A bit of history:
ApacheDS was started in 2002 by Alex Karasulu, who brought is own effort
(Ldapd) into the Apache incubator in october 2003, so pretty much 2
years *before* Neil Wilson started to work on OpenDS.
We offered the OpenDS team to coodinate our efforts when we announced
ApacheDS 1.0 in 2006 at Austin, during the ApacheCon conference. This
never actually happened, as Sun was already fighting with internal
difficulties, leading to the departure of Neil and a few collegues to
create UnboundID.
We tried to start a common effort to design what is now the LDAP API
with Sun, and it somehow leads to some work been done in common, but at
the end, Sun completely let down.
I don't see the point in forking OpenDS; it's already 17 years old, and
would require a huge effort to get to live. Plus who will engage in thsi
effort?
All in all, I'm not sure OpenDJ or OpenDS has made a lot of impact on
the industry, which is currently dominated by Active Directory (for the
worse) and OpenLDAP.
So we still think there is some space for ApacheDS, but in a different
area. We decided from day one that ApacheDS should be as compatible as
possible with OpenLDAP, because we guys are working i the same spirit of
true Open Source. And actually, migrating from ApacheDS to OpenLDAP
should be a breeze.
Our main pros are that you can use ApacheDS as a test bed while
developping your Java application based on a OpenLDAP server without
having to deal with teh complkexity of installing and managing OpenLDAP
during the development phase: you can embed ApacheDS as a test
environment
(https://directory.apache.org/conference-materials.data/testing-LDAP.pdf)
without having to deal with cleaning up anything in between tests, à la
testContainer but without the extra 10 seconds required to start the
container...
Plus we have Studio, which is extra util.
Bottom line, we have a path to get ApacheDS being production ready, it's
now just a matter of time to get it on track.
On 14/07/2023 06:38, Brian Wolfe wrote:
So this is an interesting thread. I am curious if you guys have ever
considered building a fork from the Sun OpenDS platform. The 2.2.1
binaries are still available, perhaps the actual source can be obtained
from oracle. It uses the CDDL license. Thing is there are already a few
forks out there in the enterprise world. OpenDJ now ForgeRock DS, Ping
DIrectory formerly UnBoundID, and Oracle Unified Directory. The OpenDS
2.2.1 is pretty old too. They started that project at the same time.
I've always liked how modular the OpenDS platform is and have developed
plugins for them in the enterprise space. You would probably be able to
find some of the enterprise devs willing to work on an
opensource version if it's closely related to what they are currently
developing.
On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 3:11 PM Emmanuel Lécharny <elecha...@gmail.com
<mailto:elecha...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On 13/07/2023 19:37, Shawn McKinney wrote:
>
>
>> On Jul 12, 2023, at 8:57 PM, Emmanuel Lécharny
<elecha...@gmail.com <mailto:elecha...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Apache DS is a pretty big project. It depends on many moving parts:
>> - Apache MINA for the network layer (49,610 Single lines of
code, aka slocs)
>> - Apache LDAP API for the base LDAP operation (212,990 slocs)
>> - Apache Mavibot for the new database (17,590 slocs)
>> - Apache Directory Server (184,006 slocs)
>>
>> and I'm afraid to be one of the only active committer for most
of those projects, with a day job and a family... So doing my best,
but it takes time ;-)
>
>
> I have varying responses ranging from the project’s importance,
as represented by the millions of downloads yearly, to thanking you
for your efforts keeping it going, into encouragement that we
continue on.
>
> There’s lots of potential here. But folks seem disinterested in
helping. How can we get this going again?
This is complicated.
* First, this is an almost 20 years old project (ApacheDS started in
2005). It's hard to jump in.
* Second, the code base is impressive. It's alreday hard to get into a
10/20K lines of code base, here we are an order of magnitude higher.
* Third, in order to get into ApacheDS, you must know MINA, Ldap API,
JDBM, which is not simple
* Forth, the documentation, especially the technical one, is light
* Fifth, LDAP is certainly not the most attractive technology, by far...
I would also add that The ASF, as a foundation, is intimidating. The
entry barrier is considered high, which is all but true. But, well,
even
when we tried to open the doors widely, it didn't brought any new blood!
So at the end of the day, it's mainly a matter of being passionate. If
you are not, then it might be a need to get something in a brick you
use
in your day job. And that's fine too.
We *could* also advocate more, but that means running conferences,
educating youngies at univ, or whatever works. I'm not an expert at
that. IN 20 years, I was only able to bring 2 students to the project,
and that is pretty much it.
May be The ASF is also not as attractive as it was?
Just my own perception here...
--
*Emmanuel Lécharny - CTO* 205 Promenade des Anglais – 06200 NICE
T. +33 (0)4 89 97 36 50
P. +33 (0)6 08 33 32 61
emmanuel.lecha...@busit.com <mailto:emmanuel.lecha...@busit.com>
https://www.busit.com/ <https://www.busit.com/>
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Thanks,
Brian Wolfe
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-wolfe-3136425a/
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-wolfe-3136425a/>
--
*Emmanuel Lécharny - CTO* 205 Promenade des Anglais – 06200 NICE
T. +33 (0)4 89 97 36 50
P. +33 (0)6 08 33 32 61
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