27 May 2008 - 07:43Do U Ubuntu?
I was invited to attend the Ubuntu FOSScamp and Developer Summit which just took place in Prague last week. This was a great opportunity to meet with the developers behind Ubuntu Server and explore ideas on multiple fronts. In some ways it was long overdue; the communication channels between Ubuntu and the OpenLDAP community were relatively nonexistent up till now. And as the Debian/OpenSSL story demonstrated, disconnects between distros and their upstreams can be extremely detrimental...We've done a lot of work to address OpenLDAP's usability in the 2.3 and 2.4 releases, but it seems that few people outside our community are aware of the progress we've made. The expansion of the documentation, the addition of new overlays, and new dynamic configuration capabilities all add up to make OpenLDAP a lot more useful and usable. Some of the discussion focused on updating Ubuntu's installation to use dynamic configuration going forward. That opens the door to more painlessly integrating other LDAP-enabled apps into a running server, which makes life easier for admins and developers alike.
We also discussed how to better coordinate their teams with our own. (E.g., forwarding bug reports from their users, participating in our developer discussions, etc.) This was probably the most crucial accomplishment of the event. The Ubuntu Server team has some ambitious plans for integrating LDAP into their platform (along with Samba and other key technologies) and streamlining the overall administration of the system. With wide open communication channels and close coordination with their upstream developers I think they'll be able to meet all these goals. Or, better said, We will all be able to meet these goals.
For all Microsoft's noises about opening up and being more community-friendly, it's still clear that they're the 800lb gorilla and frankly, The Enemy. They're the pervasive reminder that superior marketing always trumps superior technology, a truth that pure technologists like myself accept only under great duress. The open source world now has the capability to leapfrog Microsoft's functionality. The missing ingredient has been the (seemingly) tight integration and simple admin tools that MS offers, but with folks like Ubuntu bringing resources to bear on this point, even that last obstacle will disappear.
As to our part in all of this - the Ubuntu folks recognize that LDAP is the key to integrating all the disparate pieces of software in their system, and they also recognize the truth of what we at Symas have been saying for the past few years: For enterprise deployments, OpenLDAP is the only LDAP software that matters. We already have the powerful tools available to address a wide variety of needs, and as we get more feedback from folks like the Ubuntu Server team on their needs we can tailor these tools and hone them to precisely fit the requirements. Some discussion from the UDS meetings has already begun and we'll continue to push forward together.
Usually at my conference appearances I incorporate a bit of music into my presentations. It's bit of a play on words, musical performance as a metaphor for OpenLDAP performance. UDS was no different in that regard. But this time I didn't have to just play solo; there were a lot of Ubuntu folks making music as well. And even though we had never met before, we showed that OpenLDAP plays well with others. Ultimately we're just one part of the picture, but our role is key, and we're set to rock the world.
No comments:
No trackbacks: