Sun Releases Identity Management to Open Source

by Miko Matsumura on Aug 22, 2006 |

SOA projects frequently involve refactoring sets of reusable services and integrating scattered systems all over the Enterprise. The services that most frequently emerge as common across all Enterprise services include security and identity management. This type of infrastructure service enables Single Sign On (SSO) across a wide variety of services.

In an effort to accelerate SSO efforts, Sun Microsystems has launched the OpenSSO project--an Open Source access management software distribution that provides the means to build authentication, authorization, and session management for Java and web applications and web services.

Sun will be basing future versions of the Sun Java System Access Manager product on OpenSSO, much like OpenOffice.org project is the basis for Sun StarOffice Product. The OpenSSO project falls under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). Information about this license can be found at http://www.sun.com/cddl/ and http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cddl1.php.

This looks like a nice Open Source Identity Management System--one that has its roots in the Liberty Alliance and a set of real world customer use cases. The following links contain information regarding the technical aspects of OpenSSO.

Web Agent and C-API architecture document and source have been released. Read the announcement.
Policy Service architecture document and source have been released. Read the announcement.
Authentication Service source has been released. Read the announcement.
Authentication Service architecture document has been released. Read the announcement.
Session Architecture and Project Sources have been released. Read the announcement.
Architecture and Use Case documents have been released. Read the announcement.

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Useful OpenSSO Links by Pat Patterson Posted

Dear SUN... by Clinton Begin Posted

Re: Dear SUN... by Floyd Marinescu Posted

Re: Dear SUN... by Dmitriy Kopylenko Posted

Re: Dear SUN... by Scott Battaglia Posted

Re: Dear SUN... by miko matsumura Posted

Re: Dear SUN... by Clinton Begin Posted

Re: Dear SUN... by Javier Pavier Posted

Re: Dear SUN... by Clinton Begin Posted

Re: Dear SUN... by Anthony McClay Posted

Useful OpenSSO Links by Pat Patterson

Thanks for picking up our announcement, Miko. Here are some useful links for anybody interested in finding out more about OpenSSO:

OpenSSO Project Page

OpenSSO FAQ

Downloadable binaries, source etc.

Relevant entries from my blog - these are entries directly relating to OpenSSO - anything on Access Manager, Federation and Identity categories should also be useful, if you're looking for more information.

There is an OpenSSO IRC Channel - #opensso on the freenode network - IRC server irc.freenode.net.

Sign up at opensso.dev.java.net now and you'll receive notification as we open source the eagerly awaited federation code, including SAML2 and Liberty Identity Web Services (ID-WSF)!

Pat Patterson
Federation Architect
Sun Microsystems

Dear SUN... by Clinton Begin

The open source community is not a trash bin for the products you can't sell.

Best regards,
Clinton

;-)

Re: Dear SUN... by Floyd Marinescu

The open source community is not a trash bin for the products you can't sell.

For some products where there are clearly existing leading solutions already in open source - indeed open sourcing your own product may not make sense. However, I'm not aware of many enterprise SSO projects - this one might do well.

Re: Dear SUN... by Javier Pavier

The open source community is not a trash bin for the products you can't sell.

Are news sites like InfoQ a trash bin for comments that ThoughtWorks can't sell ?

;-)

Re: Dear SUN... by Clinton Begin

Dude, that was weak point, even as a joke.

Selling "comments" was never our business model. And we didn't lose $800 million dollars with our business model. In fact, we actually MADE money by doing something that people value. Crazy!

There's a lot I wish Sun was doing that was of value to me (their customer).

Clinton

Re: Dear SUN... by Dmitriy Kopylenko

The open source community is not a trash bin for the products you can't sell.
For some products where there are clearly existing leading solutions already in open source - indeed open sourcing your own product may not make sense. However, I'm not aware of many enterprise SSO projects - this one might do well.

Well, there is CAS: www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/index.html

Cheers,
Dmitriy.

Re: Dear SUN... by Scott Battaglia

There are a few enterprise SSO open source solutions in existance. One popular one is JA-SIG CAS
www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/

Its an open source SSO developed by institutions of higher education, but its used by universities, non-profit organizations, governments, and corporations worldwide.

There's also JOSSO, PubCookie, CoSign and some others (though I'll admit we don't deploy them here so I'm not sure how "enterprise ready" they are)

Re: Dear SUN... by miko matsumura

The open source community is not a trash bin for the products you can't sell.

Best regards,
Clinton

I must admit to finding your comment amusing. So it's ok from that perspective, but then again I also do think that offering software that has been comercially deployed at major companies in an area that developers are legitimately grappling with is a decent and possibly strategic move. So my opinion differs from yours--but of course that's what makes community interesting.

Miko

Re: Dear SUN... by Clinton Begin

I'm glad someone saw the happy face. ;-)

Seriously though, I hope the best for SUN, they're a "cool" company, and if all we had was IBM, Microsoft and HP....the world would be a pretty boring place. YAWN.

That said, I think SUN is seriously misguided right now regarding both Open Source Software and Java. And I'm not seeing a lot of hope.

Cheers,
Clinton

Re: Dear SUN... by Anthony McClay

As we are all technical representatives, and share our issues amongst our shared experiences.. I find this statement offensive. We as a community should welcome the chances to open the solutions or at lease be a part of the solution.

I am glad that Sun has decided to open the development/technology to this very important and critical feature for all of us professionals to get more involved, extend and perhaps market ourselves. If you have not worked with distributed systems, SOA, or federated Portals you have no idea how important this feature truly is.

I first looked at this product when I generated a federated Portal which linked A National BEA Portal to 50 other individual state portals using BEA and Sharepoint Portal and features of SAML 2.0

I am very glad to see, such a pivotal enterprise component, opened to individuals who may effect the future direction, or build the future products to solve our problems.

I am very happy to have tools from the Java Architecture Sig and Apache and all the rest of the great developer community when I need to solve problems, but we should welcome this all products and companies that offer the general development community to get involved with the solutions, and help build them as well.

1. FREE DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY FOR SUN - if we are willing to get involved
2. An OPEN SOLUTIONS THAT WE CAN USE - if we decide to use it

Tony McClay