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Matthew Hardin

A Message From Our President regarding Red Hat and SuSE


A MESSAGE FROM OUR PRESIDENT REGARDING RED HAT AND SUSE REMOVING OPENLDAP FROM THEIR LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS


A few weeks ago, one of our strategic partners—a large European government and defense contractor—requested a call to discuss a big concern: the OpenLDAP server was slated to be removed from upcoming releases of Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux distributions.

As best we can tell, there will be no directory server included in future releases, but I was informed by Red Hat’s sales division that the Red Hat Directory Server will be available for an additional fee of $41,000 per year. Our partner said that he’d been tasked by his management to communicate to us their extreme displeasure with this move, which they perceive as an attempt to lock them in to Red Hat products.

We agree.

SuSE has announced that they, too, are removing the OpenLDAP server from their Linux distribution “for business reasons.” We’re told that they intend to replace it with 389DS, a less-capable LDAP server derived from the same 1990s-era code base as the Red Hat Directory Server, with an upgrade path to the old Novell eDirectory Server.

Again, it looks to us like an attempt to persuade clients to undergo expensive conversions to branded solutions—and we don’t see how this helps customers.

We can’t control what Red Hat and SuSE do with their Linux distros, but we can offer you an alternative: fully functional and maintained replacement OpenLDAP rpms for your current Red Hat or SuSE OS, free of charge. And when Red Hat ends OpenLDAP support, we’ll continue to have updated, free packages into future releases.

Available for purchase, if you choose, will be our unrivaled support packages, providing immediate and accurate responses from directory experts, thorough technical support, and professional documentation.

As a reminder, our flagship server product, Symas OpenLDAP Gold, will continue to be available for those who need enterprise capabilities and performance.

We’ve got other cool stuff brewing too: a protocol-aware load balancer that prevents the client pile-ons that affect other load balancers, some really cool integration options for Microsoft Active Directory, and something that’ll blow Red Hat’s Identity Manager (aka FreeIPA) out of the water. Stay tuned.

Red Hat and SuSE appear to be choosing the path of proprietary products and customer lock-in. But we choose to be a steward to all OpenLDAP users.

Have any questions? Send me an email. I’d love to discuss this further with you. Sincerely,




Matthew Hardin, President & CEO

Are you an existing Red Hat or SuSE customer? We have more information for you here.


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