[Fedora-directory-users] Advantages of using FDS vs OpenLDAP?

[Howard Chu]

> Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 10:18:35 -0700
> From: Richard Megginson <rmeggins at redhat.com>
>
> Mike Jackson wrote:
>
>   
>> Howard Chu wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Sorry to poke at a moldy old thread, but I think some misconceptions
>>> need to be cleared up.
>>>       
>> Hi Howard,
>>  That certainly was a moldy old thread. I'm surprised it took this 
>> long to catch your attention :-)
>>     

I guess my attention has been elsewhere ;)

>>> I'm not here to attack FDS. I have nothing but respect for the team
>>> working on it today. But the fact that OpenLDAP developed under
>>> different conditions, with a different philosophy, is just that -
>>> philosophical difference.
>>>       
>>  This is one problem which I have with using OL in commercial systems: 
>> developers pushing their philosophy. The preaching of philosophies is 
>> a fundamental difference between open-source and commercial 
>> projects/products, and fortunately not all open-source projects do it. 
>> With a commercial product, the customer is always right and new 
>> features (like MMR) will appear and be enabled by default with 
>> sufficient customer demand.
>>     
>
> I don't believe the customer is always right.  A good marketing 
> organization will give the customer what they ask for.  A great one will 
> give the customer what he/she really needs/wants, which is not always 
> what the customer asks for.  We were fortunate at Netscape and Red Hat 
> to have a couple of great PMs, and a few good ones.
>   

Indeed. In my experience on many projects, the "customer" is almost 
always wrong. Fortunately for them they were usually shielded from me by 
several layers of sales/marketing, and those layers got to deal with 
twisting the language so that it appeared the customer was getting 
exactly what they asked for, when we were just delivering what they needed.

I don't want to pollute this list with too much off-topic discussion, 
but this is a key difference - OpenLDAP did not begin as a commercial 
directory product, and that was not its original purpose. It was never 
Kurt's goal to create a directory server that could compete with other 
commercial directory servers, he just wanted something that would work 
for NetBoolean's mail routing product. Symas wasn't looking to become a 
commercial directory server company either, we were just looking for 
something that would work for our Connexitor EMS product. I.e., OL 
started as the bare necessities that a couple developers needed for 
something else entirely, and the only focus of the project has been 
satisfying its developers. Many people are put off by the "if you want 
it, add it yourself" attitude. I personally found this attitude 
attracted me to the project, because I enjoy creating code that does 
what I want.
>> With an open-source project, the developers sometimes call the 
>> "customers" crazy, stupid, uninformed, etc, and tell them to be quiet 
>> or go away if they don't like it.
>>     
>
> That happens with proprietary software just as much or more, it's just 
> not as public :-)  c.f. Microsoft, Oracle
>
>   
LOL. Indeed, when was the last time you ever heard "you're right, we'll 
fix that right away" from Microsoft...

> That being said, I have been bothered by the tone of discussion on the 
> openldap lists at times, and I don't want to have that sort of 
> negativity on the fedora ds lists.  Perhaps it is just a difference of 
> philosophy.
>
>   
Newbies tend to have a rough time with OL and with the OL lists. And 
teaching newbies about LDAP basics hasn't really been one of the 
priorities for OL. But in general the only time I've seen real problems 
has been due to folks who come onto the lists without a clue and who 
steadfastly ignore all the clues given to them. Ignorance isn't a sin, 
but aggressive ignorance is.
>> Since this project's software has commercial roots, and still has 
>> commercial funding, thankfully you don't see much pushing of 
>> philosophy here.
>>     
>
> You see a different philosophy.  Besides, OpenLDAP does have a 
> commercial entity behind it (Symas), and they do have customers, and 
> they do want to provide features and services for them.
>   

Yes, and this marks a distinct change for OpenLDAP. "It works" used to 
be good enough, but isn't any more. A lot of initial development was 
driven purely by internal needs. The emphasis has slowly changed to 
making the code enterprise-grade, and that change has been largely due 
to Symas. The old codebase sucked, royally. We at Symas started 
profiling the code (and developing new code profiling tools to assist), 
re-factoring, ... and as a result the OL 2.1 code was 200 times faster 
than 2.0. With the old philosophy probably nobody would have bothered to 
investigate. But I'm a perfectionist; "it works" isn't nearly good 
enough for me...

>>  The biggest problem I have with OL is that the -users mailing list is 
>> censored, which is sometimes used to ensure that philosophy can be 
>> pushed without being questioned. I have had numerous postings to 
>> openldap-users blocked, which either questioned (even indirectly) the 
>> philosophy of OL or mentioned the name of another directory server. 
>> I'm happy that we have freedom of speech on this list and can have 
>> this discussion; it would be prohibited on openldap-users. I really 
>> despise being censored, and I'm sure that many other people feel the 
>> same way.
>>     
>
> There are other lists that can be used to talk about other directory 
> servers and how they compare to OpenLDAP e.g. the umich list, and to 
> some extend the ldap-interop list.  I don't fault Kurt for keeping the 
> discussions germane - perhaps we will have to do the same with the 
> Fedora DS lists if we become victims of our own popularity, which is a 
> good problem to have :-)
>
>   
I think part of the problem was that the OL list was the only place to 
find free help on the entire technology, and it irked me to see my time 
being wasted giving free support to people using commercial products. 1) 
they paid money to a vendor already, the vendor should be supporting 
them. 2) if they have money to burn, they ought to be paying me instead. 
;)  The fact that these other lists are active has pretty much solved 
that problem.
>>  Considering those two problems, I would have a difficult time saying 
>> that I have nothing but respect for the *entire* OL team. However, I 
>> do have a lot of respect for you because you listen to opposing views 
>> with an open mind and are willing to debate them in a friendly manner.
>>     

Thanks. A good debate is always nice; anyone who doesn't like 
intellectual challenge shouldn't be here in the first place...
>> BR,
>> Mike
-- 
  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  OpenLDAP Core Team            http://www.openldap.org/project/