Just one point – I would not say "that sustaining OSS is not on any Oracle’s agenda". The acquisition process just started last week. This is an enormous piece to swallow. Let’s see in the coming weeks if / when / how Oracle will come with more details about it’s OSS plans.

again, this is a confirmation that Oracle does not know what is OSS about. Or they know, but they don’t care. What is important for Oracle is their Customers.

That’s perfectly fine with me. There is nothing wrong in making money.

It’s just that it should be crystal clear that sustaining OSS is not on any Oracle’s agenda.

Here is how I understand and see the situation.

1. When Oracle says "We will continue to support existing customers".
I understand : "we will continue to fix bugs, issue patches, support new platforms / adapters / systems and sell these to customers having a support contract"

2. When Oracle says "lifetime support", I do understand : "as long as you are paying, we will continue to support you"

3. When Oracle says "our strategic IAM tools are Oracle IAM family products"
I understand : we will not sell OpenSSO to new customers and will not bring any significant new features to it"

4. I do believe in communities and I know Sun managed to create a community around OpenSSO. As a matter of fact, some companies (like ForgeRock mentioned in my previous comment) already started to sell service and support around OpenSSO. There web site says they are hiring engineers, so they might even further develop such products.

I do not agree with you that the solution is aimed at disappearing if / when Oracle will drop engineering effort from it. Forks do happen, communities do exist and might provide an alternative paths for OpenSSO users that can not afford an Oracle support contract.

So, if you are an happy OpenSSO user today and do not want (or can’t afford) to follow Oracle, I would contact one of these companies to see what they propose and how you can trust them in the foreseeable future.

(once again, these are my understanding and opinion, not the one from Oracle)

Of course, Oracle can dump Glassfish, OpenSSO and OpenDS in a trashbin^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hforge, like SourceForge, a place where 70 000 other projects are slowly withering.

In fact, you exactly clarified Oracle position regarding those projects : Oracle don’t give a dime. Thanks for this clarification.

We licence Oracle Weblogic suite (mainly App server with the dev environment) for more than we pay Sun for the entire JES stack. Can’t see that happening again! Of course, Sun couldn’t make money, Oracle do – so maybe it’s just a market we can’t afford to be in. As I said, it’s sad, but I’m not surprised 🙁 We run apache, php, uportal, drupal as opensource products without the backing of proper support – so I guess opensso will just become another one of those. Oh well, it was good while it lasted 🙂

Still, interesting times – and some interesting decisions we will need to be making in the next couple of years!

Cheers

Oracle is committed to support existing OpenSSO customers but chose Oracle Access Manager & co as Oracle’s strategic IAM tools.

Fortunately, OpenSSO is open source and you might expect to see startups or established companies create value around OpenSSO and ensure the solution will continue to evolve.

Have a look at http://www.forgerock.com started today for example.

As Emmanuel says, what exactly does that mean? Sounds bad to me as someone who is about to deploy OpenSSO as a university wide SSO solution :-/

Sucks. Bet we won’t be able to afford the Oracle option. Not sure we will be able to afford Oracle/Sun support on a lot of our stuff in the future.

Sad 🙁