LDAPv3 work was started in 1996 Mark Wahl of Critical Angle Inc, Tim Howes, and Steve Kille under the aegis of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
LDAPv3 was first published in 1997, superseded LDAPv2 and added support for extensibility, integrated the Simple Authentication and Security Layer, and better aligned the LDAP protocol to the 1993 edition of X.500.