SLAPD#
The SLAPD (Standalone LDAP Daemon) and SLURPD (Stand-alone LDAP update replication daemon) was originally developed within the long-running project that developed the LDAP protocol.Today, many LDAP Server Implementations are derived from the same code base of the original SLAPD and/or evolutions of it.
University of Michigan#
LDAP was co-developed by Tim Howes
of the University of Michigan, Steve Kille of Isode Limited, and Wengyik Yeong of Performance Systems International, in 1993.
Netscape Communications Corporation#
In 1996, several of the project's developers were hired by Netscape Communications Corp and they developed what became known as the Netscape Directory Server.Sun Microsystems-Netscape Alliance (iPlanet)#
The Sun-Netscape Alliance, Santa Clara, CA was A joint venture of Sun Microsystems and Netscape to market Netscape's Web-based software products. The Alliance was formed when AOL acquired Netscape in 1999 to take advantage of the fact that the bulk of Netscape software was already running on Sun hardware. Netscape product names were replaced by the iPlanet brand name.Sun Microsystems Open Net Environment and AOL#
In March 2002, the Sun-Netscape Alliance was concluded, and iPlanet became a division of Sun and a core component of the Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE).AOL and Sun Microsystems retained the intellectual property rights for all products. Sun Microsystems took retained engineering and support organizations were fully staffed by Sun Microsystems employees.
iPlanet software became Sun ONE software, which changed its name in late 2003 to the Sun Java System brand. We are unsure if the the Sun Java System brand contains much code form the original code base. The OpenDS LDAP is, AFAIK, an Open Source version of the Sun Microsystems Directory Server.
Red Hat Directory Server#
The AOL rights and code were acquired by Red Hat and is now the Red Hat Directory Server. Red hat on, June 1, 2005, much of the source code was released as free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).As of version 1.0, December 8, 2005, Red Hat released all of the remaining source code for all components included in the release package and continues to maintain them under their respective licenses as part of the Fedora Directory Server.
The Fedora Directory Server project changed its name in May 2009 to 389 Directory Server to give the project a distribution and vendor neutral name and encourage porting or running the software on other Operating Systems.