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Q&A with Paul Cormier
Red Hat Executive VP of Engineering
On September 30, 2004, Red Hat announced plans to buy certain assets of Netscape Security Solutions from America Online (AOL). The products to be acquired include Netscape Directory Server and Netscape Certificate Management System. Netscape Directory Server is an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) for centrally managing application settings and access controls. Netscape Certificate Management System is designed for user authentication.
We recently sat down with Paul Cormier, Red Hat Executive VP of Engineering, to talk about the acquisition, and why this is good news for both Red Hat customers and the open source community.
Read the press release.
Q: First, give us a little perspective on the history behind Red Hat's creation of the Open Source Architecture and how this new technology will fit into it.
A: For several years, Red Hat has been working as part of many community projects to move individual pieces of the Open Source Architecture forward.
And even more importantly, we've been focused on the integration of these technologies. So you have these open source projects that start to spring up that are within the infrastructure--Apache, Tomcat, JOnAS, to name a few. Red Hat has worked individually with these communities and assembled the technologies to create solutions. This is the model Red Hat has been using with the Linux operating system and the integration of the many pieces of the OS. It's a large part of the value that Red Hat provides.
Last year when we began to see many more projects that were centered around technology outside the OS and were more focused in the infrastructure space.
But with this, we had two technology holes to fill within the Open Source Architecture: directory and security. Look at the stateless Linux model for example. Today you have a program login on the OS, you input your password and it brings up a password file, authentication, mounting local file system, etc.
In a single system environment of today, one logs into their desktop locally and checks credentials, mounts files, etc, all based on state, which resides on that box. In the environment we are talking about, state is not locked to a specific box but resides within the network. This allows a login anywhere on the network but always being secured with the same credentials and access to the same files users are authorized to access. Directory and network security are key elements to making this all work together.
Those are the two pieces that are now going to help us tie together all of the features of the Open Source Architecture.
Q: How will this help Red Hat customers looking to build their infrastructures around open source technology and avoid lock-in?
A: With this new technology we now have a completely open solution stack.
The parts that make the most sense to open source in the stack are the technologies that span the horizontal architecture. You can't have halfway security. Either your services in the infrastructure play in the security model or they don't.
Now we're the only company in the industry that has an entirely open source stack. You don't get locked in at the OS, why would you want to get locked in anywhere else?
Q: How will the acquisition of this technology benefit the open source community?
A: We continue to give more technology back to the open source community. We're probably the biggest contributor to the open source community as far as pure research and development dollars. The acquisition and open sourcing of these technologies will only serve to expand the community we're working with.
Q: And how will Red Hat customers benefit?
A: This gives us the ability to deliver more complex, more integrated solutions. We can now tie everything together. I estimate that this put us two three years ahead in delivering on the plan we had in mind with the Open Source Architecture.