Likewise Software, formerly Centeris, has released Likewise Open, an open source community project that enables core Active Directory authentication for Linux systems by joining them to Active Directory domains. Likewise Open provides organizations that are struggling with homegrown and do-it-yourself solutions with a proven enterprise solution for authentication.   Likewise Open is hosted at www.likewisesoftware.com/open and the source code is available today to enable Linux vendors to integrate open-sourced Linux authentication solutions into upcoming versions of their operating systems.

Gerald Carter, a senior Likewise Software developer, respected member of the open source community, and long-time member of the Samba core development team, will serve as the project director for Likewise Open.

Key features of Likewise Open include:

• User authentication with a single user name and password on both Windows and Linux systems
• The ability to apply Active Directory security settings on individual Linux machines to enforce password complexity and aging
• Credential caching for offline logon in the event of temporary loss of connectivity to the Active Directory Domain Controller
• Single sign-on for SSH and PuTTY

Consistent with Likewise Software’s focus to provide solutions and support for the enterprise,  Likewise Software also announced key distribution and technology partners that will support the Likewise Open project. These partners include Red Hat and Canonical, the sponsor of Ubuntu.

“We are excited about the Likewise Open project and the solutions that it will provide Canonical's enterprise customers and other major deployments of Ubuntu,” said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project. “Likewise Open allows us to provide end users of the Ubuntu operating system the ability to join their systems to Microsoft Active Directory for user authentication. We look forward to the debut of Likewise Open in the April release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long Term Support).”