DCE to be released under the LGPL

The Open Group Debuts Open Source Licensing of DCE Source Code
Sponsors Include IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Entegrity, Penn State and Chalmers


San Francisco, CA   January 12, 2005   The Open Group announced that the
source code of the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE), an
industry-standard, vendor-neutral set of distributed computing technologies,
is being made available under an Open Source license.  The Open Group's
initiative will broaden the use of DCE concepts and components as a
vendor-neutral interoperability infrastructure. 

"The Open Group's members are committed to working with the open source
community to promote interoperability," said Allen Brown, President and CEO
of The Open Group. "Secure, scalable interoperability is the foundation of
exchange and usability of data within and across organizational boundaries -
the key to Boundaryless Information Flow(TM)."

Previously, the DCE source was only available under a traditional license.
Making it available under a recognized open source license (LGPL) both
increases the accessibility of DCE as an interoperability technology, and
permits a broader community to work on the source to expand its features and
keep it current.

The Open Group will work with the DCE community to make DCE available to the
open source development community, as well as continuing to offer the source
through The Open Group's web site at: http://www.opengroup.org/dce/

"I am pleased to hear the DCE 1.2 program sponsors have agreed to contribute
the DCE source code to the open source community," said William Estrem,
Principal of Metaplexity Associates and former chairman of the Open Software
Foundation End User Forum, who had served as the customer representative on
the DCE 1.2 program steering committee. "This is a long anticipated event.  I
know of several developers who are very interested in working with the code
to provide better implementations of existing DCE applications and to create
new distributed systems."

"It's great to see DCE -- the first secure secure enterprise computing
platform -- finally available for development by the OSS community," said
Rich Salz, Chief Security Architect at Data Power Technology. "Its size alone
makes it both a formidable challenge to, and testament in the belief of, the
open source community.  I look forward to seeing new release of DCE used to
solve real-world enterprise computing problems."

Jeremy Allison from the Samba Team, noted:  "DCE is one of the core
infrastructure technologies used in computing today. I'm delighted to see it
being made available under a Free Software licence. This will promote the
wider adoption of DCE in the Open Source/Free Software community"

About DCE
The Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) is an industry-standard,
vendor-neutral set of distributed computing technologies. It provides a
complete Distributed Computing Environment infrastructure, including security
services to protect and control access to data, name services that make it
easy to find distributed resources, and a scalable model for organizing
widely scattered users, services, and data. DCE runs on all major computing
platforms and is designed to support distributed applications in
heterogeneous hardware and software environments. As a mature product with
three major releases and the only middleware system with a comprehensive
security model, it is deployed worldwide in critical business environments. 

For more information, visit http://www.opengroup.org/dce/introduction.htm 

About The Open Group 
The Open Group is a vendor-neutral and technology-neutral consortium, which
drives the creation of Boundaryless Information Flow(TM) that will enable
access to integrated information within and between enterprises based on open
standards and global interoperability. The Open Group works with customers,
suppliers, consortia and other standard bodies. Its role is to capture,
understand and address current and emerging requirements, establish policies
and share best practices; to facilitate interoperability, develop consensus,
and evolve and integrate specifications and open source technologies; to
offer a comprehensive set of services to enhance the operational efficiency
of consortia; and to operate the industry's premier certification service.
Further information on The Open Group can be found at
http://www.opengroup.org.

Note to Editors: Boundaryless Information Flow is a trademark of The Open
Group. 
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