Colin Robbins has published on his blog a “Prehistory of LDAP“, which describes some of the origins of the standard.
All of this predates my involvement with LDAP, directory servers and even X.500, but I feel related to it, since the names, projects or people, he mentions are familiar to me and I had the chance to meet or even work with some of them.
Anyway, for the curious who want to understand the roots of LDAP, it’s definitely worth reading.
Bill Nelson, has published the “The Most Complete History of Directory Services You Will Ever Find” (until the next one comes along), a detailed history of LDAP based directory services and products. Expect a few updates as people find about this and ask for adding new data points. But this is the most complete summary I’m aware of. I had a timeline of Sun directory products a few years ago, but Bill’s has more details.
His post includes a visual timeline of the directory service products and their heritage, linked here under, for your convenience.
Personally, I’ve been involved with the Sun and derived lines since 1996, and now drive the ForgeRock one: OpenDJ !
Ludo Sketches 