Why the Fedora Directory Server won't make things better (for now, at least)

I just discovered on slashdot that Fedora released the Fedora Directory Server (FDS), an open-sourced Netscape Directory Server. Of course, the first thing was looking at how to build it by myself, just to test its compatibility. I often do that with large-scale software, just trying to compile it, not only with standard glibc, but also with dietlibc. In the past, software that compiles and links with dietlibc has been shown to be more portable than software that doesn't (I'd call that the "all the world is glibc"-syndrome). And so I started looking at the external dependencies, i.e. additional libraries that are required in order to build FDS. And what was one of the first things that I discovered in this list? Yes, the infamous Berkeley DB. Thanks, good bye. Berkeley DB caused a lot of issues with OpenLDAP already, so why would I want to use it with FDS?!

In this article, Andreas Bogk warned about "Berzerkeley DB", as he called it, and hoped (in the comments) that NDS would become an alternative to OpenLDAP. Well, no, unfortunately. I had hoped for a good, free and complete implementation of an LDAP server, too, but it doesn't look that will happen any time soon.