Tools Vendor Readies Passport for Linux

A small software development company this week disclosed that it will soon offer prebuilt versions of Microsoft's Passport Internet-based authentication technology for the Unix and Linux operating systems.

The news follows Microsoft's announcement Thursday that it will share some of the source code for its single sign-on service. The software giant said it would make available in November the code to the Passport Manager--software that links a Web site or a software application to Microsoft's Passport service, which allows users to log on to multiple Web-applications using a single password.

Ready to Sell

As it was originally designed, Passport Manager could only be installed on Microsoft server software. However, prompted by requests from large Passport customers that manage user authentication on Unix or Linux servers, Microsoft has worked with a company called Ready-to-Run Software, in order to port the software to non-Windows systems.

Now that Microsoft has opened the code for the critical piece of software that enables Web site operators and software makers to link to the Passport service, Ready-to-Run said it has been given the nod to sell the software it created as a packaged product, according to Bill Saltys, vice president.

"They're really in an interesting position because they've done some of this before and they've had access to the source code," said Adam Sohn, product manager with Microsoft's .Net platforms group.

Next Stop: Unix

Ready-to-Run has licensed the Passport Manager source code from Microsoft for nearly two years, during which time it was responsible for porting Passport Manager to Unix systems in use by Weather Channel Enterprises and the digital music download service PressPlay, run by Vivendi Universal and Sony Music Entertainment.

"For any customer that has a non-Windows implementation of Passport, they would have gotten our [software] from Microsoft," Saltys said.

The company will deliver in the next few months Passport "kits," which will be available for several non-Windows operating systems. Among the first will be support for Sun's Solaris operating system, which is a version of Unix; and Red Hat's Linux operating system; as well as systems based on flavors of Unix from IBM and Hewlett-Packard. It will also work with customers to develop custom implementations of Passport, Saltys said.

Microsoft said Ready-to-Run is likely to be the first in a series of software vendors that will come out with Passport software for non-Windows systems using the shared source code. "We think it's really about building an [independent software vendor] ecosystem around this," Sohn said.