A Tale of Two Universities

Nothing I do as sole proprietor of Mentata Systems is random: I owe a personal debt to all three of the schools featured in the LDAPHttp Big Ten example. Northwestern University is where I received a strong and diverse undergraduate education in computer science and mathematics. The Penn State Hershey Medical Center is where my wife got her MD and where I worked for the most pivotal period of my career. Penn State University is also the original legal owner of LDAPHttp, as it was in part produced on contract for their interests. It is through the good will of Penn State and the people at Hershey that I can release the software as free and open source. I have also learned a thing or two about values from these institutions, and values are at the heart of Mentata Systems.

A Tale of Penn State

A Tale of Northwestern

And what about the University of Michigan? I have no interesting personal experiences to relate, but I believe we all owe a great deal to the University of Michigan because they sponsored the original LDAP project, developing and releasing the specifications and source code openly to the world in 1992 at the dawn of the world wide web. Any success I may experience rests on the strength of their innovations and on Michigan's progressive use of the products of their internal development efforts.

Thank You!