As you know, Kerberos was originally developed at MIT as the authentication protocol for MIT’s Project Athena in 1983 and was adopted as an IETF standard in 1993. The quick release of Kerberos as an Open source tool in 1987 led to a massive adoption amongst IT vendors up to a point that there is no way back to a non Kerberos world.

This is the reason why seven large organizations have decided to form The Kerberos Consortium whose goal is to establish Kerberos as the universal authentication platform for the world’s computer networks.

The Consortium Operating Principles:

• Be a not-for-profit consortium of companies led by MIT.
• Develop authentication and authorization technologies for computer networks based on the Kerberos system.
• Meet the needs of users, operating system vendors, application vendors, and other members of the Kerberos community
• Expand, and accelerate, the implementation and standardization efforts that MIT currently undertakes.
• Provide a valuable forum by which customers and vendors can communicate their needs for the future of Kerberos
• Provide a neutral environment, interoperability and functionality issues of concern to the wider Kerberos community.

The Consortium’s members (sponsors) include big names in the industry such as Google and Stanford Univ. so it might well be One ring to rule’m all