The SLAPD and SLURPD (Stand-alone LDAP update replication daemon) originally evolved within the long-running project that developed the LDAP protocol.

Today, many LDAP Server Implementations are derived from the same code base of the original SLAPD and/or evolutions of it.

University of Michigan

LDAP was co-developed by Tim Howes

Tim Howes

Tim Howes is the co-inventor of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol , the Internet standard for accessing directory servers. The main purpose was to handle situations that the X.500 protocol suite could not address....

 of the University of Michigan, Steve Kille

Steve Kille

Steve Kille is an English software engineer.He has worked on Internet technologies since 1980, and was one of the principal engineers behind the ISODE open-source implementation of the OSI protocol stack....

 of Isode Limited, and Wengyik Yeong

Wengyik Yeong

Wengyik 'Weng' Yeong was an American computer scientist. He is principally known for his work on the X.500, LDAP, and SNMP Internet protocols....

 of Performance Systems International, in 1993.

Netscape Communications Corporation

In 1996 Netscape Communications Corporation hired several of the project's developers: they worked on what became known as the Netscape Directory Server.