Sun Wednesday said it would offer support to corporate users of OpenSSO open source identity technology and introduced a new version that also protects companies against patent infringement suits.

Sun said the newly minted Sun OpenSSO Express will be updated every three months with new features that will keep users on the cutting edge without sacrificing critical support. The company made the announcement at the annual OSCon conference going on this week in Portland, Ore.

OpenSSO is a set of Java-based technologies that include single sign-on, access management, federation and secure Web services. OpenSSO incorporates such standards as Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0, Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) and WS-Federation; and such projects as OpenID and Information Cards.

Sun eventually will fold updates to OpenSSO, an open source project the company started two years ago, into its commercial products that incorporate OpenSSO code, such as Sun Java System Access Manager and Identity Management Suite. Users with licenses to either of those two commercial products or to Java Enterprise System will get OpenSSO Express at no charge.

"What this model allows a customer to do is to start developing OpenSSO, and if they want long-term support they can move to the commercial bits," says Nick Wooler, senior product manager for Access Manager and Federation Manager at Sun.

Users with licenses for the commercial software can download and deploy OpenSSO Express and will have support under their existing contracts, which come in Standard, Premium and Premium Plus levels. Users will be able to log bugs, but they will have to stay on either of the two most current versions of the OpenSSO code.

The support plan is similar to what Sun is doing around other open source software it shepherds including MySQL, GlassFish and Solaris.

OpenSSO Express is available now.