End of macOS Server, Alternative ?

Apple have an official article here - Prepare for changes to macOS Server - Apple Support and in this they do list suggestions for alternatives to Apple's own functions.

• With regards to Mail for many years many admins have been using Kerio Connect instead so there is no change there, this arguably also covers Calendar and Contacts
• For Web serving I expect that despite what Apple imply that Apache will still be on all Macs and you could manually enable and configure it, however this is an area where MAMP would be an easy alternative
• For NetBoot/NetRestore/NetInstall Apple list NetSUS which is free from Jamf but there is also Imagr, I personally hope this change prompts the DeployStudio team to port the DeployStudio server to Linux - something they should have done some time ago, NetSUS already runs on Linux
• I had already several years ago switched away from Apple's VPN server to running StrongSwan5 under Linux which can do IPSec and IKEv2, where I currently work we run SoftEther VPN also under Linux which can do IPSec and OpenVPN/SSL but not IKEv2

The implication from Apple's article as above is that OpenDirectory Server and Profile Manager are both being continued and presumably also the currently unique Caching server. There are plenty of alternatives for Profile Manager including of course Jamf but as I implied non that I am aware of for the Caching server.

With regards to Open Directory this is a much bigger concern to me. There is obviously Active Directory which I suspect Apple use themselves and are expecting everyone else to use as well. In theory there is OpenLDAP on Linux and one fewer people have heard of which is FreeIPA. Unfortunately both have or rather don't have good support for Macs, in particular changing passwords can be a real problem. The official FreeIPA documentation on supposedly how to configure Macs contains several major errors and even if one gets round them still does not deliver a fully working solution and requires a lot of work on each client Mac rather than being configured once on the server. One might have to even consider the absurd approach of using SAMBA as an Active Directory server if that works better.

My problem is not specifically with Apple effectively discontinuing their server offering, it is that they have done nothing to ease the transition. Their above article does not qualify. What Apple should have done is the following - they could still do this if they have any decency.

1. Open Source more of their existing server components
2. Do the work for projects like OpenLDAP, FreeIPA, SAMBA to add proper support for Macs and provide this as free contributions to those projects with code, announcements and articles. Apple could then with a clear conscience end their own involvement knowing that someone else can take over responsibility.

(SAMBA does not yet properly support TimeMachine backups.)

Since I think many of us will agree that Linux rather than Windows Servers is a better alternative people might want to look at Webmin as a weak but better than none means of adding a better user interface to Linux server tools. See http://www.webmin.com/