Hello everyone.
After many discussions with Joe Brinkman and Scott Willhite about the Active Directory provider I decided it was time to "put up or shut up" and applied to be the Project Lead. Imagine my surprise when the answer was "Yes". 
Seeing as this is my first blog here I guess I should tell you a little about myself. I've worked with computers doing programming on a personal level since the very early 80's. On a professional level I've worked in an IT position at a Technical College in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada for the past 10 or so years where I do a bit of everything (computer repair, server administration, programming, etc). I discovered DotNetNuke back in it's early days (I believe it was version 1.0.6) and quickly became a convert. When I'm not working on the computer I'm either watching some form of motorsports, at TaeKwonDo with my eleven year old son, or spending time with my wife and two teenage daughters.
But enough about me when what you really want to know about the AD provider. If you check the project page you'll notice that Charles Nurse is now the Core Team Sponsor. While some might think it's a mistake to put two Crazy Canucks together on a project I don't think so. Charles is very familiar with how the Active Directory provider is tied in with the core code and is going to be a great help in going forward.
So what direction is the Active Directory provider headed? What Charles and I would like to do is separate the AD code from the core and make it an actual provider. This serves, at minimum, two purposes. It can become a separate project that isn't reliant on core code releases with it's own release schedule much like you see with the other DotNetNuke projects. It will also make it easier to add other versions of authentication making the provider much more rugged.
Over the next few days I'm going to get far more familiar with the AD code and start looking at ways to meet our initial goal of separating the code from the core. Also once I'm a bit more settled into the Project Lead position I will most likely be looking for project team members so if you're interested be prepared.
Thanks
Mike Horton