Same is true for the public cloud instance:

url --basic -b cookies.txt -c cookies.txt -u john:123 "http://controller-aerogear.rhcloud.com/aerogear-controller-demo/autobots" -v

Response from Openshift:

* About to connect() to controller-aerogear.rhcloud.com port 80 (#0)
*   Trying 107.22.154.127...
* connected
* Connected to controller-aerogear.rhcloud.com (107.22.154.127) port 80 (#0)
* Server auth using Basic with user 'john'
> GET /aerogear-controller-demo/autobots HTTP/1.1
> Authorization: Basic am9objoxMjM=
> User-Agent: curl/7.24.0 (x86_64-apple-darwin12.0) libcurl/7.24.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8r zlib/1.2.5
> Host: controller-aerogear.rhcloud.com
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
< Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 06:44:33 GMT
< Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
< WWW-Authenticate: Digest realm="default",domain="/aerogear-controller-demo",nonce="MTM2OTIwNTA3MzAyNTpkMzdjMTA5ZC1lMGQwLTQwOWUtYjdkMi04ZTNlMDRiYTMxNWQ=",algorithm=MD5,qop=auth,stale="false"
< Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
< Content-Length: 958
* Added cookie JSESSIONID="6knm0NlG0-NpOdCWOXW0Ba3w.undefined" for domain controller-aerogear.rhcloud.com, path /aerogear-controller-demo, expire 0
< Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=6knm0NlG0-NpOdCWOXW0Ba3w.undefined; Path=/aerogear-controller-demo; HttpOnly
< 
* Connection #0 to host controller-aerogear.rhcloud.com left intact
<html><head><title>JBoss Web/7.0.13.Final - Error report</title><style><!--H1 {font-family:Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;color:white;background-color:#525D76;font-size:22px;} H2 {font-family:Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;color:white;background-color:#525D76;font-size:16px;} H3 {font-family:Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;color:white;background-color:#525D76;font-size:14px;} BODY {font-family:Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;color:black;background-color:white;} B {font-family:Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;color:white;background-color:#525D76;} P {font-family:Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;background:white;color:black;font-size:12px;}A {color : black;}A.name {color : black;}HR {color : #525D76;}--></style> </head><body><h1>HTTP Status 401 - </h1><HR size="1" noshade="noshade"><p><b>type</b> Status report</p><p><b>message</b> <u></u></p><p><b>description</b> <u>This request requires HTTP authentication ().</u></p><HR size="1" noshade="noshade"><h3>JBoss Web/7.0.13.Final</h3></body></html>* Closing connection #0
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