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[grain of salt]
Nope.... It's not like there are lots of competetive groupware products and services out there... Just that for some crazy reason, people still choose Microsoft, who are proven leaders in designing secure, easy to use products.
[/grain of salt]

According to Australian LinuxWorld is reporting that Novell's CTO has issued an ultimatum to SCO: put up or shut up.

Check out eGuide.

It's a free (as in $), java servlet based white pages that works against LDAP, and all the display is done in XSLT so its very customizable.

You could take a look at an application called GroupWise by Novell. It is web based and offers a powerful backend. It has powerful LDAP tools that can be viewed and edited on any platform. Also, it is widely scaleable. But it is a tad on the slow side. A small price to pay if it gets the job done, huh?

Houston Chronicle article on court case.

Novell wins one in Illinois.

The National Society of Professional Engineers doesn't want riff-raff.

IEEE Computer Society sasy NO, at least in Texas.

ACM editorial saying we shouldn't call it engineering anyhow.

Well, they could be using the Edirectory". They still need to manage all those Linux machines.

I was just looking around their site for Linux information, and that came up.

Over time, Red Carpet Enterprise will be tightly integrated into the Novell ZENworks(R) product line, leveraging Novell directory services and policies management functionality.

I don't have a huge amount of network admin experience compared to some of the people here, but I've set up and managed 3 different networks: NT4 with about 10 workstations, Netware 5 with about 130 workstations, and 2000+ActiveDirectory with about 15 workstations. Netware 5 was, by far, the easiest to administrate network. Netware5 was at a school, so it was a more restricted environment, but was also very varied. The nice thing was teachers had a bit less restrictive setups, but basically every workstation in the school could be used for any purpose.

I tried to setup application distribution at a software company I worked at with ActiveDirectory. That was an exercise in futility. Now, I'm not a MSCE, and I've haven't had much formal training in administration, but within about two days, it had caused more headaches (apps not working properly due to missing files, access problems, etc) than it was worth, and we went back to the traditional machine-by-machine manual installation. Sure, it's only 15 machines, so it's not a big deal, but I was a developer, not an administrator. If a machine died, it would have been nicer to be able to put the basic image on, and have a fully operational machine again (like netware could do) - which takes about 5 minutes of my time. Perhaps I didn't give it enough time, or maybe I just didn't have it setup right, but I accomplished the same thing on Netware in 2 weeks (from scratch) with no previous netware experience.

I work on the NT4 network right now (it's been running for around 4 years), and as soon as I have time, I will be replacing it with linux, with the goal of replacing the workstations as well. I get angry every time I run across something I can't do without some 3rd party app, that I could do in about 2 minutes with a shell script.

I think I'll keep an eye on Netware, though. If I can get the power of Netware plus the flexibility of Linux, I will be very happy.

See iFolder and iPrint, that don't require a client32 50MB install to use - just a browser.

See iFolder and iPrint, that don't require a client32 50MB install to use - just a browser.

It's not the RPMs list, but close - check out the 1-2-3 links for details of the plan

That's a really interesting question - they're (we're?) faced with trying to decide whether to do NSS or some such as a native file format (including Virtual File Services?) or just using Reiserfs or ext3. What does the community think we should do?

In any event, the rights policy question has more to do with the administrative model running on the machine - capabilities with/without root, LSM-based SELinux, etc...I've even wondered if they (we?) should do a Novell LSM plugin...thoughts?

Don't forget the IBM/SuSE tie in, that brings z-series, i-series and x-series processors. Novell already has eDirectory running on AIX machines (see here). And since it runs on both AIX and Solaris 64-bit machines, the 64-bit jump shouldn't be hard to x86-64, at least. And the Nsure Audit platform agents list on page 21, here includes Linux for IBM S/390 (zSeries). Take the hint!

Don't forget the IBM/SuSE tie in, that brings z-series, i-series and x-series processors. Novell already has eDirectory running on AIX machines (see here). And since it runs on both AIX and Solaris 64-bit machines, the 64-bit jump shouldn't be hard to x86-64, at least. And the Nsure Audit platform agents list on page 21, here includes Linux for IBM S/390 (zSeries). Take the hint!

Nice troll.

Too bad you were too lazy to do a little research. You could have been using bash (yes, it's "bash", not "Bash"). It took an entire 10 second Google search to find this.

I'm guessing the reason your year is up is because you were let go for incompetence.

I really doubt that, considering how different Novell OS is. Windows an Linux are similar when it comes to native filesystems etc. In Linux we have rwx permissions, deny overrides allow for inherited rights etc. Windows has the above plus a little more. Novell on the other hand has tons of permissions and rights. For example you can give a user the rights to rename a file but not to do anything else in the folder etc.
Novell supports perl, except for the commands for directory traversal etc. If Novell could not fix it up for so long I doubt they will be able to provide full binary support.
What I think the idea is ( and what novell has been saying) is that Netware 7 will be a set of services which run on Linux. They will behave like before but the underlying OS will be netware. It shouldnt matter onto anybody since no one ever really has to work directly on the box in Netware almost everything is through a browser, and from there there will be no changes.

"Novell also announced on Tuesday that it would be porting its entire GroupWise collaboration software, a product that significantly overlaps with Ximian's Evolution client, to Linux. The applications handle e-mail, scheduling and contact information to keep employees organized. Although Novell intends to support both software packages, the eventual goal is to have only one, said Stone."

Evolution is presently distributed under the GPL, so of course Evolution in its present state can not be "closed".

But, as far as I can tell, Novell Groupwise is not open source. Is this correct? I admit that I do not have any experience with their products.

What I am worried about is that the above quote is meant to suggest that the technologies in Evolution will be integrated with Novell's own proprietary solution, and that future development of Evolution as an open source product will be called into question, or will be seriously slowed.

Are these fears justified, or am I missing something here?

Microsoft Watch: Are you worried about SCO taking you on further, now that you've made your intentions to be a Linux player more obvious (with the Ximian deal)? Red Hat just sued SCO today...

Stone: It's great they sued them. That takes the heat off us. Go Matt! (Szulik, Red Hat, chairman and CEO) SCO doesn't have any friends left. And remember, we never said the copyright thing between us and SCO was over. We'll see."

Microsoft Watch: Are you worried about SCO taking you on further, now that you've made your intentions to be a Linux player more obvious (with the Ximian deal)? Red Hat just sued SCO today...

Stone: It's great they sued them. That takes the heat off us. Go Matt! (Szulik, Red Hat, chairman and CEO) SCO doesn't have any friends left. And remember, we never said the copyright thing between us and SCO was over. We'll see."

As announced here. It's written in Java.

Novel merged with WordPerfect in Jun 1994. Novell gave up 51 million shares of stock to get all the outstanding shares of WordPerfect. NOVL was trading near $15. That puts the price tag for the deal well over 700 million bucks.

Two years later, Novell unloads WordPerfect to Corel for 11 million in cash and 10 million shares of Corel stock. At that time CORL was about $10. Value of deal: 110 million.

That means Novell paid 600 million for Groupwise. Seems like a disaster to me.

But does Novell have the cash to continue development of all these?

I understand there is a native client already. Never seen it though. Let me find a link.

Ah yes, here's the press release. A java client, ok not quite native. An alternative to the web interface though.

I'd look for evolution to start working with groupwise too though.

My bet is this is why they bought Ximian. The Ximian guys have the knowlege to write an Exchange replacement.

Can you spell groupwise?
Or Exchange replacement?

My bet is this is why they bought Ximian. The Ximian guys have the knowlege to write an Exchange replacement.

Can you spell groupwise?
Or Exchange replacement?

No one on the Worldwide Management Group or the Board of Directors is Mormon.

http://www.novell.com/company/bios/index.html

I am not hawking NOVL, and I do own less than 100 shares (disclosure complete, post commencing) but I'm glad I re-evaluated them. With their recent release of their products for Linux (which seem to be doing reasonably well), and now with this purchase, it seems that they are serious about Linux. Since they were always great in the directory space, it seems like they just might be positioning themselves to try and contend in directory services again.

Just in case you didn't already know...
Novell Client for Linux

Personally I've always admired the structure of Novell's various user/share schemes but really hated the tools used to interface with them. Of course I'm a bit dated on the issue (Netware 3.x, 4.x, haven't had to really admin a version since then) so I'd hope it's much improved. :) I just did a bit of snooping around on Novell's site but couldn't find any screentshots of their interfaces anywhere, oh well.

Jonah Hex

Plus, they're the only shop in the bidness with a robust, distributable, replicatable, dynamically inheritable directory service [without which they would've long since ceased to exist].

Well the solution depends on your needs, of course. I think 'groupware' is really overkill in most instances, but since you're obviously looking for something like that...

Novell Groupwise is a definate contender here. The one downside seems to be that the server end doesn't yet run on *nix (unless I'm misinterpreting?) although that's been planned for awhile. But if you have one Novell or Windows server that can run it, it's pretty client-agnostic, there's a (quite good, I am told) web-based interface as well as clients for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Bynari Insight is another strong contender, it's what IBM is putting on their linux servers these days and those that have used it seem to really like it.

As I understand it, someone correct me if I'm wrong, what Evolution brings is a little different - the ability to connect to Exchange and Lotus Notes servers, right? So that would be a third possibility, but from what I've read it looks like Insight and Groupware are better systems, unless perhaps you've already invested in Exchange or Notes...

• MS Exchange Server (server end; NT only), MS Outlook (client end; Win32, MacOS). Very limited support of open-protocol clients (IMAP, webmail?). Microsoft Corp. wants to sell you Exchange 2000, these days, but Exchange 5.5 is still very common.

• Lotus Notes / Domino (server end, Linux supported), Lotus Notes (client end; Win32, MacOS). Limited webmail access (iNotes).

• Novell Groupwise. http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/ Server end runs on either Novell NetWare 5/6 or WinNT. Client end is proprietary Win32 client or webmail. A native Linux client is under development.

• SuSE Linux Openexchange Server (formerly SuSE Linux eMail Server). Standard, good open-source components (Postfix, Apache, Cyrus IMAP, OpenLDAP, OpenSSL) preconfigured to work well with one another, plus a couple of proprietary components: YaST2 for graphical administration, and SkyrixGreen for integrated scheduling and group discussions (shared folders). Client access from any OS, including but not limited to webmail. A full-functional trial version (lacking only "maintenance") is available for US $20 at http://www.suse.com/openexchange/slox_eval_form.ht ml . Sites are known to scale well to at least 1,000 users per site. The largest deployment yet known (March 2003) is 1,900 users.

• Bynari Insight Server, http://www.bynari.net/ . Server end is Linux-based. Intended as a plug-compatible replacement for MS-Exchange Server, based on POP3, IMPA, SMTP, and LDAP, but also with full support for all the special, proprietary MS-Exchange Server RPC-based protocols for group discussion, scheduling, contact management, task lists, etc., when used with MS-Outlook clients. Review: http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6734

• Bynari InsightConnector, http://www.bynari.net/ . Extensions that load into MS-Outlook clients to let them perform MS-Exchange-type functions (scheduling, contact-management, public folders) without needing an MS-Exchange server, using only open-standard IMAP, SMTP, and LDAP servers, instead.

• Samsung Contact (formerly HP Openmail), http://samsungcontact.com/en/ . Server end can be Linux-based (or Solaris/AIX). Based on SMTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP. Supports proprietary protocols for e-mail, scheduling, etc. native to Samsung's Contact client (which is available on Linux and Win32). Webmail access. Implements Microsoft's (documented, for a change) MAPI protocol for scheduling, public folders, offline folders.

• Oracle Collaboration Suite, http://www.oracle.com/ip/deploy/cs/ . Formerly Steltor CorporateTime, http://www.steltor.com/, until that firm's recent acquisition by Oracle. (That product is said to have emerged from Netscape Calendar.) Does IMAP, POP3, SMTP, E-mail, real-time conferences, voicemail, scheduling. Apparently implements all of the special, proprietary MS-Exchange Server RPC-based protocols for group discussion, scheduling, contact management,

With this, merge the strength of Linux's "no license fee" with Novell's admin/directory tools. I want to have a server I can throw 5, 500, 50000 users on and not worry about licensing - and I just pay Novell for the user interface and tools.

Unfortunately, if licensing for NetWare 6 is any indication, that's not going to work:

(from the NetWare 6 FAQ)

Q. My customer has workstations in which more than one person shares across shifts. How many licenses will they need?
A. Each person which accesses the software services must have a unique NDS user object created for them, and each of these objects need a licenses. So if three people share the same computer across shifts, each person must have a unique NDS user object, and three licenses are needed to cover them.

Q. Will a person who has two or more different user objects assigned to them need multiple licenses?
A. Yes. A person who has multiple unique user IDs assigned to them will need a license for each different ID.

There are Novell customers that are clearly getting benefit from using Novell software - and it's not always NetWare. Take a brief browse through here and you'll quickly see that it's not just a case of people using the software... but people benefitting from the software.

As for Novell having it's own /. section... well, it's never too late to start. :-P

Between this and this you should have enough information to get you the best tools to complement your GroupWise system... also note that PalmOS 5.0 will be shipping with a GroupWise client according to this. It might also be a good idea to check out the Cool Solutions pages for extra hints and tips now and again.

Between this and this you should have enough information to get you the best tools to complement your GroupWise system... also note that PalmOS 5.0 will be shipping with a GroupWise client according to this. It might also be a good idea to check out the Cool Solutions pages for extra hints and tips now and again.

Between this and this you should have enough information to get you the best tools to complement your GroupWise system... also note that PalmOS 5.0 will be shipping with a GroupWise client according to this. It might also be a good idea to check out the Cool Solutions pages for extra hints and tips now and again.

Between this and this you should have enough information to get you the best tools to complement your GroupWise system... also note that PalmOS 5.0 will be shipping with a GroupWise client according to this. It might also be a good idea to check out the Cool Solutions pages for extra hints and tips now and again.

There's a poll at their new Linux site.

Let them know which distribution you use - maybe they'll take a hint?

Novell's site says:

"Internet Messaging and Calendaring that promote productive collaboration and easily scale to match your organization's growth."

Well that doesn't sound like groupwise. That sounds like NetMail. For those of you that don't know Novell has two messaging solutions. NetMail is internet standards based, has run on Linux for years, and scales like nobodys business.

http://www.novell.com/netmail

Playing .WAV Sound Files. Longtime NetWare users may be familiar with the FIRE PHASERS login script command that generates a sound during the processing of the login script. NetWare Client 32 ships with a PHASERS.WAV sound file that is played by default when the FIRE PHASERS command is issued in login script.

Obviously you've never been aware that Novell has been equipped with Phasers for years.

http://forge.novell.com/modules/news/ a SourceForge repository of Open Source stuff for Novell. RSYNC, Apache, bash, gcc etc.....

Novell is supposedly releasing a GW client for linux! Woo!

(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!)
hmmm, guess that actually means something eh?
NDPS NDPS
iPrint iPrint

(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!)
hmmm, guess that actually means something eh?
NDPS NDPS
iPrint iPrint

Breaking News:

SCO has announced that is has claim to all IP related to supernovae. SCO claims it bought the rights to view and reproduce all supernovae images from NASA back in 1996. Another suit, targetted against the Catholic Church is insurance in case there really is a God that created the supernovae. If so, then God will be part of a future lawsuit.

Being that NASA uses UNIX computers to do much of it's work, SCO is also including IBM, Novell, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson as defendents in the filings.

Further updates as we get them.

You'd think that wouldn't you?

This says otherwise!

• The OSI response
• Novell's letter to SCO
• Bruce Perens' comments here on Slashdot

...given this SCO response to Novell's recent open letter. It says, and I quote,

"SCO® owns the contract rights to the UNIX® operating system. SCO has the contractual right to prevent improper donations of UNIX code, methods or concepts into Linux® by any UNIX vendor." (Italics mine).

They go on to say that:

"Copyrights and patents are protection against strangers. Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with. From a legal standpoint, contracts end up being far stronger than anything you could do with copyrights."

For those who won't take the time to read the Novell letter, Novell claims to hold all of the patents and copyrights for the Unix operating system, thus refuting SCO's claim to IP rights.

--

"Depth is to your life what dead air is to a talk show."

Thomas de Zengatita