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Novell Makes More Open Source Moves
Roger Foss writes "Novell has announced it will release its cross platform iFolder file synchronization software as open source. This is pretty cool: far more transparent and easier to use than Unison or some of those friendly Rsync variants. iFolder does multi-master delta synchronization and is user friendly. The source software will be available at Novell's own Forge site and release under the GPL. This sure beats Novell's earlier open source efforts, when they released their proprietary IPX protocol stuff years ago. For those who want to try it, there's a live demo site that I doubt would withstand slashdotting."
Finally, mj01nir writes "According to Miguel de Icaza's web log, Chris Stone just announced that Novell will be moving the whole company to OpenOffice by the end of the year, and to Linux on the desktop a year after.
funny how things change, a few years ago I thought I had it made cause i had a CNE and now it's not worth crap....
Oh man, Linux and OpenOffice in a big US company!
.
It just makes me so happy
In other news, SCO does something dispicable to ruin my good mood.
I have to admit I'm surprised its taken Novell this long to announce their move to Linux + OpenOffice.org given how long they've now had Ximian in the fold. I would've expected them to have announced their intention to do so a lot sooner.
:-)
This is a huge coup. Not only are IBM doing the same thing with their desktops (although they're porting MSOffice instead of using a Free office suite) but with Novell, one of the oldest Networking platform companies still surviving, announcing this on top of all their other efforts, people are really going to start taking notice and realising that maybe Linux truly is Prime Time for businesses now.
Then again... So far its only been companies that have a lot to do with Linux and Linux based services that have announced this. Would be very nice if someone like HP, Dell, or Gateway came out and got on the bandwagon. That would hold a lot more weight with the average IT manager or C-level management.
Still, slow small steps turn to huge gallops rather quickly in the IT world
A couple of years from now, all the RHCEs will be bummed because the latest OpenBEOS certification will be the new hotness... More serously though, certifications such as these are just another product for OS vendors to sell.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Millions of Linux geeks across the globe orgasm in unison.
I was laughed at by some "consultants" that had formerly worked in my school district, when I started converting their Novell systems over to Linux. Now that it's done, and things work better than ever, Novell decides to convert itself over to Linux wholesale...who's laughing now?
Gessh...
Did anyone else notice that the iFolder project page only mentions GNOME?
iFolder: integrated file sharing in the GNOME, Windows, and OS X desktops.
Also, iFolder is written in C#. I guess that comes with the territory.
Development Status: 2 - Pre-Alpha
Environment: Win32 (MS Windows), Gnome
Intended Audience: Developers, End Users/Desktop, System Administrators
License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
Operating System: MacOS, Windows, Linux
Programming Language: C#
Topic: File Sharing, Gnome, Filesystems
Putting the romance back into necromancer.
...but I'm not sure what...
Novell has announced NetWare will cease to exist as a standalone product
Um, "cease to exist" means a lot more than "cease to exist as a standalone product" in fact, they are opposite meanings. The highlighting emphasises the negative...I think this is a great announcement that sends a confused message. Hey they are adopting Linux more strongly, thats good right? They are not dropping NetWare, thats good for current NetWare users.
The glass is half full...
-- Sig meltdown immine...
A brave move, but a welcomed one at that. It's going to be interesting next 12 months to see if Novell has made the right move.
Netware is a solid platform and proven its stability, where Windows has failed. On the other hand Novells 1st generation software hasn't always been the best.
Will the Netware zealots adopt the linux based services quick enough for Novell to cover its investment? Lets hope....Time will tell.
Area51 - We are watching...
Netware has had its heyday. When customers found out they needed TCP/IP to internetwork, the days of a strictly local area network, as NetWare were numbered.
With their purchases of Ximian and SuSE last year, it was pretty clear that Novell managment saw the need to take their company in a new direction. Novell chooses to embrace the new world. SCO tries to fight against it.
I just got a position as the IT director at my company. They've been using Netware for years. Just before the SuSE/Novell news, I was planning to switch to SuSE for all server applications. Even bought some hardware to try it out. Now, I'm thinking about using those Netware licenses a little while longer....
Hey, think I can trade one or two of those in for a boxed copy of 9.1 pro??? We can all dream, I suppose...
Sorry, but I don't know much about netware. The article talks about a netware "kernel" version.
How do they "integrate" this with Linux, exactly? (or am I missing something.)
From the article:
But if Microsoft open-sourced Windows, which Messman said he did not think would happen as this was a huge cash cow for the Redmond, Wash., software company, Novell would help its customers use open-source Windows if this happened and they wanted it, he added.
If DeBeers starts giving away diamonds for free, we'll be sure to make sure our clients get some. In the event that a magic fairy inserts $50 billion into our bank account, we'll share that with our clients.
Sure. Whatever.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
with all the corporate support for OSS related projects, it is becoming a real contender on the server side against Microsoft. I wonder how much this eats into Microsoft's server sales they were counting on. Looks like all the "unix conversions" MS was counting on to continue their grow isn't going to happen. In fact looks they're gonna get hurt. The only real cash cow left for MS will be windows and office. Feel like the writing is on the way for the gradual and slow shift from world leader to just another player. MS won't die, but it will become less important as time goes on.
It will be nice when the NetWare server gets full Linux compatiblity. Really, it will be a Linux server that supports NetWare services - but the distinction won't matter.
Personally, I would like to see the NetWare editor ported to Linux. I can't stand vi, and there really isn't a simple console (text-mode) editor geared for DOS/Windows users available on Linux. The NetWare EDIT program still fits the bill as arcane enough to not be yet-another-DOS-Edit clone, but does simple editing very easily. Cut-and-pastes between files, too. Its just a matter liking what you know.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
I have gone from not caring about a single thing Novell has done to them being one of my favorite companies, ever.
Buying Suse and Ximian, moving to Linux as a desktop, with OpenOffice.org? Then cancelling their most popular product for Linux? They seem very, very committed to F/OSS.
This has got to be the first time I've ever said this about a company's reaction to Linux on slashdot, but they just, somehow, gained a customer, and a recommendation to friends.
Congrats Novell, you've won my support, and the support of the entire Linux community.
I like Novell. In fact the rights and permissions are just like Unix or Linux: You have nothing until someone gives it to you.
Isn't M$ major flaw in that area? You have everything until someone takes it away.
A secure system or network is based on a sound philosophy. Notice the difference!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
...other that moving applications from NLM to ELF, I don't see any giant advantages to this on the server end. We already have apache, tomcat, ssh, etc, etc for Netware.
And on the desktop, I have memories of Novell trying to take on MS once before and failing horribly. I'm skeptical. I can't see how any "synergy" with Linux will make Netware a better product than it already is--aside from the PR buzz it's getting and the goodwill from the Linux community.
I haven't (and this is totally honest) used Netware in about a million years. I guess it is a good thing that they are hopping on the linux bandwagon, in one of those "Follow or be forgotten" sort of moves. All the power to them if they can make a place for themselves in the future.
That really is my homepage, no kidding.
well this is pretty amazing. last year it looked like we linux advocates were just going to be keeping up the tired mantra of "unix is dead, long live linux... any day now, unix is gonna die... any day now..." who'd have guessed we'd now be saying "netware is dead, long live linux"? and who'd have guessed we'd be right?
Sorry, for some reason Slashdot mangled the URL. Here it is: rtsp://rm2.novell.com/04/brainshare/lord_of_the_ne t_real.rm
Blog Ho
iFolder is a major gift to the Linux community and is an excellent sign to me that Novell is committed to Open Source Model not just the "we're on the Linux boat" fad. Until you've used iFolder and seen your files move from desktop to desktop with little to no effort on your part, you just can't understand. It's seamless, it's secure and it's reliable. I encourage all of you to give it a try! Thanks for a great product and thanks for believing in the OSS community Novell!
Novell has got a great position.
1) They got tried and tested file, print, directory, and groupware services (including mail, calendar and secure IM services) - that's probably 50% of the windows server market right there
2) They got good security and infrastructure management offerings. Microsoft can't even compete in this category.
3) They got an enterprise class J2EE / Web Services platform from their SilverStream acquisition. (that's the other 50% of the windows market)
4) They have their own linux distro now from SUSE
5) They have a Linux on the desktop offering from Ximian
6) They have a world class distribution, partners program and support organization with over a decade of experience.
7) They've got a good core system integration group from CTP
8) And they are trying to replicate the success of the Certified Netware Enginneer with the new Certified Linux Engineer program. (MSCE was a complete rip off of the NE program)
Only one problem, they have managed to screw up every acquisition they did in the 90's.
Please Novell, don't screw this one up. We're counting on you.
I think I still have a copy of Netware 3.11 for Redhat Linux laying around somewhere. It was pretty cool, booting Netware on top of linux, but Novell canned the effort for some reason, and then mars-nwe was born, then died.
This will be interesting...
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
... The ones who care about security.
I work for a comapny that makes a network monitoring product so my sample may be skewed. Regardless, a lot of people would probably be surprised how many networks still use Novell to handle their network logins, file sharing, etc. becuase its more secure than Windows. Some of this may be security through obscurity but the answer we consistently get when we ask people why they still run Netware is that its more secure.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Unison?
I'm definitely not going anywhere near that stuff then
My other computer is your Windows box
Novell claims to have learned from past experience (which is admirable), yet they still want "very tight integration"? Isn't this what got Microsoft in trouble in the first place?
Sort of, but not really. Microsoft was convicted of using it's monopoly power to unfairly compete in the desktop market. They did this by bundling applications on their platform so as to give them an inherent advantage in market share terms. Novell is not a monopoly in any sense, and so does not have to play by the same rules. They are free to bundle away.
More power to them, I say.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
Hell Director: (on a stage near the entrance. on a microphone.) Hello, new-commers! Welcome! Can everybody hear me?! Hello! (taps his mic.) Can everybo...okay! Uh, I'm the Hell Director! Uh, It looks like we have about eight-thousand, six-hundred, and fifteen of you newbees today, and for those of you who were a little confused, uh, you ARE dead and this is Hell! So, abandon all hope and, uh, yadayadayada! Uh, we're now going to start the orientation process which will last about...
New Hellion #5: Hey, wait a minute! I shouldn't be here! I was a totally strict and devout Protestant! I thought we went to Heaven!
Hell Director: Yes, well, I'm afraid you were wrong!
New Hellion #6: I was a practicing Jehova's Witness!
Hell Director: Uh, you picked the wrong religion as well!
New Hellion #7: Well, who was right?! Who gets into Heaven?!
Hell Director: I'm afraid it was the Mormons! Yes! The Mormons were the correct answer!
OK, so now can Novell get their own topic? Please? I mean, Corel still has their own topic.
Throw us old Novell guys a bone willya?
the no
If that's truly a South Park episode, then they ripped it off of Rowan Atkinson, the British comedian known for his Mr. Bean show. Except in his version, the jews were right: Atkinson's "Hell" sketch
/usr/share/morlock
I had to rescue data from a Novell fileserver that had become corrupt, and NWFS was invaluable in doing so. But, I had to compile an ancient kernel specifically for that purpose.
If Novell really is committed to Linux, perhaps they can shed some light on this murky topic.
Andre Hedrick's concerns
Netware Utils
Kernel patches for 2.4.15
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
In response to:
;-)
(EG. Novell shops could turn servers into such things as SQL database servers as well as just file/print servers, without resorting to purchasing additional boxes to do it.)
I currently work at an education institute running a Netware network. We have a Citrix Farm running 2003 server, but thats it. On our NetWare boxes we run such services as file, iPrint, Zenworks for Dekstops, Centura SQL server, GroupWise, GW WebAccess, Cluster Services, workstation policies, Extend Director Portal, ichain proxy servers plus others. All with five 9's up time, serving 10,00 users, spread over 7 campuses over 150km with tiny frame relay links. All from my desk
Whats not to like about that? Why do I need Linux?
What if...
:P)
What if the Linux will be more and more used in the "big companies" and more and more business will rely on it, and not on M$ bloatware; 'cause this day seems to get closer and closer and maybe it's not just a dream to realy get rid of the evil software..
But when all the cash flow will rely on a open kernel, will anyone continue to develop the kernel with an open heart? Or we will end up with hackers' "strikes" and protests and slogans like "we will not develop for the rich to get richer!" stuff? Will this be possible? Will it be a good thing for the software comunity and for the world? (dern, I sound like camaiging for somebody
But I'm just curious.. 'cause every action in this workd is driven by something.. Open source is driven by many wills, but one of them is to make software "free as in freedom". But I wonder what will happen' when this will collide with creating software to help the administration control us, etc.
It was just a thought..
and there really isn't a simple console (text-mode) editor geared for DOS/Windows users available on Linux.
;)). I've also found the simpler dtach to be useful at times.
I assume you are looking for an interface with the basic CUA (Windows) keybindings? Unfortunately, AFAIK, full support for CUA seems to be virtually impossible in the generic case of remote terminals (due to ESCaping keycodes and the ancient keyboard limitations kept alive by terminal emulators -- e.g. this is the reason you have to hit ESC twice in mc to register a single ESC), but in the specific case of the Linux Console (which has direct access to hardware), this is possible.
Many editors have CUA bindings, though to varying degrees of success. e.g. Emacs or Jed. Unfortunately, some of the time it feels like a hack and a few might even require manually modifying Linux's keymappings.
Perhaps the closest I've found is SetEdit, which is based on a port of the TurboVision text-mode windowing library, which is very comfortable for me since I used to use the old DOS Borland IDE, which also happens to have an OSS Linux version called Rhide.
I love text-mode and I think a lot could be done to improve it in Linux; particularly, "fixing" the ancient terminal system and providing for modular non-linear behavior. Sometimes I don't want to deal with the 100MB+ required for X (not to mention GNOME & KDE for apps that are dependent upon them), but I'd like a non-linear interface.
Screen is a step in the right direction, though it is not (initially) very user-friendly (not using Windows/CUA keybindings
I don't know why more non-linear text mode applications aren't created. I've found a few that are made as independent ncurses apps, but, ideally, I think they should all use some standard text windowing environment. Recently, I noticed Twin which looks familiar (tvision?), but doesn't seem to be very actively used... and I don't know if it supports CUA keybindings.
Hope this helps.
The nice thing about open source is that they cannot take it away from us. If some company take some OS code in a direction you do not like, you fork the code. If I develop some open source code, I get the better code, and at the same time companies get better code they can use and evolve. If companies develops/evolves OS code, I can use it for my benefit, or I can choose not to, and stick with the old code. You have the freedom to choose yourself. So I dont think we'll ever see strikes and the like, since people choose themselves which code to use/evolve and what license to release under.
There will always be community developed code. Like debian on the distribution side, you will always have non-commercial code that will preserve our (consumer/little guy) interest. This will spur competition for the commercial companies and improve the overall offer.
-TN
If there was any doubt about novells intentions, and its place in the future of open source, i feel that this quote sums it up nicely....
[""We're giving them software and services, but we don't set the direction for open source, we only contribute to that discussion and make suggestions. The open source community is driving where competition will occur and we are a member of that community," he said."]
Its important to note that its clear they feel a member of the community, and not a self appointed figure head. Theres a reason "open source" and "community" are seen so often side by side in print, because this selfless "community" spirit is what gave open source its true value, and will continue to make GNU/Linux and its components a threat to anyone who attempts to market inferior software.
One of the reasons IBM is porting office [rather than simply using the Lotus SmartSuite applications] is their aquisition of Rational, and all of Rational's project management / analysis / design tools.
Some of the current tools depend on MS Office templates & run Office applications. IBM would need the capability to read, edit or create documents with with full file format compatability for all the interum stages of conversion to platform agnostic tools. [have to be able to exchange files with folks still stuck in Windows]
Caution: Do not stare into laser with remaining eye.
The real-life example I give is the group "President of the United States of America", which is by definition a Group of One. When Bush was sworn in, rather than having whether to reassign all kinds of rights that Clinton had (nuke-you-lur launch codes [equal time: Carter, who was a nuclear engineer, pronounced it 'nuke-ee-ahh'] vs. ownership of NY home that qualified Hillary to run for Senate) it would just be a matter of adding Bush to the group and taking Clinton out of it, while leaving his other group memberships ("Husband of Hillary", "Member of Democratic Party",...) alone.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Novell's Client32 never has and never will transmit the password without encryption by default. The password stored in eDir is encrypted and so is the one used to compare sent by the client. cat
They are also porting their nss filesystem to linux (according to some of their guys here at Brainshare). This means salvage/undelete, trustees, and "higher resolution" file permissions on a file system that does not fragment. I do not know if it is journaled or not. This sounds like great news to me...
Novell's Client32 never has and never will transmit the password without encryption by default.
Longtime CNI/CNE here [although I'm not part of the team that wrote the code itself, so understand that what follows is the standard Novell sermon that we'll all just have to accept as a matter of faith].
For years, bordering on decades, Novell has insisted that PASSWORDS NEVER TRAVEL THE WIRE!!! In the Novell-verse, only HASHES of passwords are allowed to travel the wire. When you say
you mean to say [and never transmits "passwords" period - no ifs ands or buts allowed].That's one of the reasons Novell gave up on NDS/eDirectory synchronization with NetBT/CIFS, LanManager, and NT Domain Controllers - to make the thing seamless to the end user, they would have had to follow Microsoft's lead and send encrypted passwords over the wire, rather than encrypted hashes of passwords. It's certainly the reason that Native File Sharing in NetWare 6 is such a bitch as to be useless - the end user has to remember both a NetBT/CIFS/LanManager password AND an NDS/eDirectory password precisely because Novell is scared to death that if they were to integrate a NetBT/CDFS/LanManager infrastructure [where passwords travel the wire] into the NDS/eDirectory infrastructure [where only hashes of passwords travel the wire], then they'd lose all their Red Book/Blue Book/Green Eggs & Ham Book certifications. In fact, it's also the reason that, in many scenarios, when you upgrade a server across the wire [e.g. replace an old NetWare 3.x box on 80386 hardware with a newer NetWare box on newer hardware], the user accounts created on the new box have no passwords - to get the passwords from the old box to the new box, Novell would have send passwords, rather than hashes of passwords, across the wire, and, as we've seen, the former is forbidden.
As for the grandparent's assertion that Novell stores "clear text passwords in RAM" - that might have been true circa 1987 and NetWare 2.x, but I can't imagine it's been that way in the last ten or fifteen years. Like some other posters, I'd ask for some documentation on that one.
One of the things that help Microsoft pull ahead of Novell in the mid/late 90's was that any tool that could find the start button could suddenly call himself an SE. Whether that was Microsoft's goal in making a server OS that had the same desktop environment as the workstation OS or not, who knows. That's the integration I was referring to.
Interestingly enough, an environment of both linux servers and linux workstations improves on that motif. If you were so inclined, you could install {KDE|Gnome|Ximian} on a server and use that, combined with VNC or SSH X11 forwarding to have the same environment on your servers as your desktop. Not that you would, but you could, just like you can in a Windows environment. What you can't do in a Windows environment though is easily get a shell on your workstations. In a pure linux environment, you can ssh into workstations and administer them just as easily as you could a server. For all Microsoft's efforts, they still haven't come up with a secure way to quickly get a command shell on a remote machine.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.