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Open Group Releases DCE 1.2.2 as Free Software
lkcl writes "The Open Group announced 12th January 2005 that they are releasing DCE/RPC 1.2.2 as a Free Software Project - under the LGPL. This is a major coup for Free Software: the Distributed Computing Environment is known to be involved in some major projects. There is a mirror at opendce.hands.com which runs rsync,
ftp, and there is also a dce122.tar.bz2.torrent bittorrent running as well."
This is one _monster_ big deal for Free Software.
This is the code that allows big companies such as IBM, Fujitsu, Entegrity etc. to bid for £500m contracts.
We have FreeDCE already, which is the DCE 1.1 Reference implementation autoconf'd and updated...
The Open Group was formed by the merger of X/Open and the Open Software Foundation. The use of "open" in all those names predates the phrase "open source." The term it relates to is "open systems," which refers to standardized Unix systems, as opposed to mainframes.
The Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) is a software system developed in the early 1990s by a consortium that included Apollo Computer (later part of Hewlett-Packard), IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, and others. The DCE supplies a framework and toolkit for developing client/server applications. The framework includes a remote procedure call (RPC) mechanism, a naming (directory) service, an authentication service, and a distributed file system (DFS). DCE RPC was derived from an earlier RPC system called the Network Computing System (NCS) created at Apollo Computer. The naming service was derived from work done at DEC. DCE DFS was based on the Andrew file system (AFS), originally developed at Carnegie-Mellon University, and later extended by Transarc Corporation (which was later merged into IBM)
Link here
...and for those of you who are still wondering what TFA is about, note that just about every big system and OS vendor has its own version of DCE. It has been the foundation for a lot of securely networed applications.
You call that a troll? I have a whole beltway full of trolls better than that!
Short answer : yes. Long answer : The code is Free means the code is Free. The code is released under the LGPL. If you can't look at the code and figure it out, what does it really matter anyway? On top of this, if you are involved in a large project with many developers chances are your organization will pay for it. The API is well documented in more places than just their pay-per-book service.
they didn't steal it but from what i can gather they took the DCE 1.1 reference implementation (available under a BSD-like license before most people had even _heard_ of free software licenses!) which is basically "stubs"... ... and then they integrated it with NetBIOS and SMB (inventing ncacn_np which is DCE/RPC over NT's NamedPipes - heard of those? look up CreateNamedPipe on the MSDN :) ... and then they added WINS as a resolver... ... and then they added NTLMSSP authentication... ... and then they created NT Domains with it... ... and then they put _every_ single administrative interface behind a DCE/RPC client-server architecture (really easy: the Win32 Registry API is one!)... ... and then they started on exchange... ... and then they created ncacn_http which is RPC over HTTP because some idiots started blocking exchange packets and they needed to punch a hole through firewalls [what do you mean, the web _is_ the internet, you stupid microsoft support idiot!] ... oh, and don't forget DCOM on which an entire generation of MSDN-created software is based!
hijacked? naaah. microsoft _really_ recognised a good thing, and unlike a lot of people who go "duuuh, i wish...", just snowballed with it.
DCE is the core middleware at PSU and has been for years. Your access account you use for everything is a DCE principle (Which ends up being KerberosV + some stuff).
:) It really was/is a cool and powerful system. Its one major failing it the complexity and effort needed to set it up.
The PASS filespace is DFS which is the distributed filesystem componant of DCE. Webmail and the Portal (wehmail.psu.edu portal.psu.edu) are built on top of the filesystem.
eLion is a client server application that uses Smalltalk on the web front end and Natural/Adabas for the backend (running on an IBM zSeries mainframe). A custom in house developed DCE RCP middleware mechanism is used to get them to talk to each other. This lets us do dynamic load balancing without special hardware, adding and removeing backend servers and automatically have them put into the locally managed "server pool" on each web server front end, and validating the calls on the backend via the kerberos credentials of both the web server and the user making the call. (can you guess what I did for the last 3 years?)
Now, IBM has end of lifed DCE, which screws us (and several National Labs, Merck, Cal Poly Tech, Buffalo U, Pain Webber, a handful of other universities, etc). PSU is migrating off of it to MIT KerberosV, LDAP, a "yet to be determined filesystem" (probably OpenAFS, which is a 10 year step backward), and I have absolutely NO idea how we will replace the RPC.
Anyway, PSU people have been using DCE heavily for about a decade and many didn't even know it
Finkployd
lkcl covered the other stuff, I'll touch on DCOM.
DCOM is literally a reverse engineered DCE-RCP, to the point where it is wire compatible with it. DCE-RPC is an authenticated RPC which uses KerberosV for the authentication token, and since DCE puts group information into the ePac (like MS did with their Kerb) it also allows for group based authorization at the RPC level.
Microsoft ripped out all the security (who is suprised?) and called it DCOM. Of course the idl compilers are different so they are not compatible at that level, but once compiled, a DCE rcp client/server can talk to a DCOM client/server, assuming you are not trying to use any of the security built into the DCE-RPC
Finkployd
Enjoy
D CE.shtml#osf122
http://support.entegrity.com/private/doclib/index
DCE did a "proper" job by using the available fields of kerberos for the correct - documented - purpose.
the use of CDS being largely irrelevant was recognised by TOG in 1999: you need to pay IBM stacks of $$$ to get the code _but_ it was recognised: OpenGroup link here. fortunately, someone has created a set of free software plugins - nss and pam etc. already
AFS, OpenAFS, DFS - it's a long long story for another day, methinks :)
from the press release:
Previously, the DCE source was only available under a traditional license. Making it available under a recognized open source license (LGPL) both increases the accessibility of DCE as an interoperability technology, and permits a broader community to work on the source to expand its features and keep it current.
Some clarification.
It's not just the DCE RPC that has been released, it's the whole schebang, including:
* The build environment (ODE)
* The vast documentation with specs
* Threads (Ugh!, Please don't use)
* RPC
* Directory services
* Security services
* Time sync
* File service (DFS) including the Episode file system.
* Test procedures
* The various administration tools
* The tools needed to make DCE applications.
The code is old, however and building this is not for the faint of heart, but there's lots of good stuff in there.