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Novell Opens Source

Posted by Hemos on from the rip-'em-open dept.

hepjedi writes "News.com is reporting that Novell is giving away its source code. " They did this at their annual conference and rolled out plans to "...the release of core NetWare protocols, to test releases of its clustering software, to further refinements in its strategy to provide management tools for NetWare and Microsoft's Windows NT operating system." Their basic aim is to get more developers for the system (Duh).

1 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Netware - have we moved on too far? by Dave+W · · Score: 3

    I have used netware a lot in the past from 2.1 onwards through 4.1, this has been in smallish lans with upto approx 70 users but mostly less than 30.

    For file and print services for msdos PC's Netware was magic, completely reliable, fast and very simple to manage.

    But Netware has never been much in the way of an application server. Few dbms supported it (Btrieve being the most common), few other server based applications were available and those that were tended to result in one server per application due to load, performance and stability. For example we tried Global MHS for a while but it was hopeless compared to using a workstation. (NB Most of the server applications that were available were also very expensive)

    Now we all expect to use application servers for many tasks. Servers only oferring file and print services are only relevant to very small LANS.

    Unlike older versions of Netware it appears that Netware 5 might be a good application server environment. Particularly now with support for Java making it much easier to develop for than NLM's ever were. Also having Oracle now bundled makes a big diference.

    But surely if Linux and the BSD's are competition for NT they are even greater competition for Netware on small sites.

    Will I ever again specify Netware? Well if I need NDS then maybe, if I need plain MSDOS PC's then maybe (I have not looked at connecting msdos to Linux/BSD).

    But in every other way Linux already has everything a small site would want from Netware. Not only that but the the number of vendors offerring pre-installed Linux is growing fast - how does it compare to the number with pre-installed netware.

    All we need is directory services to compete with NDS and who will need Netware anywhere? I believe this is where LDAP should come in but I don't know much about that or the status of free LDAP software.

    Just my 2c.

    Dave