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Novell Embraces Open Source, Sun Still Flirting
According to this story at Wide Open News that was submitted by a least a dozen readers, Bruce Perens has helped Novell create a "Novell Cooperative License" that meets true Open Source criteria. Meanwhile, CNN says Sun "...is working towards eventually 'community sourcing' as much of its software as possible," but under a license that doesn't truly qualify as Open Source. Sun is still a bit of a tease here, but at least this is a step in the right direction, eh?
>The lawsuit was in relation to some clustering
/usr/src/linux/fs/ncpfs/, I see that the original code is quite old (1995), but more interesting: There is no license. Could anybody please clear up in this? It's a bit disturbing...
>software. Right?
Sorry, I have no idea. And perhaps that's a bit scary -- how many of us check our software for patent restrictions before running it? I mean, for all I know, me running NCP could be a violation of some Novell patent.
Hmmm, looking at
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
But, to me, publishing under SCSL looks like a pretty direct and deliberate attack by Sun on true open source Java and UNIX kernel efforts, because it takes away the motivation of many people to develop open source versions of their software without promoting anything other than Sun's business. Sun is still within their rights to do that, of course, but I think the open source community is justified in criticizing them for it.
(Incidentally, look for "contamination clauses" in their source code licenses; in the past, if you looked at their sources, you were prohibited from contributing to a clone.)
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
They left novell and started selling novell's clustering tech. Novell sued and theys guys fessed up. Why should anyone listen to them now?
6 1,349111-54,00.html
for more info see http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,60
from the above link:
However, nothing short of a full "Open Source" implementation will make the Linux
community happy. So the real challenge is to create a Open Source "minimal NDS" to seed the market. Once NDS is in the door, then Novell can leverage and up-sell the ZEN and Internet product lines.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Thanks for keeping up with the payments.
+&x
Right . Except that when you d/l the StarOffice source then write your own office suite and/or contribute to an exisying one (i.e., KOffice) expect to have Sun's bloodythirsty lawyers all over your ass because you have "seen" their proprietary source
My journal has hot
The question we must ask is whether they are doing this with a genuine belief in the Open Source development model or just to grab some limelight (and look good). XGI announced their open source XFS long time ago and they have nothing as yet to show for it in their website... just my penny's worth...
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
The BSD license and the GPL are better than the SCSL would ever dream of being. Watching Bill Joy (the inventor of the BSD license) run around touting the SCSL leaves a very bad taste in my mouth - it's like watching a man commit treason against one of his ideals "for the good of the company". It's sickening and sad.
-- ultra1
This is interesting. I hope that Novell's license makes their software free software.
there was a post on linux-kernel from jeff merkey,
the developer of the existing netware support
for linux.
apparently, novell seems to play games..
decide for yourself.
i copy from:
jeffs linux-kernel post
Linux Community,
For those folks who saw the Linux Today article about Novell's "Open
source plans", here's some food for thought. This is an internal email
thread from Novell discussing Open Sourcing of NDS with the principals
at Novell with us (TRG) and attempting to negotiate us to stop Open
Sourcing NetWare technology on Linux. FYI, Dave Shirk and Novell are
full of it, and are in actuality trying to "put the genie back into the
bottle" and get us (TRG) under control. Part of their strategy is to
FUD the key Linux folks to divert attention and mindshare away from what
we are doing. They are out trying to FUD the open source community into
believing they are actually going to do something, but it's really a
well planned attempt to shut us down from providing NetWare open source
technology to you guys.
They first threatened us with more lawsuits if we did not halt our Open
Source NDS projects, then Dave Shirk, the so called "open source
champion" of Novell fired Bryan Clark, the Novell marketing person who
was trying to integrate our Open Source projects with Novell. Dave
Shirk called him into an office and fired him for even suggesting that
NDS be open sourced on Linux -- then turned straight faced to the the
Linux community, stating Novell was moving towards such a direction, and
lied to us. The attached internal email threads are provided so the
principals in the Linux community know these guys are full of it.
Busted!!!! If they try to suck up to any of you, be warned, their
intention is to CONTROL what's going down with their market share.
Linux is killing Netware right now, and will easiy assimilate over 1.5
million nodes of Netware next year. This is a predatory move to "trojan
horse" Linux and neutralize the threat.
Enjoy,
Jeff
We have a lot more than 3 Open Source organizations, actually. But you're right that SPI is in the soup as well. It's just that the latest conversation has been between me, FSF, and OSI.
I regret that I'm not going to be much of a coder for a while. I'm president of a VC firm investing in Open Source businesses. I'm hiring some good coders and mentoring them, that'll have to do.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Nobody's forcing anyone to develop software for Sun. If your boss decides that it's in the best interests of your company, then that's his problem (and yours), not Sun's. Look, lawyers are not going to come busting down your door, as long as you don't break the license. Don't think the license if fair? Tough shit. Don't use it then. But, for the love of God, stop complaining about how much these licenses are evil and corrupting. It's a free market -- if you don't accept their terms then vote with your feet and use a different vendor.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
A few corrections:
1) Eric Schmidt did not come from Javasoft, he was CTO for all of Sun. (He is also a certified VSG (Very Smart Guy), and one of the very few CEOs in this business that *fully* comprehends the importance and role of network computing environments. He was instrumental in the genesis of Oak/Java. For this reason alone I still hold out hope for Novell.)
2) Actually, Kerberos is not a directory service at all, but an auth service that relies on Project Athena's Hesiod service as its directory. It's possible to use Hesiod for things other than Kerberos, but unfortunately, Hesiod/Athena never took off outside a few DEC Unix shops. NIS+ may actually have the most elegant architecture of the NDS/NIS+/AD trio of (at least technically) serious contenders, but Sun never built tools that would have made NIS+ usable by mortals, so no one does (or really even can, it's sad.)
11) Novell's directory is in some ways less elegant than AD, but it has the big advantage of running on darn near eveything, where AD is (and is likely to remain) NT only.
12) Good point - especially on the low end. But it would be a mistake not to continue to capitalize on success in the mid-range server market. There are too many people out there that think Linux is the right answer everywhere. Part of being a good technologist is recognizing "appropriate technology."
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
This is America and I will just claim prior art. In fact, I can claim better prior art as I now have your IP.
You might indeed improve upon someone else's work before you claim it as your own. Some rearrangement and a few changes here, a few needed things there, you have something with added value.
Its now stolen from its heritage and you may miss the benefits of the orginal authors. The author who wrote the code before you was inspired to write that code and had much vision. That's something you cannot duplicate. You might try to claim it as prior art, but the first author knows that code in his sleep and much better than the visible back of his hand. That is part of the author's soul you stole. You might claim it as yours, but can you relate to it, trace the history of that code, and talk about what inpired it? You might to defend yourself. But you are faking it.
You appear to enjoy programming off the work of others, not to create in its own sense. There are dangers to what you are doing and it may well profit you. But if you do cross with an original author over code you stole, you will encounter a personal battle. You might even win one or two, but people may get wise. It takes time to grow up and gain wisdom. You might learn its to your advantage to develop your own vision, rather than steal from others.
Does Sun portray their license as just as free as GPL? I think that Sun has done a very good job portraying what they intend their license to do. They *want* other companies to use thier code in closed source programs. The GPL doesn't allow it. Hence, Sun allows other companies to use their code in proprietary applications for a fee.
It's not open-source, and it's not meant to be. It's meant to make it easy for corporations to intergrate with their projects without having to also open their projects.
The GPL and SCSL are not only different, but are meant for completely different goals. What each of them were meant to do, they do, and do well. Let's Cheer For Choice!!
-Brent--
I don't know what to think about the SCSL.
Sometimes I think this is a good thing for Sun's customers that want to look at it and that may want to license Sun's code. And now that Sun seems to be clearer that it is not an Open Source license then it's fine with me, it is better than totally closed source while not being totally Open Source and therefore not for me.
With this POV this is a step in the right direction.
But sometimes the SCSL appears to me like a "sect". That is, it is easy to enter the sect/community but once you are in this is very hard to get out and you are never sure to ever get rid of it.
It is easy to have access to Sun's code but once you have read it you hardly can prove you didn't use it for your own Free Software. This is why I would avoid any code under this license, or any similar license, because I fear (rightly or not) that it may restrain my liberty to code software related to what code I saw.
I don't say that it was Sun's incentive (put people in a dangerous position if they do both SCSL and Open Source) to create the SCSL but it looks like this could be one of the consequences, so I will avoid this kind of license like the plague and if I was an employer I would forbid my employees to look at it and ask new employees on their exposure until their is some clarification of the SCSL made to avoid this problem.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
> He wrote the whole thing in pretty much
;-P
> undocumented C and when he left Novell, he took
> his hard drive with him.
OK, taking the hard drive home is pretty poor. But undocumented C, wow, never seen that before. Whaddya mean he might have had a ridiculous deadline to meet? No fucking way man, programmers not only love to write documentation, but our managers ALWAYS allow enough time for it.
Anyways, I'm willing to be that both sides are sinners (I'd expect nothing less from any real programmer) and neither is really in a place to judge the other.
So draw your own conclusions about what's better for Linux. The smarter people at Novell can always get another job if their market dries up.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
They *want* other companies to use thier code in closed source programs. The GPL doesn't allow it. Hence, Sun allows other companies to use their code in proprietary applications for a fee.
Wouldn't a double licensing like the QPL and a proprietary license have the same effect?
1. The Open Source license make sure it is open, but may impose conditions on the maintener (that is what the QPL do it seems to me).
2. The proprietary license allow them to license the code for a fee to companies wanting to include it in proprietary software.
And they would have avoided the problem we have now.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I don't care if Novel is doing it, or disgruntled ex-employees; I will be happy to see NDS available as Free Software. Certainly Novell has no reason to keep the NDS client software closed. Opening the NetWare and NDS clients could only serve to increase their market penetration.
Freeing the NDS server would require some serious reworking of Novell's business model, so I'd be more surprised to see that open. Let's just wait and see what happens.
I for one, will happily use TRG's GPL'ed software, now that I know they exist. They need to get out more, I've been searching for Free Netware-Linux interoperability solutions for six months now and never came across them.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I do also question whether or not anyone else should accept SCSL-ware. I think it doesn't give outside developers a fair quid-pro-quo, so I don't think we should contribute our own code to it. I think it doesn't give users everything that Open Source does.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Just to clarify: There is already excellent IPX (the NetWare protocol) _and_ NCP (the NetWare network filesystem) support in Linux, giving you everything you need to connect to a NetWare server, read/write files, etc. (There is something called MARS as well, which lets you emulate a NetWare server, but I haven't been able to get it to work.) All you need is the Linux kernel and a copy of ncptools, which is (as you say) OSS. This works great, and I use it for my everyday work at school. Pretty bug-free, even, and with all the administrative tools you'll need.
:-)
Just so people wouldn't go mad looking around at the web
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
See recent posts on linux-kernel by Jeff Merkey. Basically, there's a private firm of ex-Novell employees (the good people who all quit--Merkey wrote Novell's SMP kernel, for example) who are implementing Netware file system support (GPLed for Linux, sold to Microsoft to be in Service Pack #1 of Windows 2k). Now that that's done, they're moving on to NDS.
When the Timpanogas Group gets those two items finished, there will be no reason in the world why you can't instantly migrate any Novell setup to Linux or NT. And, there will be lots of reasons to do it....
Obviously, Novell is scared shitless over all this. They've fought Timpanogas in court, and lost, so now they're trying to FUD to stall public acceptance of the Timpanogas Group code--why run TRG NDS when you can allegedly wait 6 months for the "real thing" from Novell? Of course, if you wait for the code from Novell, you're going to wind up waiting for Godot....
See, for example, this post of leaked internal Novell discussions.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
As far as I know, it's entirely possible to make a Netware client through reverse engineering, it's still legal to do that, and some people have done that and it's available in Open Source. In addition, there's Netware stuff that Alan Cox worked on long ago. But I am far from cognizant of the status of all of these products.
The Novell folks came to me and asked for help with a license. I gave it to them, for free, spending two days there in Utah and other time on the phone and email, for the good of the community. If you think something is happening that is not for the good of the community, of course you should tell me about it, and I will bend people's ears at Novell if necessary.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Here's what I've culled from several stories on the subject...
mrfantasy mentioned DigitalMe above - I have also seen mention of the management interface for ICS (the Internet Caching System), and more importantly, the NDS for Linux client. I would absolutely love to see NWAdmin, along with the (vital) plugins for administration of ZEN and other NDS extensions, running on a Linux platform. Yes, I know that ConsoleOne is the future direction of Netware administration - but there are far too many critical administrative functions that do not run on that platform yet.
The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life
Now, I realize that this may go against all of the established dogma of the nerd world, but open your minds just a crack and you'll totally understand the SCSL.
Lets suppose that a company exists that can only differentiate itself from its competitors by the intellectual property in its software. While its hardware and service are good, they aren't overwhelmingly compelling, and the only way they can make money is to sell software because its good software and people use it.
Now, why would that company open source its products? So that someone else can use their intellectual property to improve their products? Not a compelling business model. But what if they just want to lower the barriers to liscencing their code to third party software developers? They could create a psuedo-open liscence that allows people to see why they should liscence the code for commercial products, and they make it easier for people to get started. The company makes money when the liscencees turn out finished products.
Sun doesn't want to open source their code. And they won't. They want people to build products using their intellectual property, and then pay them for it. In a tech world where it makes more sense to liscence a piece of the puzzle instead of doing your own, Sun is trying to get in on the sale of IP thing.
Not all software needs to be GPLed. And Sun doesn't think theirs should be. The think you should have the right to admire, use, and then pay for it so that they can feed their families, too.
Andrew Gardner
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
I think that the Sun "community" source license is dangerous. It seems that the SCSL is a deliberate attempt at stopping the popularity of Free Software.
By providing developers with easy ways to get at their source but keeping complete control over what is happening with that source (don't try to fix a bug or add a feature and distribute your improvements to anybody unless you can pay lots of money to Sun for testing/compatability "support") they can stop any innovation that they don't want. But at the same time they have now legally prevented people from doing something simular since they have seen Suns "Intellectual Property".
I surely hope my employer doesn't think something like this is a "step in the right direction" and order me to look at the "Community" source code, because then they have effectively tight my (and their!) hands to improve on the ideas in any way that is a treat to Sun. If you accept the license terms that Sun dictates it will be very difficult to ever do anything (as Free Software or even proprietary software) without fear of having accepted Suns terms.
Please don't fall into this trap! Don't accept Sun source code because it is now easy to become part of their "community". You will later regret it if Sun sends laywers because you have seen source code that effectively belongs to Sun (and not to the community you thought you where part of).
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
(1) Novell NetWare is IMHO an excellent NOS (network operating system) for file and print serving. Starting with NetWare 5, Novell is attempting to crack the application server market (currently owned by midrange systems, NT, and *nix). The programming environment they now focus on is Java. The current head of Novell, Eric Schmidt, came from Sun's Javasoft division.
(2) A while back Novell announced "Wolf Mountain" clustering technology. Soon after, a new company called "Wolfpack" announced 3rd party clustering technology for NetWare. Novell sued Wolfpack for stealing trade secrets. It turns out that a number of key Novell developers had formed Wolfpack.
(3) A court ordered Wolfpack to stop some activities and change their name. Their new name was Timpanogas (dot com).
(4) Novell has a large market share in NOS software. They also own the directory market with NDS. Their best product is NDS. It allows sharing of user data between OS's, including NetWare and NT. The practical benefit of NDS is having one username/one password between many systems. NDS is a very secure system. I don't know if it's ever been cracked.
(5) NT has increasingly challenged NetWare's market share. And Linux now challenges NetWare and NT's market share.
(6) To address NT's shortcoming in directory services, Windows 2000 will include "Active Directory." It's likely the technology will suck rocks for years. It's taken Novell 10 years to get NDS right. But due to Microsoft's market presence, Active Directory will probably be a big hit.
(7) Linux has no directory service. Except Kerberos, and that is too complicated for ordinary mortals. NDS is available for some *nix's, like Solaris.
(8) Timpanogas is releasing a lot of open source NetWare compatible software for Linux. This is most likely making the Novell people angry.
(9) Novell may release enough of NDS to make an open source NDS client for Linux. They might also sell a commercial NDS server for Linux. But they are an old school proprietary software company. They will never open source the whole of NDS (IMHO).
(10) For many years, Novell's share price (NOVL) foundered. Then Eric Schmidt took over and the share price took off like a rocket. But Novell declined to open source NDS, Microsoft announced Active Directory, and Novell's share price quickly died off.
(11) Conclusion: Novell is dead unless they open source all of NDS and become a services company. Linux desperately needs a good open source or GPL based directory project that is administrable by non-immortals.
(12)An assumption. IMHO, Linux should focus on workstations, handhelds, and basically the client side. Figuring out the high end can come later. That would basically follow Microsoft's path to success. (Low end first, then high end.)
Go Linux!!!
I am not a lawyer.