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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?
They left novell and started selling novell's clustering tech. Novell sued and theys guys fessed up. Why should anyone listen to them now?
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for more info see http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,60
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
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,
The fact is: The Open Source Community -- especially the Linux faction of it -- are getting greedy. We're so used to having everything for free, and completely open, that we're now berating companies that don't cater to our demands. Well the truth hurts, but you can't have everything for free. Companies are going to want to hold on to their IP, and licenses like the GPL and BSD don't do a whole lot to help them maintain that hold.
So, yes, I think this is a step in the right direction. In this case, the right direction is whatever direction Sun feels is right for them. When you're the CEO of their billion-dollar company, then you can decide what "the right direction" for Sun is. Until then, stick to working on things that are your own responsibility. There's nothing wrong with criticism, but comments like "Suns License Sucks Ass" are just inciteful, and they really don't do much to further your standpoint.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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.
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).
(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.
After some poking around, deep within one of the FAQ's, I found a question about getting the source. "At last!" I thought. But it was not to be. The doc only had a link to a form deep within Sun's web page, which required you to fill out a whole ton of crap, and promised they would review your application and send snail mail sometime in the near future. Unfortunately, I needed to get working on things ASAP. Waiting for a pointless beauracracy was not on the agenda.
In fairness, I should also state that I had procrastinated the project (it was for a class) far longer than I should have. It was one of those night-before-the-assignment-is-due things. Had I been able to get the JDK working, I would have been able to finish it though. As it was, my grade took a big hit.
So, I guess the moral of the story is: don't rely on Sun, use a REAL Open Source alternative whenever possible, and get going on projects before the last second. ;)
BTW, Sun has the right to release things under whatever crappy license from hell they want, but I wouldn't recommend encouraging it by patronizing them.