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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?
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
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.
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).