Feasability. Ok, so we know Tanenbaum has no beef with Linux and a lot of people stand up for him. My question is whether that implies that you believe?
Who believes a 21-year old who had no OS development experience and 1 year of C programming, could create 30.000 lines of OS code in one year (including kernel code) without basing his stuff on other code or books?
Am I getting this right?
I mean I am happy to believe it (although when I had a few years programming experience and then followed a Minix / OS development course, I was lightyears away from being able to write one from scratch). I just want to check if YOU really believe this.
Oh for crying out loud - read the signals. Novell is doing everything but sending you a personal, handwritten letter with little hearts over the i's that they will discontinue NetWare and would love it if you could move with them to Linux. They're moving GroupWise til Linux. The NSS file system is coming along nicely. iFolder is on Linux and will become open source. eDirectory and other stuff is already there. MySQL, PHP, Perl etc etc was on Linux way before NetWare. So what exactly will you be missing after this -the ability to run NLMs? The less- -than stellar batch scripting language of NCF files?
So trust me - in spite of the "not abandoning NetWare but adding Linux" slogan customers are getting the signals. Novell will not develop NetWare much beyond v7 and everyone knows it.
Even if they pull of a NetWare that can run also run on the Linux kernel, it will only be to ease customers over to Linux.
If you're planning IT strategy 2-3 years ahead, you should plan on moving to Linux or something else. Yes your NetWare servers will last longer, but at some point you will no longer have the option to upgrade to a newer NetWare version.
Having said that, all of this really represents a great opportunity to look at using more open source and start teaching vendors what you expect in that respect.
Linux, CUPS, SAMBA... it's all a MESS from a consistent user friendly experience perspective.
This is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING WE NEED TO FIX ABOUT LINUX if we ever want non-techies to see the light. And I've heard they can be found in businesses too... doing real work..!
Nice try. In theory you're right, but in reality a drive like that will have the heads floating -extremely- close to the platter.
It'll take almost nothing to make the heads impact the platter - the slightest drop will be sufficient.
There's Flonix - a Knoppix based distro. Theres a USB key edition and a CD edition.
Incidentally, the Flonix install instructions say to run syslinux for Windows under XP, but all I get is a "ERROR 3246: Boot sector read failed" error. Anyone know how I can syslinux my USB key if all I currently have running is XP?
What with their existing GroupWise and NetMail email systems, Ximian Evolution and SuSE's OpenExchange server (and dont forget sendmail), Novell has a fragmented messaging story.
First, they got GroupWise when they aquired WordPerfect. When they later sold WordPerfect, they kept GroupWise and its now evolved into version 6
When UnixWarewas aquired and later sold, they kept some of the developers. Some of these guys then developed Novell Internet Messaging System. This was a scalable, cross-platform system adhering religously to standards only - unheard of within Novell. It has since been renamed to NetMail, version 3.5 is just around the corner. It'll run on NetWare, Linux, and Windows.
BTW at one point NetMail was going to be the Exchange killer, and they had almost completely reverse-engineered some of the Exchange protocols
Then Ximian was aquired, and Evolution and the Exchange Connector were put more in focus. No doubt there are lots of plans for a Evolution connector for GroupWise as well.
Meanwhile, plans to port GroupWise to Linux were announced earlier this year at Novell's BrainShare conference.
Now, they're aquiring SuSE which has been touting OpenExchange Server (now at v4.5) as a lower cost alternative to Microsoft Exchange.
Oh yeah, and they have GroupWise Messenger, a secure instant messaging system with almost no interesting feature (aka "business-oriented")
What should they bet on?
GroupWise has a full-text search, simple document management, a great web interface, cool viewer technology. It's also nicely integrated with Novell's LDAP server eDirectory for easy management.
NetMail has high performance, scalability (ie. 100.000 users per server).
Evolution obviously has a great email client
OpenExchange Server is a full-featured, low-priced Exchange competitor, and obviously in strong competition with GroupWise.
Either ditch OpenExchange Server and continue with porting GroupWise server to Linux, or they'll stop porting GroupWise. Whatever, but make it clear to customers what their recommended options are! Their messaging strategy is badly in need of a makeover.
Internal problems:
Novell's developers - from Novell, Ximian, SuSE - are now all over the place - geographically at least. It not only has to get them all working together (not against each other). Famously, for a long time their GroupWise and NetMail product groups didnt even talk to each other. Culture clashes could be waiting: it's one thing to integrate Ximian, a cool company with easy-going people, but now they are bringing in Zhe Germans. They can be as head-strong about doing things their way as the product managers of Utah..
It but first needs to figure out what it's product set is going to be.
And it's marketing strategy? It certainly lags their merger and aquisitions and their product strategy by at least six months.
But its nice to see Novell has some guts. Maybe they even have the guts to go aggressively after the desktop market. They'll certainly need something to replace the huge revenue income that NetWare represented, and SuSE Linux servers arent going to do it alone..
Personally, I'm happy to wait for yet another file system: Novell Storage System. It certainly is feature packed. Now before you all start banging on me, remember that Novell for years was the king of file system services.
Just some of the features:
Compression and fast decompression
Hiearchical storage system integration
Advanced access control model, with
granular access control with inheritance and inheritance filters
Copy on Write
File system snapshot
Journaling
Transaction tracking
DFS, Junctions and yes! symbolic links!
Disk, directory and user level quotas
Fast mount and repair times
Name spaces for MAC, NFS, NCP
Native CIFS, NFS, AFP and WebDAV protocol support
Clustering support
Software mirroring and RAID0 striping
Fast! State of the art caching and read-ahead algorithms
Low memory requirements
Scalable: 64-bit, 8 terabyte sizes, pooling etc
I could go on... About the only thing it is missing is encryption. Of course it remains to be seen whether the port to Linux will be successful, and whether Novell has the sense to make it open source.
This is a LAME attempt to exploit open source by leveraging the interest in the new Mandrake beta.
So this guy apparently writes some lame HOWTO guide that contains info anybody could've gotten out of FAQs.
"This HOWTO will be short, brief and to the point" really means "I didn't bother doing any research so I could include anything that would be worth your while"
Then this guy creates a simple website that WILL TRY TO INSTALL AD/SPYWARE when you visit it. This guy pretends to help but really is only trying to lure people to get his ad/spyware installed.
Supports just about every method of accces, including LDAP, JDBC, ODBC, C, C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, Java, JNDI, SOAP, DSML, RADIUS, HTTP, SSL, XML, PHP, Perl, etc
Is 100% standards, ie. TRUE LDAP v3 not like AD
Has builtin, fault-tolerant automatic replication and synchronization
Runs on Linux, Solaris, AiX, Windows, and possibly HP-UX in the near future
Can be managed through a Java GUI Admin tool or a -very- cool Web-based portal called iManager
Integrates with just about anything, including operating systems, databases, applications, HR systems, etc
Has true inheritance
Has granular access control
Is secure
Supports web services
Is a mature product in its ninth+ generation
Used by customers such as the French Tax Authority for 30 million users
and the Star Alliance which includes Lufthansa and United Airlines for global identity management
and CNN.com for personalized Ad banners on a huge scale
is used more than any other directory in the market
Can manage users, groups, applications, printers, desktops
Is supported software
In other words, because nothing else comes close. Sure, you can probably think of some alternatives but anyone who does a technical evaluation will tell you this is THE directory to use.
Now, do yourself and the company you work for a favor; get familiar with the products and then form an opinion. It's the professional thing to do. The geeky thing to do. The right thing to do.
--
Like if I gave you a.sig you would know what to do with it?
>.. if we truly care about the freedom that open source represents, > then we should try to make sure that as many > people as possible get a chance to try the red pill.
It turns out Novell already has several red pills. Their iFolder product is one of the coolest things since sliced bread, and it runs on Linux. Their ZENworks for Servers products can centrally manage many servers - including doing patch management for Linux servers.
No prize for guessing they probably are working on a ZENworks for Linux Desktops. If it's true we're in for a real treat!
Anyone know what other products they make that run on Linux?
An easy and LIKELY explanation is that this is a rumor planted by Microsoft to hurt PS2 sales.
As soon as people suspect the PS2 to be dying, they'll look elsewhere. Maybe wait for PS3, maybe look at the competition. Regardless, they'll avoid the PS2 because that is soon going to be yesterday's technology.
Way back when I was studying computer science, we had this book called "The Psychology of Computer Programming".
It referred to a few legendary (back then) programming feats, including one about the guys at the Jet Propulsion Lab.
They found they had 1/2/I forget which/ Kb of RAM left on the Pioneer/Voyager/I forget which/ spaceprobe they were writing the software for. So they wrote an image pattern recognition program that would study the atmosphere in jupiter/saturn/I forget which/ planet.
Ok so I don't remember all the details but it sounded like really, really, REALLY tight code.
--- You want a.sig? Here's a.sig for you: Take THAT! How's that for a.sig?
In 6-12 months from now, if anybody asks how Microsoft managed to conquer the P2P marked so fast, simply point them back to this thread to show them the state of quibbling between all the other players.
What they should have done is gang up against Microsoft with open standards and inventive forward thinking and not simply try to use P2P as a scheme to get rich quickly.
I
n any event, this is definately a new reason not to move to Norway. I had no idea that "Double Jeopardy" protection wasn't commonplace in most of the "Free" world
You want reasons for NOT moving to Norway?
How about
24% VAT
35-50% income tax
cold long winters
world's most expensive taxi rides
world's most expensive capital city
one of the highest gasoline prices in the world
not member of the EU
and by the way Norwegians are too conformist to use anything but Microsoft software. But I guess that last one isn't unique...:-)
Oh well at least they don't dub imported movies like they do in France and Germany...
> If Microsoft wanted to, they could be the world's largest vendor of Free software.. couldn't they?
Gee what where they THINKING?!
"Wow! We could become the world's largest vendor of Free software!" -Or- "we continue to be the world's largest vendor of software that people PAY for.."
Is it still mindboggling? Why is this even a thread?
Think about it: He guesses something about the future - say a five hundred years from now. He writes it down, but formulates it so that it sounds like he invented / discovered this NOW. He buries this profound, deep secret NOW, waits a few hundred years.. THEN they'll dig up the secret and they'll be stunned! "WHAT? They knew about this way back then?! This changes our entire world view!"
It's sort of like the the pyramids, which were built long ago so we could discover them later. That's what the UFO's have been doing all this time. And the worst part is.. The goverment has known this for years!
Wake up! NetWare has native support for CIFS, NFS and AFP file system protocols in addition to it's own NCP. That means you can access NetWare servers without a Novell client. It also supports WebDav and http. It can use eDirectory or domains for authentication. The server can be managed through a browser.
Obviously you haven't payed attention in class. What? You thought just because -you- had some issues once Novell would never improve?
Novell as a company has changed too, you know. It delivers cross-platform products and services, and Linux is one of the platforms it considers strategic. The others are Windows NT/2K/XP, Solaris, Aix. The company has embraced open source software and has ported Apache, Tomcat, Perl. PHP, MySQL and even JBOSS are in the works.
You obviously dont know what you're talking about but unfortunately you're not unique. Novell isn't a has-been, it's a strong survivor after the dot.com fallout and coming back. The Net Business Solutions tagline might sound stupid to you but that's because you have no clue what Novell is about these days and what they deliver (some 150+ products in addition to NetWare). Again - you're not unique. I'll agree that Novell sucks at marketing. Not as bad as a few years ago, but they still suck.
Oh, and yes I work for the company. Yes I love it. Yes I'm biased. No, it doesn't change the fact that you didn't know what you were talking about. You're still clueless.
It's Windows-only. It does nothing for Windows NT, 9x, Linux, Solaris workstations.
When you install it, it disables all disk caching on the server to prevent corruption, affecting overall server performance by 50%
It requires changes to your DNS infrastructure and can crash existing DNS servers
Groups aren't scalable, supporting max 5000 users
You cannot grant rights at the OU level
You can't rename domains or merge trees
There's no remote management. No web based management.
For AD repairs, you have to be physically present at the server, reboot it into a special repair mode, log in with the non-AD credentials you used when you installed the server (if you remember them!), try to repair, and then reboot and bring the server up in normal mode. If the problem still isn't fixed, you must repeat the process. Talk about downtime!
AD doesn't have true inheritance, which means that granting a Password Admin type user rights to reset every user's password can take forever.
Similarly, granting rights to a file system also takes forever because OU's cannot be granted rights to files and directories
AD is -very- resource intensive. Simple operations can take hours, and the database grows almost exponentially. Granting rights to a user to administer e-mail addresses for 5000 users will grow the database by 13 megs!
In fact, they've been zipping all of the Internet content for years with their Echelon technology. Every e-mail, webpage, Slashdot post etc. is currently stored on a half-full CDROM that every NSA employee carries a copy of.
Wait a minute.
Remember Microsoft took Kerberos and made it proprietary? They did a similar thing with LDAP.
For interoperability, LDAP directories should support the inetOrgPerson in its schema. LDAP applications typically expect this. Active Directory doesnt, and although it's not required to do this Microsoft has again created interoperability problems..
It's like when they changed DNS with their extensions...
Novell's eDirectory is the fastest, most scalable & reliable LDAP directory around, runs on NetWare, Windows, Solaris, Linux, Tru64 Unix and AiX, and comes with some pretty cool LDAP tools.
ConsoleOne is a graphical, cross platform GUI tool that allows you to do pretty much every thing. Add, Delete, Create, Modify, Search, Extend the schema, etc.
There's also the ICE (Import, Convert, Export) tool which allows you to import, convert and export data from LDIF or other LDAP servers. ICE is available in a GUI and command line version.
eDirectory is also managable through a browser, and if you use their DirXML product you can basically take any data from any system and expose it through LDAP.
Novell's eDirectory is redistributable for developers. If you do development work, check all their goodies at their development site. You'll find LDAP class libraries, tools etc.
The evaluation copy of eDirectory can be found here and includes the tools mentioned.
Slashdot Mirror
Feasability. Ok, so we know Tanenbaum has no beef with Linux and a lot of people stand up for him. My question is whether that implies that you believe?
Who believes a 21-year old who had no OS development experience and 1 year of C programming, could create 30.000 lines of OS code in one year (including kernel code) without basing his stuff on other code or books?
Am I getting this right?
I mean I am happy to believe it (although when I had a few years programming experience and then followed a Minix / OS development course, I was lightyears away from being able to write one from scratch). I just want to check if YOU really believe this.
Wouldn't that make it ideal for Mono?
You mean is that A4 or Letter?
Oh for crying out loud - read the signals. Novell is doing everything but sending you a personal, handwritten letter with little hearts over the i's that they will discontinue NetWare and would love it if you could move with them to Linux. They're moving GroupWise til Linux. The NSS file system is coming along nicely. iFolder is on Linux and will become open source. eDirectory and other stuff is already there. MySQL, PHP, Perl etc etc was on Linux way before NetWare. So what exactly will you be missing after this -the ability to run NLMs? The less- -than stellar batch scripting language of NCF files?
So trust me - in spite of the "not abandoning NetWare but adding Linux" slogan customers are getting the signals. Novell will not develop NetWare much beyond v7 and everyone knows it.
Even if they pull of a NetWare that can run also run on the Linux kernel, it will only be to ease customers over to Linux.
If you're planning IT strategy 2-3 years ahead, you should plan on moving to Linux or something else. Yes your NetWare servers will last longer, but at some point you will no longer have the option to upgrade to a newer NetWare version.
Having said that, all of this really represents a great opportunity to look at using more open source and start teaching vendors what you expect in that respect.
This is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING WE NEED TO FIX ABOUT LINUX if we ever want non-techies to see the light. And I've heard they can be found in businesses too... doing real work..!
Nice try. In theory you're right, but in reality a drive like that will have the heads floating -extremely- close to the platter. It'll take almost nothing to make the heads impact the platter - the slightest drop will be sufficient.
There's Flonix - a Knoppix based distro. Theres a USB key edition and a CD edition.
Incidentally, the Flonix install instructions say to run syslinux for Windows under XP, but all I get is a "ERROR 3246: Boot sector read failed" error. Anyone know how I can syslinux my USB key if all I currently have running is XP?
- First, they got GroupWise when they aquired WordPerfect. When they later sold WordPerfect, they kept GroupWise and its now evolved into version 6
- When UnixWarewas aquired and later sold, they kept some of the developers. Some of these guys then developed Novell Internet Messaging System. This was a scalable, cross-platform system adhering religously to standards only - unheard of within Novell. It has since been renamed to NetMail, version 3.5 is just around the corner. It'll run on NetWare, Linux, and Windows.
- BTW at one point NetMail was going to be the Exchange killer, and they had almost completely reverse-engineered some of the Exchange protocols
- Then Ximian was aquired, and Evolution and the Exchange Connector were put more in focus. No doubt there are lots of plans for a Evolution connector for GroupWise as well.
- Meanwhile, plans to port GroupWise to Linux were announced earlier this year at Novell's BrainShare conference.
- Now, they're aquiring SuSE which has been touting OpenExchange Server (now at v4.5) as a lower cost alternative to Microsoft Exchange.
- Oh yeah, and they have GroupWise Messenger, a secure instant messaging system with almost no interesting feature (aka "business-oriented")
What should they bet on?- GroupWise has a full-text search, simple document management, a great web interface, cool viewer technology. It's also nicely integrated with Novell's LDAP server eDirectory for easy management.
- NetMail has high performance, scalability (ie. 100.000 users per server).
- Evolution obviously has a great email client
- OpenExchange Server is a full-featured, low-priced Exchange competitor, and obviously in strong competition with GroupWise.
Either ditch OpenExchange Server and continue with porting GroupWise server to Linux, or they'll stop porting GroupWise. Whatever, but make it clear to customers what their recommended options are! Their messaging strategy is badly in need of a makeover.Internal problems:
Novell's developers - from Novell, Ximian, SuSE - are now all over the place - geographically at least. It not only has to get them all working together (not against each other). Famously, for a long time their GroupWise and NetMail product groups didnt even talk to each other. Culture clashes could be waiting: it's one thing to integrate Ximian, a cool company with easy-going people, but now they are bringing in Zhe Germans. They can be as head-strong about doing things their way as the product managers of Utah.. It but first needs to figure out what it's product set is going to be.
And it's marketing strategy? It certainly lags their merger and aquisitions and their product strategy by at least six months.
But its nice to see Novell has some guts. Maybe they even have the guts to go aggressively after the desktop market. They'll certainly need something to replace the huge revenue income that NetWare represented, and SuSE Linux servers arent going to do it alone..
Good luck, Novell.
I could go on... About the only thing it is missing is encryption. Of course it remains to be seen whether the port to Linux will be successful, and whether Novell has the sense to make it open source.
"This HOWTO will be short, brief and to the point" really means "I didn't bother doing any research so I could include anything that would be worth your while"
Then this guy creates a simple website that WILL TRY TO INSTALL AD/SPYWARE when you visit it. This guy pretends to help but really is only trying to lure people to get his ad/spyware installed.
Boycott this LAME website!
Well if we take the directory alone, then:
- Scales to millions and millions of objects
- Supports just about every method of accces, including LDAP, JDBC, ODBC, C, C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, Java, JNDI, SOAP, DSML, RADIUS, HTTP, SSL, XML, PHP, Perl, etc
- Is 100% standards, ie. TRUE LDAP v3 not like AD
- Has builtin, fault-tolerant automatic replication and synchronization
- Runs on Linux, Solaris, AiX, Windows, and possibly HP-UX in the near future
- Can be managed through a Java GUI Admin tool or a -very- cool Web-based portal called iManager
- Integrates with just about anything, including operating systems, databases, applications, HR systems, etc
- Has true inheritance
- Has granular access control
- Is secure
- Supports web services
- Is a mature product in its ninth+ generation
- Used by customers such as the French Tax Authority for 30 million users
- and the Star Alliance which includes Lufthansa and United Airlines for global identity management
- and CNN.com for personalized Ad banners on a huge scale
- is used more than any other directory in the market
- Can manage users, groups, applications, printers, desktops
- Is supported software
In other words, because nothing else comes close. Sure, you can probably think of some alternatives but anyone who does a technical evaluation will tell you this is THE directory to use.Now, do yourself and the company you work for a favor; get familiar with the products and then form an opinion. It's the professional thing to do. The geeky thing to do. The right thing to do.
-- .sig you would know what to do with it?
Like if I gave you a
> then we should try to make sure that as many
> people as possible get a chance to try the red pill.
It turns out Novell already has several red pills. Their iFolder product is one of the coolest things since sliced bread, and it runs on Linux. Their ZENworks for Servers products can centrally manage many servers - including doing patch management for Linux servers. No prize for guessing they probably are working on a ZENworks for Linux Desktops. If it's true we're in for a real treat! Anyone know what other products they make that run on Linux?
It's the equations physisists use that 90% lacking. It's an emporors clothes thing.
An easy and LIKELY explanation is that this is a rumor planted by Microsoft to hurt PS2 sales.
As soon as people suspect the PS2 to be dying, they'll look elsewhere. Maybe wait for PS3, maybe look at the competition. Regardless, they'll avoid the PS2 because that is soon going to be yesterday's technology.
Way back when I was studying computer science, we had this book called "The Psychology of Computer Programming".
.sig? Here's a .sig for you: Take THAT! How's that for a .sig?
It referred to a few legendary (back then) programming feats, including one about the guys at the Jet Propulsion Lab.
They found they had 1/2/I forget which/ Kb of RAM left on the Pioneer/Voyager/I forget which/ spaceprobe they were writing the software for.
So they wrote an image pattern recognition program that would study the atmosphere in jupiter/saturn/I forget which/ planet.
Ok so I don't remember all the details but it sounded like really, really, REALLY tight code.
---
You want a
What they should have done is gang up against Microsoft with open standards and inventive forward thinking and not simply try to use P2P as a scheme to get rich quickly.
You want reasons for NOT moving to Norway?
How about
- 24% VAT
- 35-50% income tax
- cold long winters
- world's most expensive taxi rides
- world's most expensive capital city
- one of the highest gasoline prices in the world
- not member of the EU
and by the way Norwegians are too conformist to use anything but Microsoft software. But I guess that last one isn't unique...:-)Oh well at least they don't dub imported movies like they do in France and Germany...
> If Microsoft wanted to, they could be the world's largest vendor of Free software .. couldn't they?
Gee what where they THINKING?!
"Wow! We could become the world's largest vendor of Free software!"
-Or-
"we continue to be the world's largest vendor of software that people PAY for.."
Is it still mindboggling? Why is this even a thread?
Think about it:
He guesses something about the future - say a five hundred years from now. He writes it down, but formulates it so that it sounds like he invented / discovered this NOW.
He buries this profound, deep secret NOW, waits a few hundred years.. THEN they'll dig up the secret and they'll be stunned! "WHAT? They knew about this way back then?! This changes our entire world view!"
It's sort of like the the pyramids, which were built long ago so we could discover them later.
That's what the UFO's have been doing all this time. And the worst part is.. The goverment has known this for years!
Wake up!
NetWare has native support for CIFS, NFS and AFP file system protocols in addition to it's own NCP. That means you can access NetWare servers without a Novell client. It also supports WebDav and http. It can use eDirectory or domains for authentication. The server can be managed through a browser.
Obviously you haven't payed attention in class. What? You thought just because -you- had some issues once Novell would never improve?
Novell as a company has changed too, you know.
It delivers cross-platform products and services, and Linux is one of the platforms it considers strategic. The others are Windows NT/2K/XP, Solaris, Aix.
The company has embraced open source software and has ported Apache, Tomcat, Perl. PHP, MySQL and even JBOSS are in the works.
You obviously dont know what you're talking about but unfortunately you're not unique. Novell isn't a has-been, it's a strong survivor after the dot.com fallout and coming back. The Net Business Solutions tagline might sound stupid to you but that's because you have no clue what Novell is about these days and what they deliver (some 150+ products in addition to NetWare). Again - you're not unique.
I'll agree that Novell sucks at marketing. Not as bad as a few years ago, but they still suck.
Oh, and yes I work for the company.
Yes I love it. Yes I'm biased.
No, it doesn't change the fact that you didn't know what you were talking about. You're still clueless.
In fact, they've been zipping all of the Internet content for years with their Echelon technology. Every e-mail, webpage, Slashdot post etc. is currently stored on a half-full CDROM that every NSA employee carries a copy of.
Remember Microsoft took Kerberos and made it proprietary? They did a similar thing with LDAP.
For interoperability, LDAP directories should support the inetOrgPerson in its schema. LDAP applications typically expect this. Active Directory doesnt, and although it's not required to do this Microsoft has again created interoperability problems..
It's like when they changed DNS with their extensions. ..
ConsoleOne is a graphical, cross platform GUI tool that allows you to do pretty much every thing. Add, Delete, Create, Modify, Search, Extend the schema, etc.
There's also the ICE (Import, Convert, Export) tool which allows you to import, convert and export data from LDIF or other LDAP servers. ICE is available in a GUI and command line version.
eDirectory is also managable through a browser, and if you use their DirXML product you can basically take any data from any system and expose it through LDAP.
Novell's eDirectory is redistributable for developers. If you do development work, check all their goodies at their development site. You'll find LDAP class libraries, tools etc.
The evaluation copy of eDirectory can be found here and includes the tools mentioned.