[KLUG Members] Novell may nix NetWare development

[Adam Williams]

> Let me preface this by saying I am not a Novell radical, but it is a big part of
> my background. I have been purposefully shifting my thinking from NetWare to
> Linux thinking since 1998, looking for Open Source replacements and
> opportunities wherever I can. Linux is unquestionably the future of operating
> systems. (The present for an increasing number of us.)
> > > Wow!
> > No joke.
> > > http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5060413.html
> > "Novell also announced on Tuesday that it would be porting its entire
> > GroupWise collaboration software, a product that significantly overlaps
> > with Ximian's Evolution client, to Linux. "
> > This just makes good sense.  There are alot of Groupwise customers,
> > giving them a migration path less radical than going to exchange looks
> > like money in the bank.  This may give them a product other than NDS and
> > file/print server, which is a very good thing.  I suspect that Microsoft
> > could trounce them in those two areas (since it is basically included in
> > M$-Windows).
> If Novell file and print services, and the EASE of administration associated
> with it, were all running on Linux, I would think informed IT people would take
> a hard look at it over NT. People with a NetWare background will get it, but the
> glut of paper MCSE's will have a hard time comprehending it IMO. Seriously,
> their filesystem management, granting of rights, inherited rights, and
> everything about it is eDir (NDS) centric and really easy to administer...once
> you understand that everything is an object. Granting read/write for a directory
> to one group and read only to another group for the same directory and different
> access still to an individual user is cinch. Much better than User, Group, and
> Others in ext3. Granted, I've not played with the Linux filesystems that support
> such ACL control yet, but it's the easy to use tools and shell integration that
> make filesystem management a breeze for NetWare administrators. 

ACL support is a HUGE improvement over the
was-a-obselete-idea-twenty-year-go owner/group/world thing.  Once
OpenLDAP supports SLAPI (supposedly alread in the 2.2.x branch
under-developement) this LDAP->Filesystem thing should be pretty simple
to implement.  But it could be a long time until the mainstream distros
include such a thing even if it becomes available.  That could be
Novel's niche,  and they could use it to pistol whip RedHat in the
server space (IMHO).

Hopefully someone will take over maintenance of kORBit
(http://korbit.sourceforge.net/) or some simialir package so that when
the PTBs go to do this it can be implemented using purely open and
standard protocols.

> For the longest time, there was one main tool for managing a NetWare
> network...NWAdmin. But NO...Novell had to get all java-happy on us and come out
> with ConsoleOne, a java app built to turn a PIII into a 486. They are moving a
> lot of this to a web management interface now. Not as cool as Webmin, but the
> same idea. 

Yea, our VOIP phone systems have a HUGE, KLUDGY, and SLOW java
management utility.  There java developers should be taken outback and
beaten senseless.  I use other Java apps that are FAST, so I don't think
this is a Java problem so much as an incompetent programmer problem.

> > They've still got some pretty stiff competition.
> > Novel <-> M$ <-> OpenSource(Free!)
> > Groupwise - Exchange - OpenGroupware
> > NDS - ADS - OpenLDAP
> > Evolution? - Outlook - Evolution
> > Mono/Apache - .Net - Mono/Apache
> > XD (Bonobo) - Windows (COM) - XD or GNOME (Bonobo)
> > ZenWorks(+Red Carpet?) - Zero {NameOfWeek} - APT, Red Carpet, up2date
> > ? - ?* - xmlBlaster, Castor, BIE (middleware)
> > n/a - SQLServer - PostgreSQL, SAPdb, Thunderbird (**)
> > * I know M$ has a product in this market, but I have no idea what the
> > name is.
> > ** Not to mention commerical DBs like Oracle or DB2
> Novell has DirXML, which might be the middleware piece you speak of. They've
> always counted on 3rd parties to write DB's though. However, with NW 6.5, they
> do include MySQL in the install procedure. Postgres on NW has been available for
> quite awhile.
> Besides the outward business reasons for Novell to set sail with Open Source, I
> have long suspected they have a battalion of developers internally that have
> been using Linux for quite awhile.

It is actually pretty hard to find a serious IT shop that doesn't have
Linux around.  What serious developer/admin has the time to futz around
with Windows?

> > Support for LAMP will help them with small shops without back-end
> > systems and possibly schools.  But how much for the bigger players with
> > complex hereogenious networks?  I suspect not much,
> > Does Novel have other products?
> Yes, quite a few. The thing about their products is that everything ties into
> eDirectory. The Linux parallel is more and more Open Source apps supporting
> LDAP. It will be interesting to see how much Novell morphs their eDir to be more
> like standard LDAP. AFAIK, if an app can talk to LDAP, it can talk to eDir. But
> the differences are still there, as evidenced in the recent PHP/LDAP thread.

This is true. You can use an NDS server with and out-of-the-box RedHat
install for PAM authentication and NSS.

> Let this be a loud and clear message to Novell fans: Linux is here. Now. If
> you've been dabbling with it but not seriously jumped in yet, it's not too
> late...yet. Get your Linux skills now or be left behind. Future Novell
> certifications WILL require Linux expertise, I have no doubt. 

Preach it brother!