Novell moves cautiously toward opening code base
By Scott Berinato, PC Week Online
October 22, 1999 4:09 PM ET
Novell Inc. plans to publish by year's end its own open-source license, along with the initial applications that will fall under that license.
But while the Provo, Utah, company continues to take baby steps toward an open-source initiative it first discussed a year and a half ago, it's still not ready to open up its crown jewels -- NetWare and NDS (Novell Directory Services).
"We're not diving in head over heels," said Dave Shirk, Novell's vice president of products. "We can't afford to hiccup on this."
Novell's conflict over how much of its code base to open up is understandable. It doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of Netscape Communications Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and other companies whose open-source licenses were criticized for being not quite open enough. The result was muted developer enthusiasm for the products.
A matter of timing
"Getting things fixed and developed on NDS now is difficult, so if open source made that faster, that's great," said Ron Palmeri, vice president of strategic relations at Oblix Inc., a Novell partner in Mountain View, Calif. "But take Netscape's LDAP [Lightweight Directory Access Protocol] development kit. [Because of licensing restrictions] since it went open source, it has been difficult to get fixes and development."
On the other hand, the longer Novell waits to create an open-source license for NetWare and NDS, the more the company inhibits widespread development of applications for those environments.
"Nothing bad could come of Novell opening core technology," said Benoy Tamang, vice president of marketing at Linux distributor Caldera Inc., a Novell partner in Orem, Utah. "Look at the clout IBM has gained from diving in. At minimum, Novell would be assured a development boom."
"From a developer and customer standpoint, it would get NDS everywhere," added John Kretz, president of Enlightened Point Consulting Group, in Phoenix. "Then Novell could focus on the application level."
Enter Mr. Raymond
Novell would like to launch the initiative around Comdex in Las Vegas next month, according to sources. But those plans could be thwarted if key open-source advocates, including Eric Raymond and the Open Source Initiative, don't give their stamp of approval to Novell's public license, officials said.
Novell missed an internal target date earlier this month to receive that endorsement, and officials said they won't launch the initiative until they do. The open-source backers are currently reviewing the Novell license, officials said.
Novell's first applications to fall under the license will be the digitalme online identity management technology, the client piece of NDS for Linux and the management interface to the company's Internet Caching System, sources said.
Releasing open-source versions of those products will enable users to customize their management environments. Novell officials also said they hope it leads to more development of new features.
To augment its open-source license, Novell will launch a new developers' network on its Web site, complete with bug tracking, download sites and code trees, officials said.
Novell also may consider forming a separate open-source division, though that's not in the cards right now.
"That's part of the maturing of the model we'll go through," Novell's Shirk said. "We're not precluded [from] changing this as it adapts."
Bringing up baby
A key reason behind Novell's hesitancy in committing to a sweeping open-source initiative is concern over protecting the security infrastructure in the core NetWare and NDS products, said Kris Magnusson, Novell's open-source program manager and key evangelist for the initiative.
"Bits and pieces are not a bad place to start," Magnusson said.
Some customers agree with that approach.
"On the surface, open source is a trend and people will use the term to attract developers," said Novell user Jim Price, manager of Arizona Telecommunications Systems, in Phoenix. "But if it's not well-managed, it could ruin development of the product."
Beyond technical issues, Novell is grappling with another important aspect: what opening up core products to the development community would mean to the company's bottom line. "It would be irresponsible," Shirk said, "if we didn't deal with what open sourcing means to revenue."
The revenue question has some partners convinced that Novell will not be able to open up core technology. The company still makes half its revenue from NetWare, making the network operating system an unlikely open-source candidate. And until Novell increases revenue from NDS-based applications, it is unlikely the company will shut off the cash flow that comes from NDS itself as well, one source said.
"We think if they could open-source their bread and butter - NDS -- they could create an 'Apache-like' situation with the directory. Then, boy, could they build a business," said one Novell user and partner who requested anonymity. "But from what we see, that just can't happen because NDS is their baby." |
