News from PANUG/BizNix - April 16, 2003 http://panug.org - http://biznix.org PANUG MEETING This Thursday is PANUG's April meeting. The main presentation will be given by Rick Lindahl. Rick's company specializes in fixed wireless networking. He'll discuss security, interoperability, distances, speeds, and many other areas of interest. There will also be two factory reps from Alvarion and RAD Data Comm. who will speak about their equipment lines and perspectives in this area as well. NETWARE & LINUX Dick Pilz submitted this link to a Computerworld news story about Novell's plans to use Linux as the kernel for NetWare 7: http://www.panug.org/4 The plan is for future versions of NetWare to allow customers to choose whether to use Linux as the kernel or the traditional NetWare kernel for NetWare services. Anyone that runs only traditional core NetWare services will likely stick with the traditional kernel. Those who run applications on their NetWare server, such as Oracle, Apache, MySQL, Etc. will likely choose the Linux kernel. Gregg Berkholtz, PANUG's outgoing President, says "This sure looks alot like SuperNOS..." referring to the Novell project to put NetWare core services on a Unix kernel. Ed Sawicki expands on this: "In the early 1990s, Novell purchased Unix from AT&T. Ray Noorda, Novell's President at the time, created a project to replace NetWare's proprietary kernel with Unix, thus allowing a NetWare server to also function as a general purpose operating system, thus allowing NetWare to be a real application server. It would also have solved the troublesome memory allocation problems that have been the bain of NetWare administrators for many years." "Unfortunately, the project was cancelled in the mid-1990s when Norda was ousted and Unix was sold off to SCO, which was later purchased by Caldera (a Novell spin-off), who now uses the name The SCO Group." Once NetWare begins using the Linux kernel, it will mean that nearly all small computer operating systems of significance will be based on Unix (not counting computer game consoles, palm computers, and embedded devices). You may recall that the latest Mac operating system is now Unix-based. Even Microsoft has been adding Unix features to Windows. FEEDBACK by Ray Roberts (in response to yesterday's Community Outreach article) The Community Outreach effort is off on the wrong foot. The problem isn't so much managers oppressing technical people. The problem is IT people who don't make a business case for particular open source solutions. IT must show how an open source solution advances the goals of the enterprise, i.e., how it solves your boss' problems. She's not going to care that with only a little bit of training everyone now using OfficeXP can switch to StarOffice, but she might be receptive if you propose putting refurbished PCs in that Phoenix field office that doesn't have any computers. Actual business cases will probably be most persuasive to BizNix's outreach efforts. Identify companies or offices that successfully run open source software, and what they gained by it. Early on, I'd occasionally slip my manager background articles about open source software. This reassured him that we weren't embarked on some bleeding-edge software adventure. Now he slips me Linux articles from the Wall Street Journal. FEEDBACK Robert L. Brown submitted the following article from CNET in response to the XML article earlier this week: Microsoft Limits XML In Office 2003 By Joe Wilcox Staff Writer, CNET News.com.com April 11, 2003, 8:46 AM PT A distinction that Microsoft is making between professional and standard versions of Office 2003 means that many customers may not get all the features they've been expecting, including broad support for Web services. For more than a year, Microsoft has touted Office 2003's support for Extensible Markup Language (XML), a highly anticipated new feature of the productivity suite. But Microsoft now plans to fully deliver the feature only in the two high-end versions of the product, one of which will be available only to businesses subscribing to Microsoft's volume-licensing program. See: http://news.com.com/2100-1012-996528.html DISCLAIMER PANUG and BizNix welcome contributions from all members. Member contributions do not necessarily represent the official positions of PANUG or BizNix. If you don't contribute, the views of members that contribute frequently may appear to be the official position of the group(s).