Novell and Linux [LWN.net]

Readers of the discussion on LWN.net may have seen comments posted by Kristopher Magnusson, who happens to be the chair of Novell's "Open Source Review Board" and the person responsible for managing the company's relations with the free software community. We had the opportunity to ask Mr. Magnusson a few questions about Novell's plans with regard to Linux; his answers appear below. But first, a couple of other Novell-related items:

Novell has become a gold sponsor of the Linux Professional Institute, and is recommending LPI certification as part of its own certification program.
Jack Messman, Novell's CEO, has sent us a clarification of Novell's view of Linux and the free software community, and an apology for some remarks in an interview that did not come out quite right. " Novell wouldn't be spending the tremendous time, money and resources to make this strategy a reality if we didn't believe in the present and future of Linux. After building and enhancing NetWare for 20 years, this is new territory for us. We simply ask for your patience along the way."

And now, on to the interview.

LWN: In the ComputerWorld interview, CEO Jack Messman said "Linux is an immature operating system right now. It hasn't had somebody like Novell worrying about making it robust, reliable and scalable for very much time. We think we can bring that to the Linux kernel." He has since noted that he could have expressed himself better, and his apologies have been accepted. But the point remains that Novell sees room for improvement in the Linux kernel. The kernel developers agree, of course; otherwise they would be working on something else. Could you explain what improvements Novell would like to see in the Linux kernel?

First, I want to reiterate that Novell believes the Linux kernel is quite mature, robust, reliable and scalable as it is today, or else we wouldn't have decided to use it in NetWare 7. That said, at this point, Novell currently has no definitive plans to improve the kernel, though as Jack indicated we will indirectly enhance it by the services that runs on top. We intend to let the Linux developer community go through its normal development process and use whatever kernel they develop as-is.

Job number one for Novell engineering is to port the services that run on the operating system. Whether customers are running NetWare 7 on the Linux kernel or the NetWare kernel, we want to make sure they have access to the very best services for file, print, storage, directories, messaging, collaboration, resource management, Web development and many others.

LWN: Which of those (if any) does Novell plan to work on (and contribute back) itself?

As I stated, we like the Linux kernel as-is, and have no plans at this point to to develop our own improvements. Novell's focus today is delivering a number of services above the kernel.

LWN: A quick search through the linux-kernel mailing list did not turn up any Novell engineers participating in the discussion - at least, none that identified themselves as such. Does Novell have engineers working on the Linux kernel, and do they plan to participate in the development community?

We do have a team of Linux engineers who have joined the Linux-kernel mailing list and they are reading the Linux-kernel mailing list posts. My understanding is that they are getting a feel for how the discussions take place before they actually participate with questions and so forth--they want to understand the lay of the land before they jump in head-first.

LWN: The recent announcements mention Novell's contributions to various open source projects, including Apache and OpenLDAP. Can you give a quick summary of what some of the more important contributions have been?

Novell has been quietly engaging the open source community for a number of years. For example, our OpenLDAP work has been quietly humming along for four years. And it's not well known that we've thrown our weight solidly behind the "AMP (Apache/MySQL/PHP)" platform that's been so popular on Linux. Because of our AMP work, developers can take AMP code and move it to NetWare 6.5 pretty much unmodified.

Our Apache work is one of our more important contributions. We have a strong relationship with the Apache Software Foundation. In the case of Apache, Novell's lead engineer in charge of porting Apache to NetWare is a member of the Apache Software Foundation, which gives him code check-in privileges as well as some degree of control over the general technical direction of Apache development. Further, Novell has been very conscientious about contributing our improvements to the Apache codebase back to the Apache Foundation.

Novell recently formed a relationship with MySQL AB. We licensed a commercial version of MySQL to ship their database on every NetWare 6.5 CD, and this has been a big hit with our biggest customers. We practice a kind of open source process between our two companies--Novell engineers porting MySQL code make improvements that we contribute back to MySQL AB. These improvements find their way into the GPL version of the database, which benefits everyone who uses the open source version of MySQL.

Novell also has a relationship with the PHP group that's part of the Apache Software Foundation. We ported PHP to NetWare as part of our AMP strategy, and we made a number of improvements to the PHP code that we contributed to that organization.

Beyond AMP, our relationship with OpenLDAP dates back to 1999, when Novell was looking for open source C-based libraries for programmatic access to LDAP directories. We found OpenLDAP's implementation, which needed some work. We decided to pitch in and help; so we completed the work for them and contributed our improvements back to OpenLDAP. Next, we needed a set of Java libraries. OpenLDAP didn't have any, so we wrote our own and contributed them to OpenLDAP outright under their BSD-based license. After four years, we still check in Java library code to OpenLDAP on a weekly basis. Most recently, a few months ago, we contributed to OpenLDAP a DSMLv2 server written in Java.

So we've been consuming open source software for some time, and have been contributing our improvements back to each community. It's been a satisfying process over the years to see our improvements included in new versions of each piece of software.

LWN: Novell has released its UDDI code with a fair amount of fanfare. Can we look forward to other releases of Novell technology in the near future?

Yes, we will definitely release more technology in the future. In fact, we have another open source announcement planned for later in the spring that, like the UDDI server, is related to standards activities. We are also evaluating which proprietary Novell technologies could be good candidates for open source release, although we haven't finalized those decisions yet.

LWN: If I understand correctly, Netware 7.0 will be able to run on top of the Linux kernel. The thinking seems to be that giving customers the option to move to Linux will make them more inclined to stay with Netware. Is that an accurate summation of Novell's strategy? How will Novell respond if it turns out that most customers would rather run on the Linux kernel?

I think it's only one element of our strategy that the option to move to Linux will make our customers more inclined to stay with NetWare. Both versions will be bona fide NetWare 7--whether customers purchase the version that runs on the Linux kernel or the NetWare kernel, they're both revenue-generating products for Novell. If it turns out that most customers would rather run on the Linux kernel, then it would only validate our decision to move NetWare services to Linux. This is the same approach that we've taken with other products, like eDirectory, NetMail, and iFolder.

LWN: Taking it one step further...if Netware 7 runs well on the Linux kernel, what reason would Novell have to continue developing and maintaining its own kernel? What advantage does a proprietary kernel give to Novell when it can run Linux and benefit from the reliability and scalability work being done by IBM, SGI, HP, Red Hat, SuSE, and others?

Novell still has a huge installed base of NetWare customers who depend on a clear upgrade path to the next version of NetWare running on the NetWare kernel. That's why we have a dual-kernel strategy--to ensure that we don't lose customers who want to upgrade to the non-Linux version of NetWare 7. Besides, Linux and the NetWare kernel are both excellent pieces of engineering that have benefitted from years of enhancements and improvements. Many traditional NetWare customers will want the value of the NetWare kernel.

LWN: For customers wanting to run Netware over Linux, will Novell ship a specific distribution, or will customers be expected to obtain a supported distribution from elsewhere?

The answer to this question is in a state of flux. We're not sure yet exactly how this is going to work yet--please bear with us while we sort this out.

LWN: Why is Novell releasing Netware on top of Linux, rather than (or, at least, prior to) Windows?

We're going with Linux because our customers are telling us that they are moving off of Windows and onto Linux. It's as simple as that. Linux has the momentum and the mindshare and we want to lend our considerable energy to Linux.

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