My earlier message about the open audio podcast also included some information about the Novell Client for Linux. It still isn't quite there yet, and Jason Williams admitted as much in the podcast. However, he did share some news about the next version of the Novell Client for Linux due out with either OES2 or SLED10 sp1.
The RSA bits ended up being just a little bit too secure for a heterogeneous environment. For a pure NetWare/NDS environment it was great, arguably the most secure thing around at the time. Since then Novell has realized that password synchronization between different authentication sources is a key technology in and of itself, which required that password encryption be reversible. Which the RSA stuff wasn't. Thus, the introduction of Simple passwords, and ultimately Universal passwords; both of which are less secure than the RSA methods, but still secure enough.
A lot of companies have moved to Universal passwords, but Novell still has to support the RSA-style login methods through the client. Therefore, the RSA-libraries have to be distributed with the client, and that makes it impossible to open-source without RSA's approval. Which isn't coming any time soon. There may be other 3rd party licensed technology in the client, but I can't remember who else may be involved.
It may be possible to create a true open-source client that just doesn't speak the proprietary protocols, though I strongly suspect that doing so will require significant reconfiguration of Open Enterprise Server. If not significant re-engineering. This is a legacy issue.
- NCL is build using AutoBuild, but a private AutoBuild.
- The NCL will never be open-sourced because it has to use proprietary third party modules that Novell does not have the rights to open-source. One of the key modules are the RSA modules.
- The new NCL will be able to auto-detect the kernel being used and will be able to automatically generate the required kernel modules (novfs and others) when kernel version change. Really nifty!
- Introducing Gnome integration for Novell volumes. They already have the KDE version out. This will allow you to do some of the things you can do right now in Windows Explorer, only on Gnome and KDE.
The RSA bits ended up being just a little bit too secure for a heterogeneous environment. For a pure NetWare/NDS environment it was great, arguably the most secure thing around at the time. Since then Novell has realized that password synchronization between different authentication sources is a key technology in and of itself, which required that password encryption be reversible. Which the RSA stuff wasn't. Thus, the introduction of Simple passwords, and ultimately Universal passwords; both of which are less secure than the RSA methods, but still secure enough.
A lot of companies have moved to Universal passwords, but Novell still has to support the RSA-style login methods through the client. Therefore, the RSA-libraries have to be distributed with the client, and that makes it impossible to open-source without RSA's approval. Which isn't coming any time soon. There may be other 3rd party licensed technology in the client, but I can't remember who else may be involved.
It may be possible to create a true open-source client that just doesn't speak the proprietary protocols, though I strongly suspect that doing so will require significant reconfiguration of Open Enterprise Server. If not significant re-engineering. This is a legacy issue.