May 1, 2002
by sjvn01
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Rocky road ahead for IPv6

Almost two years ago, ZDNet ran an article entitled: “IPv6: It’s about time.” It seemed like IPv6 was ready for network prime time and would replace IPv4 as the dominant network protocol on TCP/IP networks–read: the Internet and most LANs. It was not to be.

At WinHEC in 2002, Microsoft almost begged its partners to embrace IPv6. And Microsoft has reason to be beating the bushes for IPv6 support. Microsoft needs IPv6 for its future peer-to-peer plans, and network companies and LAN administrators are simply not adopting it.

For example, Danny Councell, president of business IM vendor NetLert Communications, says, “As it stands now, our company has no plans for IPV6, it’s just a non-issue at this time.”

CTO Dave Juitt, of Bluesocket, a wireless LAN management company, comments, “it won’t happen in my lifetime.” It’s no different in the front trenches of networking. Rene’ Beltran, vice president of sales for DTR Business Systems, a Unix and Windows distributor specialising in supporting value added resellers (VAR) and network integrators, observes that his customers just don’t care about IPv6.

Promising trillions of new IP addresses and built-in IPSec security, IPv6 looked like it would be a natural. What happened?

For one thing, Ralph Droms, a Cisco Systems Technical Leader and chair of the IETF dynamic host configuration working group and member of the IPv6 group, explains that while “the base specifications for IPV6 has been around for a long time (August 1998), some parts aren’t done yet. For example, I’m the author of dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) for IPV6, and I’m only finishing that now.”

Jake Khuon, former network architect for Global Crossing’s IPv6 network design and deployment and a consultant today, says, “The stumbling blocks currently are (1) lack of wide-scale network infrastructure deployment and (2) lack of ‘kill apps’ that is applications that require IPv6 to function. Currently, there are only comparable applications that function within the IPv6 world much like they do in IPv4 and don’t offer any clear advantages. [Does that mean people have tried some old apps with IPv6 and they work? ]Most of this stuff is more along the lines of either research or “gee look it works in v6 too” and not particularly exciting to your average user.”

Besides, Droms points out, “new technologies like Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) and Network Address Translation (NAT) have been added to extend IPv4’s potential addresses, and thus, it’s useful lifetime.” Despite slow network performance and management problems, CIDR and NAT do give network administrators and ISPs enough addresses to keep users happy.

Another problem, Khuon observes, is that “key vendors developing IPv6 implementation still were not offering as rich a feature set as they had with IPv4. An example of this is Cisco’s IOS, which, when released as “IPv6 enabled” in the production images (12.2T) did not at first contain a sophisticated IPv6 Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP).” Since then, Cisco has addressed some of these issues, but IPv6 on IOS remains a work in progress.

Some vendors, however, still don’t support IPv6 at all. For example, no commercial version of MacOS supports it, and IPv6 is supported on Linux but still somewhat experimental. Even on Windows XP, IPv6 is a “preview” technology more suited for developers than users.

Still, some people think that IPv6 may be on its way to prime time. Besides Microsoft’s call for support, research house The Yankee Group predicts that by the fourth quarter of 2002, Japan will become the first country to deploy IPv6 in production environments. The reason? The Asia-Pacific region is suffering from a lack of available IPv4 addresses and Japan will take a leadership role in the implementation of this technology into production environments.

That’s in part because Japan has embraced 3G wireless phones, which require IPv6 for networking. Droms thinks that will happen here, too. “Wireless is going to push IPv4’s address availability,” he says. “We’re just at a point where it’s not possible to expand the address range with NAT and retain functionality for wireless devices.”

Khuon agrees. “I believe the mobile market will be the greatest pusher of IPv6,” he says. “IPv6 was designed with IP mobility in mind. You can do IP mobility today with IPv4, but it’s extremely convoluted. IPv6 makes it easier.”

And, eventually–but not as soon as many predicted–the rest of the current IPv4 network infrastructure.

A version of this story was first published in ZDNet.

April 16, 2002
by sjvn01
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Unix + Linux = Caldera

So where is Caldera going with its older operating systems? Linux may be all fine and dandy, but the fate of OpenServer is what the people at the DTR Business Systems reseller show in Las Vegas earlier this month wanted to know, and Caldera’s CEO Ransom Love was there to give them answers.

The DTR resellers — for the most part old line Intel Unix resellers and integrators working in vertical markets such as bookstores, clothing manufacturers and the oil trade — were pleased to hear that Caldera will not put the older Unix OpenServer out to pasture after years of neglect from former owner SCO. In the past, SCO tried to move OpenServer users and resellers to UnixWare — now OpenUnix — but they simply wouldn’t budge.

Why not? Because, as Rene Beltran, vice president of sales for DTR, says: “OpenServer already does everything the customers want.” DTR, a value-added reseller that works with resellers, integrators and customers, still sells 20 times the copies of the older OpenServer operating system as OpenUnix copies, he says.

It’s not just DTR. According to Dan Kusnetzky, IDC’s vice president for system software research, OpenServer has a much larger market share than the often touted, but it would seem seldom deployed, OpenUnix.

Indeed, the resellers see their OpenServer market getting bigger. As Microsoft’s support for NT diminishes the resellers see this as an opportunity to move Linux — not Unix — in. Because of the name recognition, though, when do they manage to find someone who wants Linux, they’re finding it much easier to move Red Hat than Caldera. They’re also seeing a fair amount of demand for W2K. Customers invite them in and ask for W2K by name.

Many of the resellers are reluctant to do sell Windows, though, because their expertise is in Unix. They’re also finding sticker shock with some customers as the customer begins to understand what W2K’s higher client access license (CAL) costs mean to their bottom line.

Most of these resellers also have had bad experiences with Microsoft’s quality and security, and they know full well that when something goes wrong, they, not Microsoft, will be the ones called on the carpet. Thanks to OpenServer’s incredibly high level of stability and plentiful small business applications, many of them would rather sell OpenServer over any other OS any day of the week.

OpenUnix, the former UnixWare, remains unpopular. This dates back to the SCO’s days of the late ’90s when, from the resellers’ perspective, SCO tried to force them and their customers to move from OpenServer to UnixWare. This then new operating system cost more, would require many programs to be ported at their cost, and didn’t offer any worthwhile advantages. To them OpenServer is still the operating system of choice, if Caldera supports it.

Love has answered many of their concerns by assuring the group that OpenServer will continue to be supported and that OpenUnix would get an OpenServer Kernel Personality, which would enable them first to move their existing applications to OpenUnix and, in 2003, to OpenLinux.

Caldera will continue updating OpenServer with driver updates and a refresh of the operating system, in the third quarter of 2002, that will bring OpenServer up to version 5.0.7.

At about the same time, to make OpenUnix more attractive, Caldera will be adding an OpenServer Kernel Personality to OpenUnix. This will enable users to run OpenServer programs on OpenUnix come the day that they need OpenUnix’s much more powerful database infrastructure and or need up to eight-way processing power. Caldera hopes that OpenServer users who want server-consolidation will then use this as an upgrade path.

Even after this, however, Caldera doesn’t plan on giving OpenServer a gold watch on the way out the door. In 2003, if there continues to be a demand for it, Caldera will bring a Linux Kernel Personality to OpenServer. With the LKP, users will be able to run Linux programs on OpenServer.

Caldera will also continue to upgrade its Linux operating system, with OpenLinux 3.1.2 due out in the third quarter.

Looking ahead, Love says on all three operating systems, there will be more frequent feature patches rather than frequent periodical major releases. Love added, “Users and resellers don’t want major releases, because installing them is too expensive, and they cause work disturbances.”

Caldera will also strive to make “it easier to switch between the operating systems, thus enabling administrators to mix and match. This will also make it easier to migrate between environments and consolidate servers.”

How can Caldera afford to support three operating systems? Love explained that because OpenServer and OpenUnix are already stable, they don’t require a tremendous amount of development work. Instead, most of the development dollars are focused on Linux.

Eventually, Caldera thinks Linux will win out. OpenLinux alone is making the jump to the IA-64 architecture.

But, as Love says, while it’s possible that “Linux may replace Unix, we see Unix and Linux as compatible. We don’t see, as Red Hat does, one replacing the other.”

Love also made it clear that Caldera will not be following Red Hat to the enterprise space. Instead, Caldera will concentrate on selling to small- to medium-sized businesses and branch offices through its reseller channel. As Love says, “The solution provider is our customer, not the end user.”

A version of this story was first published at Linux.com.

February 25, 2002
by sjvn01
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That’s all folks: Corel leaves Open Source behind

Without any fanfare, Corel, once a leading Linux light, first abandoned Linux and is now abandoning Open Source. Its Open Source site, OpenSource Corel, closes on March 1. Along with it goes Corel’s well received WINE fork, its work on Debian and other file packaging techniques, and other projects. The code lives on, but the site is done.

In truth, though, as a walk through the dusty Web site shows, even before the closing sign appeared on their virtual front door Corel’s work on its Open Source projects had already declined to near nothing.

Corel is under contract to Microsoft to bring .NET shared-source-code versions of Microsoft’s C# language and Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) to FreeBSD — not NetBSD as reported elsewhere. That project was part of Microsoft’s Shared Source Initiative, but there’s no sign of the project on the OpenSource.Corel site. A Corel spokesperson said the shared .NET program is still ongoing, with Microsoft managing it.

Looking back

Not so long ago, November 1999 to be exact, Corel was a leading Linux light. Its Debian-based desktop Linux distribution was designed to convert Windows users to Linux and it was extremely well received. In the meantime, Corel brought the first major Windows desktop application — WordPerfect — to Linux using WINE. Not long after that, other leading Corel Windows programs, like CorelDraw, arrived on Linux via WINE. By February 2000, according to PCData (now NPD Intelect Market Tracking) Corel’s Linux OS retail market share had increased in the United States from 2.3% in November 1999 to 19.3% in February 2000. That was then. This is now.

Since those halcyon days of a Linux desktop that Windows users could love, Corel has moved away from Linux and Open Source. Ravished by ill-timed moves into the application server provider (ASP) market, a lack of profits from Linux and its application lines, and the powerful, but eccentric, leadership of one-time CEO Michael Cowpland, Corel took a new turn — and it was a turn away from Linux.

In August 2000, Cowpland stepped down, and by that November, Corel was rumored to be looking for a buyer for its Linux distribution. While Derek Burney, current president and CEO, denied this in December 2000, it was already an open secret that with the Linux operations showing little, if any, profit, and Microsoft having rescued Corel from its miserable financial position with a $135 million stock buyout, Corel was moving away from Linux.

Corel was also abandoning its brief flirtation with ASP software. Since Burney took the reins, Corel has focused on Windows and Mac application development. The company has also been acquiring other independent software vendors such as SGML leader SoftQuad and the maker of the popular low-end desktop photograph program Picture Publisher, Micrografx.

Selling the Linux OS

But getting out of Linux proved little easier for Burney than Brer Fox trying to get free of a tar baby. Finally, though, in August 2001, Corel sold its Corel Linux OS division to Linux Global Partners (LGP), a NY based software investment firm, for an undisclosed sum.

LGP quickly formed Xandros to house it. Xandros is continuing Corel’s original mission of delivering a Windows-user friendly version of the Linux desktop with its Xandros Desktop 1.0. This product is in late beta and is a Debian-based system by way of the Corel Linux OS 3.0. It will include the 2.4.16 Linux Kernel, KDE 2.2.2, and user-friendly control panels, connection and printer wizards, a new file manager, and an easy-to-use Windows networking interoperability interface.

Is there any future for Linux at Corel?

As for Corel’s Linux desktop applications, while they are still supported, there have been no new releases since WordPerfect 2000, and it doesn’t take a software engineer to see that there won’t be any new Linux office programs coming from Corel.

A Corel spokesperson said that the company was still considering new Linux product releases in the summer of 2001 if there was sufficient customer demand. Because there wasn’t enough demand, Corel decided by early fall to cease developing Linux versions of its programs. Soon afterwards, Corel stopped selling its Linux programs. Buyers report that the shrink-wrapped packages still appear from time to time, but they’re almost as hard to find as a Linux programmer using C#.

So it is not with a bang, but with a whimper, that the only major Windows application company to ever venture into Linux software now leaves us. While Corel’s Linux projects were never a commercial success, Corel’s arrival in Linux seemed to herald a new day for the Linux desktop at the time. Today, its quiet, final departure reminds us that the Linux desktop has still to prove itself with both consumers and businesses.

A version of this story was first published on NewsForge.

October 15, 2001
by sjvn01
0 comments

It’s Not Your Linux Anymore: Get Over It

Once upon a time, there was a community bound together by the dream of free software and building a real Unix-style operating system. But, despite the best efforts of Richard Stallman and others, that’s all it was — a dream — with only a few bits and pieces (the GNU programs) in place.

Then, along came Linus Torvalds, who took some of GNU and a bit of the academic operating system Minix and started turning the dream into reality — Linux.

Fast forward a few years and Linux has developed into a serious operating system. Hundreds of developers work on it, hundreds of thousands use it on a daily basis, and Eric Raymond and company had popularized the terms open source and Linux alongside free software.

The community grows larger by the day, and Slashdot gives it a forum. Soon, Red Hat, VA Linux, and other Linux companies soar into the Nasdaq stratosphere. The old-time users begin to grumble about how the nebulous Linux community is selling out.

Move ahead two more years to today. The developer community hasn’t grown much, but Linux users now number in the millions. The Linux firms have fallen on hard times. VA Linux suddenly abandons the hardware business.

However, Linux as a business proposition is doing better than ever. Except these days it’s companies like IBM that are leading the way. The old community has gone into an all-out whine about how Linux just isn’t what it used to be.

Guys, get over it. Linux isn’t just for hardcore techies anymore. It’s not just for those who are pure of heart in their support of the contesting gospels of Free Software and Open Source. It’s not even for those who have mostly-worthless stock options in VA Linux. Today, Linux has become as mainstream as Windows.

I know, I know; many of you in the community still want to posture about being against the demons of Microsoft. I hate to tell you this, but Linux isn’t a rebellion anymore. And, Linux was never really about good versus evil. Linux is a kick-ass-and-take-names operating system with a fascinating past and a promising future in corporate America — a future to be delivered by Fortune 500 companies like Compaq, Dell, and IBM.

I hear way too many people whining about this next step in Linux’s evolution. They’re the ones snarling that the new users are clueless jerks. They are the ones that sneer at anyone using Red Hat instead of Mandrake. In short, they’re jerks.

It’s these people who give Linux a bad name. They are absolutely certain they are doing the right thing by inflaming anyone who doesn’t praise Linux to the high heavens. And, they think that there is nothing better than to accuse anyone who says anything good about Microsoft (no matter how marginal) of spreading FUD.

Of course, what they’re really doing is alienating anyone and everyone who hasn’t picked up Linux yet. By snarling like junkyard dogs, they keep the myth of Linux as the operating system fit only for foul-mouthed, longhaired, dirty t-shirted losers alive.

The fact is, Linux was, and is, the operating system for the technically elite. Today though, it’s also the operating system for anyone in the mainstream who wants to make the most of their computing power.

In other words, the real news about Linux these days isn’t going to be reported on Linuxgram; it will likely be reported in the Wall Street Journal. LinuxWorld is a fine tradeshow, but Comdex and Networld+Interop are where Linux’s future lies.

You can cry about it if you want to. You can even e-mail me nastygrams. I’ve already got mail filters set to fire twit messages to /dev/ null set up for you. But, the simple truth is that Linux is mainstream now.

Like it or lump it, Linux’s popularity means that it also has to play by commercial rules. Frankly, it’s time to grow up. It was fun and cool to wear black and be big-bad-operating-system-rebels, but Linux is now putting on a tie — and it’s about time for us to do so as well.

A version of this story was first published in Linux Magazine.

July 11, 2001
by sjvn01
0 comments

A rogue’s gallery of denial of service attacks

Tuesday, May 22, started out as just another day at CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. By day’s end, CERT, widely regarded as the Fort Knox of computer security, would be knocked off the net by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

In 2001, even the crème de la crème of network security is vulnerable. If it can happen to CERT, it can happen to you.

You can help prevent DDoS assaults across the Internet and lower your vulnerability to attacks. But if someone really wants to put your business under with a DDoS attack, they will. Microsoft, Yahoo, and Exodus have all fallen to DDoS attacks within the last 12 months; you or your customers could be next.

A rogue’s gallery of denial of service attacks. More>

April 23, 2001
by sjvn01
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Gotta Make the In-Laws Happy: Caldera and SCO tie the knot

CALDERA AND SCO WILL finally exchange wedding vows next month, and SCO integrators are eager to attend the ceremony.

During the May 4 event, Caldera’s pending purchase of UnixWare, OpenServer and SCO Professional Services is expected to receive shareholder approval.

That’s good news for SCO’s partners. Caldera couldn’t give much support or information to SCO’s resellers as the $23 million deal wound its way through the legal process.

When the deal gained SEC approval last month, it freed Caldera to share some general business plans with SCO’s partners. Once the May 4 shareholder vote is completed, Caldera will likely crank up the volume on its partnering strategy for SCO integrators.

Caldera hopes to give allies and customers the best of both worlds: Linux’s flexibility and low cost at the departmentallevel, and Unix’s rock-solid reliability at the high end of the market.

Still, Caldera will face plenty of challenges. SCO’s customer base has eroded over the years and dramatically declined between 1999 and last year (SP, April 16, p. 30, www.smartpartnermag.com/issues). It’s not “clear that Caldera can get that share back,” says Dan Kusnetzky VP at International Data Corp.

Analysts note that Sun Solaris continues to dominate the high-end market, with Windows 2000, Windows NT and Red Hat Linux enjoying strong success on Web servers and departmental servers.

Caldera CEO Ransom Love’s strategy, previewed at CeBit in Germany last month, is fairly simple. The company is embedding Linux features into Unix, and vice versa. At the same time, Caldera continues to enhance and refine OpenLinux, UnixWare (to be known as OpenUnix) and perhaps even OpenServer. Version 8 of OpenUnix went into beta this month.

Even before the Caldera deal, SCO was bolstering UnixWate to support the Linux Kernel personality (LKP). Going forward, that means OpenUnix and OpenLinux will have the same GNU tools and libraries, which stick like glue to the proposed Linux Standards Base’s specifications. As a result, developers will be able to compile and run Linux applications on top of UnixWare, which could make UnixWare more appealing to business customers and open-source developers.

Caldera will promote OpenLinux for departmental servers and Web servers, while pushing OpenUnix for high-end servers and enterprise systems.

The company hopes to avoid the type of marketing and development setbacks that plagued UnixWare when Novell owned the operating system in the mid-1990s.

At the time, Novell positioned NetWare as a file-and-print server, and UnixWare as an application server. But the UnixWare and NetWare development teams had a poor working relationship, and plans to meld the two operating systems ultimately stalled. Novell ended up selling UnixWare to SCO, where it enjoyed some initial success before losing momentum in recent years.

Meanwhile, questions continue to surround OpenServer, which was SCO’s flagship operating system until the company acquired UnixWare. SCO tried to force OpenServer customers to embrace UnixWare, but many customers scoffed at the idea.

Some SCO resellers hope that Caldera enhances OpenServer with LKP and other Linux-related features. Without those capabilities, resellers say the end of OpenServer could be near.

Software vendors apparently agree. Many developers, particularly database companies, refuse to port their latest applications to OpenServer because it’s considered to be a dead-end platform. “Caldera talked the talk, but we have to see if they will walk the walk,” says a Midwest SCO reseller.

On the corporate side, some of SCO’s established hardware partners applaud Caldera’s strategy. Gary Campbell, CTO of Enterprise Servers at Compaq, says the merger “will strengthen the relationship” between his company and Caldera.

Compaq preloads OpenLinux eServer 2.3.1 on Compaq ProLiant ML330, DL320 and DL360 servers.

Some of SCO’s oldest and best customers have already announced that they’ll be sticking with Caldera.

BMW, one of SCO’s largest customers worldwide, has a lot of confidence in Caldera International, says the car maker’s European director. BMW is buying the newest release of SCO OpenServer 5 licenses to upgrade existing motor testing applications to the new generation of tester systems, according to the BMW director.

Caldera insists that the marriage of Unix and Linux will be a success, but newlyweds tend to be idealistic. Reality usually doesn’t set in until after the honeymoon.

Big Blue Is Red Hot on Unix Trail

Supporting Linux and AIX alike, IBM’s new AIX 5L operating system and p660 and p620 servers are part of the company’s ongoing push to take over the Unix market lead through a combination of direct sales and partnerships.

IBM VP Mike Kerr thinks that IBM’s just released midrange SMP servers, bundled with AIX 5L, will play mainly in existing AIX environments where IT staffers want to experiment with emerging Linux apps on the side.

Other AIX servers have run Linux before. However, the new pSeries servers add SOI (silicon on insulator technology), adopted from IBM’s higher-end zSeries servers, for faster chip performance.

IBM expects to release TPC-C benchmarks this week, showing better results on a six-way p660 system than on an eight-way Sun UltraSparc 3.

On the scalability side, AIX 5L contains elements of Project Monterey, an earlier joint venture between IBM and Santa Cruz Operation (SCO).

To support 5L, IBM has added several hundred new direct salespeople. The company will attack the enterprise market directly, and the small to midrange market through resellers and integrators. ASPs will also be a target for the p660 rack-mount system.

Darren Shallcross, VP of business development for Big Blue partner Solution Technology Inc., says his midmarket corporate customers will try out Linux e-mail, Lotus Notes and firewall systems.

Caldera will also be entitled to sell AIX 5L after its SCO acquisition goes through. As insiders see it, though, more of Caldera’s energies will go to selling its own UnixWare 7, also containing Monterey elements.

First published in Sm@rt Partner

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