According to this story at Wide Open News that was submitted by a least a dozen readers, Bruce Perens has helped Novell create a "Novell Cooperative License" that meets true Open Source criteria. Meanwhile, CNN says Sun "...is working towards eventually 'community sourcing' as much of its software as possible," but under a license that doesn't truly qualify as Open Source. Sun is still a bit of a tease here, but at least this is a step in the right direction, eh?

Okay, here you go: answers to your questions about future implications of the recent Microsoft Findings of Fact in great depth, brought to you by four expert Slashdot readers, three of whom are antitrust attorneys. Their credentials appeared in Monday's Call for Questions. Thanks to everyone for their question submissions. The quality was so high that picking the best ones was rough. (Click below for the full Q&A session.)

Bob Frankenberg was CEO of Novell in the early nineties, when Novell were marketing DR-DOS as a replacement for MS-DOS (DR-DOS is now the subject of a law suit between Caldera and Microsoft). In part of this CBS interview he explains why his new company, Encanto, is not using Microsoft software, and why they chose FreeBSD. Read on for a few notes.

mwknight asks: "The school district where I work has servers that were patched together with different versions of Novell and NT over the past few years. Management is ready to start over and re-design our network from scratch using Novell 5 servers and Win95/98 clients. I would rather see us go with Linux for the servers, but my biggest opposition is Novell's Z.E.N. Works. Is there a Linux program that behaves similar to ZEN? Mainly something that can remote update software to Win95 boxes? "

Andrew Smith has written an excellent little feature on something so obvious that we usually don't give it a second thought: Server naming conventions. Since all my old machines are named after charachters from The Little Mermaid, and all the new Slashdot boxes use boring naming conventions like 'Linux360' (not for long tho!) I can understand this one. Its worth a read.

signal7 asks: "I run a network of 50+ workstations. Some are UNIX, some are Novell, some are NT, etc. The problem is I recently setup a killer Samba server, but synchronizing user information in a *SECURE* fashion just doesn't seem possible. I'm looking for something that provides the exchange mechanism of say Lerberos, with the centralization of LDAP. Anyone have any suggestions?"

After a bit of an absence, Arjen Laarhoven has returned with a stellar review, this time of Eric Greenberg's new book Network Application Frameworks. Click below if you are interested in the design and implementation of networks in combination with the applications that run on them.

chris wrote in to tell us that Registration for the 3^rd Annual Atlanta Linux Showcase is open. First 100 registrations get an OS-Wars T-Shirt (I have one, they rock) brazilian brain sent us an English Translation of an Interview with Alfredo Kojima of WindowMaker fame. Scott wrote in to tell us that the July issue of Daemon News is online and Jim wrote in to tell us that the July issue of The FreeBSD 'zine is out too. geophile wrote in to tell us that Propoganda 10 is out. More excellent background images to consume your free RAM. Very yum. erios23 notified us of a new toy on jwz's webpage. BluBall sent us a Slashdot reference in Salon's Silicon Funnies. Spoofs Linux and Slashdot and even me a bit I guess (well, my name anyway). And finally chrisd (who may be biased on this one) wrote in to say that VA is one of the 10 best companies to work for (According to ZD) ranking amongst Replay, Nokia and Novell. I suspect that Nerf has something to do with it.

Joseph Walsh wrote in to talk a little bit about his experiences lately getting a new job. It talks about using the various online services to try to get a geek job. It doesn't provide any answers but I think it raises a lot of good questions that are worth thinking about. As hiring becomes more automated, we'll see much more of this kind of trouble.

Principal Skinner writes " The main feature on Userweb has a pretty good exposé of Linux, the open-source movement, and trends in OSes. Heavily slams NT on reliability, scalability and TCO, as well as raising questions about whether Windows2000 is The Answer. Also talks a bit about Novell and its products. "

Alex asks: "How would one go about calculating immediate costs and tangible benefits of migrating an NT/Novell IntranetWare LAN to Linux. I am not talking only about long-term benefits as in more uptime, fewer crashes, robustness, etc., but if I could use fewer and cheaper boxes for file, internet and print servers. What could I say to a company about the immediate benefits?" What about the costs associated with retraining? What pitfalls do NT admins have to worry about when moving to Linux?

One of our readers writes "Check out the press release that says that Novell is porting NDS to Linux. This could mean that Linux will stand a good chance to penetrate the data center--just another step toward world domination. Plus NDS v8 can support a billion directory entries. " Novell is saying it will be availible by calender year 99-keep our fingers crossed.

hepjedi writes "News.com is reporting that Novell is giving away its source code. " They did this at their annual conference and rolled out plans to "...the release of core NetWare protocols, to test releases of its clustering software, to further refinements in its strategy to provide management tools for NetWare and Microsoft's Windows NT operating system." Their basic aim is to get more developers for the system (Duh).

Surplus Baggage writes "Caldera is planning to release the beta of OpenLinux 2.2 at Novell's BrainShare conference. It's the first distro to be based on a 2.2.x kernel. ZDNet has the story. " I've been reminded by people that Stampede has the first 2.2 out. As well, SuSE 6.1, out in a couple days will have a 2.2 based distrib. /me slaps own face.

Luca Lizzeri writes "The WSJ reports that IBM, Novell and Compaq are taking equity stakes in Red Hat (subscription required). An excerpt: "Red Hat Software Inc. [snip] said it obtained equity investments from three more computer companies: International Business Machines Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Novell Inc." Pretty please will someone find a link we can read and post it? And guys, don't just post the article contents in the comments- if you guys keep doing that I'm gonna get sued for copyright violation. Update: 03/09 09:33 by CT : Joy! stick sent us a free version of the story.

axg writes "Contrary to a previous slashdot report, Novell has no immediate plans to open its source". Like the previous case (Lotus), I think we should wait and see what actually happens. Bear in mind that companies tend to study things for ages before committing to anything. If most of the Novell Developers want open-source, Novell says it might open it. Amusingly, the quoted reasons for not opening their source is security (eh?)

According to this story, Novell is considering opening parts of their NDS source code. HNQ:This step is going to compete with Microsoft's Active Directory that should be available when NT 5.0 comes out. The article also mentions that Novell is thinking about investing in Caldera - thats a good news.

Well, we've received a ton of Comdex Reports. Firstly there's Linux World reporting that IBM may be porting Linux to the AS/400. Then there's a Linux Today report, discussing Linux' success in France, a new French Linux Magazine France, and the presence of an HP representative in Red Hat's Booth demonstrating an apparently impressive Firehunter.Jedi Mind Trick wrote in about a demo of 500 Mhz K7 silicon. And finally many of you told us that Novell is claiming Comdex Novell-network traffic is being sniffed.

Holiday writes "Sun Microsystems has changed the name of Solaris 2.7 to Solaris 7. Apparently they wish to follow HP's lead into large version numbers." In related news Microsoft's NT 5.0 will be renamed Windows 2000. And since we're talking NT, here is a review of its latest features. I find it amusing that command line enhancements are among them. It's also interesting to see that while data may be imported from NDS, it can't be exported back again -- reducing the value of Novell's NDS... Thanks to Vertigo1 and Phantom of the Operating System.

Ross Thompson has this question for you all: "I'm a consultant in the DFW, Texas area and have been tasked with cutting IT costs for a large (600+ users) Fortune 1000 company. Currently the company running NT/Novell networks and WinFrame. DHCP is being utilized for WinFrame. All clients are running NT Workstation 4.0. At this point, management isn't too happy with Microsoft, since they spend millions of dollars each year in clients licenses and support costs. I would (maybe) like to suggest going with Linux clients to save these costs." Sound interesting? Well, click below!