* History of NetWare
How much do you know about the history of NetWare? Those of us who’ve been associated with the archetypal network operating system for 20 years or more are very familiar with the story, but most of you, I’m sure, came along later. So I’d like to point you to some sources where you can find out the whole story.
This occurred to me as I was searching for something on the Internet and came across the Wikipedia entry for NetWare. Now Wikipedia isn’t one of my favorite reference sources – while it’s very good when it’s accurate, you need to know the subject you’re reading about in order to judge its accuracy! And while that might also be true of more traditional reference sources, it seems that Wikipedia can have (or at least has the reputation for having) more inaccuracies than most reference sources.
But I started reading through the entry and found myself nodding in agreement at things that had slipped my mind. It’s worth the read.
Linked from that entry is a chapter from “High Performance Networking Unleashed” by James Causey, which covers the same area but with additional information and a somewhat different slant from the Wikipedia article.
Also linked is a short article (scroll down to “The King is Dead, Long Live the King”) about the end of NetWare 2.2. That one is of most interest to nostalgia buffs.
Finally, there’s the preeminent history of NetWare and Novell’s early days. Roger White has written and published on the Web a 30-chapter book, “Surfing a High Tech Wave: A story of Novell’s early years – 1980-1990“. Thirty chapters, and it barely gets to NetWare 3.x! But if you want to know about the details of how NetWare came about and what the early days were like then this is a must-read. After all, White was there, working for Novell in Provo, to see it all happening.
These are fascinating stories, the history of PC networking, in fact. They are worth reading for the technological background but perhaps even more for a cultural understanding of the people who helped created the networked world we have today.
And speaking of those who helped created the networked world we have today, Novell announced late last week that Jack Messman had given up his seat on its board of directors, almost two months before his previously announced departure date. There might be more to this story and, if so, we’ll look at it in next week’s newsletters.
