* The various packages that Novell is offering
Last issue I brought up the various packages that Novell will be offering to entice you to buy its products. In particular, the marketing plan seems to be to offer a combination of an operating system with add-on applications and services appropriate to a certain industry niche. Open Enterprise Server is just one of those packages, along with SuSE Enterprise Linux Server, SuSE Linux Professional, Novell Linux Small Business Suite, and at the top end the “Validated Configuration Program for the Data Center.” The next version of GroupWise will also ship with a free copy of SLES “in the box.”
What gets interesting, some might say convoluted, is the licensing attached to these various programs and packages. For example, the GroupWise package does include a full-blown copy of SLES, but the operating system is only licensed for a single server running GroupWise – and only GroupWise. If you want to run an accounting package that uses MySQL you’ll need to do that on a different piece of hardware with a different (licensed) copy of SLES.
NetWare 6 is licensed per named user. You can install the server operating system on as many hardware platforms as you want, but everyone accessing the network needs a license. NetWare Small Business Suite (SBS) is also licensed per named user, but after that it gets confusing. There’s the starter pack, a five-user version that’s free when you contract with a Novell partner to do the installation and setup. To go beyond five users, you purchase an “expansion pack” (at, essentially, the same price as a do-it-yourself five-user package) and then buy licenses for as many (up to 100) users as you want. Either way, you’re licensed for up to five servers.
Users of NetWare Small Business Suite 6.5 can, by the way, get a free “upgrade” (it isn’t really an upgrade, though) to Novell Linux Small Business Suite 9. I say it’s not really an upgrade because you don’t have to give up your NetWare SBS licenses (as most true upgrades require) but can run both NetWare SBS 6.5 and Novell Linux SBS 9 side by side.
Novell Linux SBS is also licensed by named user, and each named user gets to install the Novell Linux desktop on one computer. It also allows for up to three servers, but no more. Unlike the NetWare operating system, Linux is just as usable for an individual as a desktop (or laptop) as it is for a server operating system. This would also seem to be the reasoning behind the limitations on the SLES license to be included with GroupWise.
This whole area of Linux servers and Linux desktops is somewhat uncharted water for the NetWare folks in Provo, Orem and Waltham, it would seem. Having finally developed reasonable technology to license solely on a named-user basis, thus freeing network managers to install as many or as few servers as they needed, the company seems to have taken a few steps backward. But that is one of the consequences of using a general-purpose operating system like Linux, rather than a specially constructed one like NetWare, to run network servers.
I’m sure, in time, it will all be sorted out. But the next year or two could be almost as “interesting” (in the sense of the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times”) for Novell network managers as it is for those trying to fathom the latest Windows licensing schemes from Microsoft. Pay close attention.
