Bonum Certa Men Certa

Nat Friedman Defends Pact with Novell's #1 Rival (Updated)

Novell makes enemies, but then denies their existence or importance. Derstandar.at, a Web site which recently did an interview with Miguel de Icaza (further analysed in our Web site), has an new interview with Nat Friedman, whom we sometimes refer to as Novell's second Microsoft apologist. The interview touches on many technical things, but it also discusses the backlash. Below lies a small fragment.

derStandard.at: Given the strong negative reactions lot's of people in the community showed to the Microsoft deal, do you think it'll get more difficult for Novell to get their stuff upstream?

Nat Friedman: I haven't seen that until now, I mean there have always been flamewars in the Linux community, it's part of the community culture. Sure there are consequences for Novell in the community resulting from the deal, we have seen that, but not in the respect that someone says "Well, Novell as a business did this agreement with Microsoft, so we won't accept their patches". And most of that negative sentiments don't seem to come from the people who accept patches anyway, they come from people who have a sort of "professional commentator" role in the community.


It is easy to disregard critics and dismiss all the backlash. It is truly a convenient excuse. The only thing louder than words, however, is the effect on one's wallet. When/if Novell's sales sink, perhaps then the company will realise that its new strategy has not worked. In fact, it has also hurt other Linux companies, which Novell ought to have befriended, rather than provoke anger.

It is worth repeating the fact that Novell is dealing with a rival which has viciously attacked it for over a decade, sometimes through FUD and often through technical sabotage. It continues to this date. What would Ray Noorda, who passed away last year, say if he were still among us? The reality is shocking. Novell invites a fierce and aggressive rival to its own conference and the relationship is not reciprocal. From the thousands of court exhibits, for example, one would find E-mails such as this one [PDF], illustrating what the plaintiff described as "technical sabotage" and "hidden APIs":

From: Denns Foster [of Novell] To: Dave Wilkes; John Galley; John Robertson Date: Tue, Jun 9, 1998 3:46 PM Subject: GroupWise vs. Outlook 98

On 05-21-98, I called our Microsoft Premiere Support number to request help with the conflict between GW and Outlook 98. I spoke to Barbara Thomas who generated case SRX9805216011611.

My initial request was that MS consider it a bug that Outlook 98 by default installs using the "Internet Only" option for e-mail services. I told her that it was our opinion that the Outlook 98’s setup program should inspect the system it’s being installed on and choose the "Corporate or Workgroup E-mail" option by default if the Windows Messaging System (WMS i.e., MAPI) was installed and profiles have been defined and choose the "lnternet Only" option by default otherwise. This would probably eliminate 90% of the complaints we get as I’m sure most people when reading the screen containing these options don’t realize what’s being said and simply go with the default as being "safe".

On 05-28-98 I received a call and e-mail from Barbara telling me that my request had been investigated and Adam (I don’t recall having heard his last name) from Microsoft would be contacting me. On either the 28th or 29th, I got a call from Adam. He told me that MS views the way Outlook 98 was operating as a "Feature", not a bug. They would take my request and submit it as an "Enhancement" for future development. I discussed/argued the issue with Adam for several minutes, explaining how by defaulting to "lnternet Only", Outlook 98 ends up breaking a GroupWise installation that had up to the point Outlook 98 was installed, worked fine. I explained to him that the setup screen made no mention of MAPI services being changed and/or broken for applications that need them. His response was that the user is given an ample description of what was going to happen and that we should "educate" our users to make the correct selection during Outlook 98’s setup. All in all, I’d describe my conversation with Adam as equivalent to talking to a rock.

I believe that the changes I made to the address book’s initialization flow last week is probably the best that we can hope for without Outlook 98 changing. We may want to add something to our README about this. The check/change I put into Surge for Outlook 98 could easily be retrofitted into a Jolt CPR build as well, assuming we don’t mind the resource the changes.

FYI: Before I made the changes mentioned above, when installing Outlook 98 using the "lnternet Only" default option, the following problems were encountered:

- No Novell address book service providers are available;

- There is no way to add them to your profile (the old MAPI profile dialog has been replaced by something Outlook 98 specific).

- Sometimes (usually?), our call tologin to MAPl fails (I don’t fully understand why this happens).

- When we can login. Outlook 98’s LDAP service provider causes us grief because of its problems implementing the MAPI APIs we use. The problems here include:

Calls to IMAPlTable::Restrict GPF when passed NULL for the restriction. This is the only documented way in MAPI to delete a restriction.

The way we use MAPI for LDAP services for Boldon James and Nexor doesn’t work with the Outlook 98 provider. I’ve found two areas that we could/should change that should be compatible with the Boldon James and/or Nexor providers.

Dennis.


There are some better examples, but this requires a lot of digging. The amount of material is overwhelming and it's all there so that Novell, as well as others, can take a lesson from history.

Update: here is another exhibit, transcribed by 'Doug Mentohl'.

From: John Gailey [of Novell] To: Michael Buck; Rex Olpin Date: Wed, Jun 10, 1989 2:20 PM Subject: Win98 and Microsoft MAPI Service

In a clean install of Win98 (not over an existing Win95 installation), the Microsoft Windows Messaging System (MAPI) is not installed. Groupwise 5.2 will auto-detect this fact during install and will attempt to install the MAPI system by accessing the Win95 CD. However, the MAPI system has been moved to a different location on the Win98 CD, causing the GroupWise 5.2 install to fail in its attemt to install MAPI.

End-users can manually install the MAPI system from the Win98 CD. To do so, they must run: \tools\oldwin95\messages\us\wms.exe

This self extracting executable will install the MAPI subsystem (and unfortunatly, will also install MS exchange Inbox and MS Exchange Post Office.)

Rex, we need a TID written up for this for our current GroupWise 5.2 customers.

Michael, we need a fix for this for the next GroupWise 5.2 service pack.

this is anti-competitive

Aaarghh!!!

- John Galley CC: Bill Street; Craig Miller


From a different angle and a different problem, here is another exhibit [PDF].

From: Gary Hein [of Novell] Date: Sat, May 30, 1998 3:34 PM Subject." Fwd: ND$ for NT / LDS Church

Don’t know if you guys have seen this document yet, but it’s just another example of lies propagated by MS. There are some very disturbing remarks, including:

Although it is possible to establish bi-directional trust, the trust connection can not be used for administering remote, unmigrated domains. This means that centralizing management with NDS for NT requires a wholesale conversion of the entire enterprise

GH: False

Note that NT servers would need to run IPX/SPX to support NDS for NT as well as TCP/IP to access other network resources and to comply with current standards.

GH: False - NDS for NT works over IP - no need to add IPX. This is a scare tactic.

Service Pack updates are questionable at best. MCS has not yet released Service Pack 4.0, however we suspect it will replace the existing samsvr.dll. To protect against NT Service Packs replacing samsrv.dll, NDS for NT checks at shutdown time and replaces samsrv.dll with the Novell version. MCS believes potential for failure is very high, as soon as any rill starts depending on new exports from samsrv.dll. Replacing this one critical dll could case the system to fail to boot and recovery could be very difficult.

GH: Perhaps advance knowledge of SP4?

Microsoft has repeatedly stated that it will support their NT customers and NT’s basic functionality, but in areas that NDS touches, namely security and authentication, Microsoft will refer customers to Novell. This has the potential of creating some confusion in the resolution of issues revolving around security and authentication.

GH: Scare tactic

Also, comments from PeopleSoft should be solicited to see if PeopleSoft and Tuxedo are supported in environments where NDS for NT is in use as well as the IntranetWare client.

GH: Is it possible that MS is telling NT developer that they should not support their products with NDS for NT?

Windows NT has a feature where anonymous Iogon users can list domain user names and enumerate share names. Customers who wanted enhanced security requested the ability to optionally restrict this functionality. Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3 and a hotfix for Windows NT 3.51 provide a mechanism for administrators to restrict the ability for anonymous logon users from obtaining system information. These anonymous connections are also known as NULL session connections. During the installation of Novell’s NDS for NT, the samsrv.dll is replaced. Novell NDS for NT currently does not include support for restricting anonymous connections. MC€£ see this deficiency as a security weakness.

GH: This is the Red Button attack, which MS ’claims’ is fixed with SP3, but really isn’t. Again, this is completely incorrect - using NDS for NT will not impact the security flaw mentioned in this document.

Anyhow - I don’t know if this is of any use to you but I thought I’d forward it over anyway. Thanks,

Gary

Recent Techrights' Posts

Representing and Speaking for Animals
If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Slop Images in VentureBeat, Linux Foundation Spam Made With LLM Slop and Slop Images
The only relief or upside - if any exists - is that the pace of slop was down a bit this week
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
 
Links 29/08/2025: Lisa Cook Sues Convicted Felon and Backdoor Mandate in UK Resisted
Links for the day
Links 29/08/2025: Arti 1.5.0, War on Public Health (CDC), and Slop 'Bros' Made to Pay for Their Mass Plagiarism
Links for the day
No, 4Chan is Not Fighting for You by Lawyering Up Against Ofcom (UK)
Don't mistake proto-fascists for people who "fight for you". They don't.
Downlplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
In Many Places in the World Vista 11 "Market Share" is Going Down, Not Up
In some countries Windows is already down to third place or lower
More Microsoft-Connected Layoffs, at Least Third Time This Month! (Also Another Death on Campus)
Microsoft as a "gaming" company is where studios, projects, games, and even developers come to die
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 28, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 28, 2025
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Poems, Games, and Java 25 Performance
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
Links for the day
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025