Open Group Releases DCE 1.2.2 as Free Software

lkcl writes "The Open Group announced 12th January 2005 that they are releasing DCE/RPC 1.2.2 as a Free Software Project - under the LGPL. This is a major coup for Free Software: the Distributed Computing Environment is known to be involved in some major projects. There is a mirror at opendce.hands.com which runs rsync, ftp, and there is also a dce122.tar.bz2.torrent bittorrent running as well."

freedce

[lkcl]

Article at Advogato [advogato.org] with some more details.

This is one _monster_ big deal for Free Software.

This is the code that allows big companies such as IBM, Fujitsu, Entegrity etc. to bid for £500m contracts. [theregister.co.uk]

We have FreeDCE [sf.net] already, which is the DCE 1.1 Reference implementation autoconf'd and updated...

Re:Ummm

[crow]

The Open Group was formed by the merger of X/Open and the Open Software Foundation. The use of "open" in all those names predates the phrase "open source." The term it relates to is "open systems," which refers to standardized Unix systems, as opposed to mainframes.

Re:freedce

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, you submitted the story AND trolled for more page views! Way to go, overselling yesterday's technology!

He bought the $lashdot Bonus Pack©. That's a story plus a guaranteed 2nd post behind a non karma whoring first post (1st would be to obvious and a karma whore first post might drown it out. Sorry, Lindsy. ) The bonus pack only cost $50 more than the regular $lashvertisement.

From wikipedia

[Oriumpor]

The Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) is a software system developed in the early 1990s by a consortium that included Apollo Computer (later part of Hewlett-Packard), IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, and others. The DCE supplies a framework and toolkit for developing client/server applications. The framework includes a remote procedure call (RPC) mechanism, a naming (directory) service, an authentication service, and a distributed file system (DFS). DCE RPC was derived from an earlier RPC system called the Network Computing System (NCS) created at Apollo Computer. The naming service was derived from work done at DEC. DCE DFS was based on the Andrew file system (AFS), originally developed at Carnegie-Mellon University, and later extended by Transarc Corporation (which was later merged into IBM)

Link here [wikipedia.org]

Re:My, how times have changed

[loose canons]

...and for those of you who are still wondering what TFA is about, note that just about every big system and OS vendor [uni-muenster.de] has its own version of DCE. It has been the foundation for a lot of securely networed applications.

Re:Open the code, but charge for documentation?

[PDXNerd]

Short answer : yes. Long answer : The code is Free means the code is Free. The code is released under the LGPL. If you can't look at the code and figure it out, what does it really matter anyway? On top of this, if you are involved in a large project with many developers chances are your organization will pay for it. The API is well documented in more places than just their pay-per-book service.

Re:Didn't M$ steal this?

[lkcl]

they didn't steal it but from what i can gather they took the DCE 1.1 reference implementation (available under a BSD-like license before most people had even _heard_ of free software licenses!) which is basically "stubs"... ... and then they integrated it with NetBIOS and SMB (inventing ncacn_np which is DCE/RPC over NT's NamedPipes - heard of those? look up CreateNamedPipe on the MSDN :) ... and then they added WINS as a resolver... ... and then they added NTLMSSP authentication... ... and then they created NT Domains with it... ... and then they put _every_ single administrative interface behind a DCE/RPC client-server architecture (really easy: the Win32 Registry API is one!)... ... and then they started on exchange... ... and then they created ncacn_http which is RPC over HTTP because some idiots started blocking exchange packets and they needed to punch a hole through firewalls [what do you mean, the web _is_ the internet, you stupid microsoft support idiot!] ... oh, and don't forget DCOM on which an entire generation of MSDN-created software is based!

hijacked? naaah. microsoft _really_ recognised a good thing, and unlike a lot of people who go "duuuh, i wish...", just snowballed with it.

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Re:WTF?

[lkcl]

the lock-out you describe was done by _microsoft_ as part of their use of kerberos in "active directory": they used the "application specific" field in order to save on round-trips (and then extended their bloody SMB protocol in order to _add_ a couple. bastards).

DCE did a "proper" job by using the available fields of kerberos for the correct - documented - purpose.

the use of CDS being largely irrelevant was recognised by TOG in 1999: you need to pay IBM stacks of $$$ to get the code _but_ it was recognised: OpenGroup link here [opengroup.org]. fortunately, someone has created a set of free software plugins - nss and pam etc. already [csupomona.edu]

AFS, OpenAFS, DFS - it's a long long story for another day, methinks :)

Re:freedce

[eviltypeguy]

I would like to point a somewhat glaring inaccuracy in the article linked in the parent post.

The article author claims:

"...Global File System (which is proprietary anyway, available from Redhat)..."

Except, GFS is NOT proprietary. Behold, the source code:

http://sources.redhat.com/cluster/gfs/

And by the way, as my first impression I think Advogato sucks if only because there is no obvious way to contact the author or reply to the article to point out this inaccuracy or anyone at the site to contact about the article. Bleh.

Re:Where's the LGPL?

[lkcl]

from the press release:

Previously, the DCE source was only available under a traditional license. Making it available under a recognized open source license (LGPL) both increases the accessibility of DCE as an interoperability technology, and permits a broader community to work on the source to expand its features and keep it current.

Not just the RPC

[Krisbee]

Some clarification.
It's not just the DCE RPC that has been released, it's the whole schebang, including:

* The build environment (ODE)
* The vast documentation with specs
* Threads (Ugh!, Please don't use)
* RPC
* Directory services
* Security services
* Time sync
* File service (DFS) including the Episode file system.
* Test procedures
* The various administration tools
* The tools needed to make DCE applications.

The code is old, however and building this is not for the faint of heart, but there's lots of good stuff in there.