sardella@strfleet.gsfc.nasa.gov (Tom Sardella) (04/21/91)
Many thanks to all those who responded to my request for help on the current status of the EXOS product. My main concerns were the continued support of this product (updates, new licenses, etc.) and getting a legal copy of the last released version. The bottom line is that Novell and Federal Technology Corporation (FTC) are currently negotiating for the rights on the software product and that FTC hopes to provide the support that we need. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens. The following points were brought up in the responses and in other research I have done: 1. EXOS software a "dead" product We weren't the only people confused about the state of this product. Many people, including ourselves, thought that EXOS was placed in the public domain when Novell took over Excelan. We even had someone at Novell tell us in December, 1990, that this was the case. Representatives from both Novell and FTC now tell us that they are negotiating to turn the product over to FTC. 2. Excelan Hardware Support FTC does provide continued manufacture and support of the EXOS boards. We have had no problems to date with this support that I am aware of. 3. Use of EXOS code in Novell products We acquired a copy of "LAN Workplace for DOS 4.0" and they are still using the EXOS NET code on an EXOS 205 board. One thing I'm still confused about is what is the latest version and what do the version numbers mean? We originally started with V3.2. Avnish Aggarwal, who used to work for Excelan and now works for Novell, says the latest version is 4.Na. The version we got with LAN Workplace is 4.Ca. The "Na" and "Ca" suffixes seem odd. What we think we can do about the licensing problem at this point is to go ahead and buy all the LAN Workplace licenses we need and then run NET on our Multibus EXOS 201 boards rather than the PC EXOS 205 boards. The license agreement states that you can run object code on one licensed machine at a time, but they don't distinguish what a "machine" is. Are there any legal experts out there? It looks like our news server is OK now, so I can accept further postings on this subject. Tom Sardella Network Control Systems Branch, Code 532 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD sardella@strfleet.gsfc.nasa.gov