Piracy - Novell foils illegal online software sales

A man has allegedly tried to sell unauthorised Novell software worth an estimated $20m (£12.5m) on EBay's Web auction site.

A man has allegedly tried to sell unauthorised Novell software worth an estimated $20m (£12.5m) on EBay's Web auction site.

Novell claimed its investigators discovered the products, which included versions of NetWare, Groupwise and Bordermanager, were being sold by a man in Massachusetts, during regular monitoring of Internet activity.

The investigators said they acquired the software from the EBay site after finding that it was not authorised for distribution.

Harrison Colter, associate general counsel for Novell, said: "Most of the Novell products we have seen offered through auction sites have turned out to be illegitimate."

Meanwhile, Novell plans to release an Open Source version of its software developers' kit for building LDAP applications.

The decision to release the Open Source libraries next month is expected to be the first of several such moves. Novell will also release an Open Source repository soon, according to reports.

Novell will take the source code from the OpenLDAP Project and add its own LDAP libraries for C software developers kit. It will then offer the finished product back to the OpenLDAP Project.

Kris Magnusson, Open Source architect at Novell, said it would be more attractive for those thinking of using it as a client for Novell Directory Services. "We are not turning it into a proprietary thing. We are making enhancements and improvements to the LDAP libraries in full view of the community," he said.