<<First a little background. DCE is the Open Software Foundation's
definition of the technology for Distributed Computing.  Two of the
leading proponents were Sun with their ONC RPC system and HP (originating
from Apollo) with their NCS.  The HP NCS system with backing (and
changes) from IBM, DEC and Microsoft was selected by OSF at least for the
primary RPC mechanism over the more popular (and freely available in
source) Sun mechanism.  From that OSF started assembling the complete
specification with its many components.>>
 
It may be worth noting that OSF DCE RPC is in the public domain, as of
October 1994. *Only* RPC, that is.
 
<<Another concern, I've not seen adequately addressed is the impact on us
overseas users.  Kerebos security still uses encryption techniques that
the US COCOM rules illegal to ship outside the US (and Canada?).  A
possible consequence is that HP or other vendors may not ship DCE
(initially) outside the US, or that it will receive a lobotamy before it
does.  The irony though is that these more common security routines are
widely available outside the US already.  I'm hoping (but without any
real reason to) that HP will see the wisdom of making the security
routines 'hook-able' so that we can link our own libraries back in.
 Maybe the whole thing should be developed in India?>>
 
Fortunately, the Kerberos-based security system is completely separate
from the rest of the DCE modules, so it can run on a different machine,
or not at all. You can still do RPC in this environment though, as you
mention, you lose DTS services if you don't have a security server
available.
 
I agree that the whole non-export thing is pretty stupid; does anybody
*really* believe that any of the popular encryption technologies are
available only in the US?
 
Steve Dirickson         WestWin Consulting
(360) 598-6111  [log in to unmask]