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Jeremy Allison Resigns From Novell In Protest
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Dec 21, 2006 11:53 AM
from the conscientious-action dept.
from the conscientious-action dept.
walterbyrd writes to alert us to word from groklaw.net that Jeremy Allison has turned in his resignation at Novell. "The legendary Jeremy Allison (of Samba fame) has resigned from Novell in protest over the Microsoft-Novell patent agreement, which he calls 'a mistake' that will be 'damaging to Novell's success in the future.' His main issue with the deal, though, is 'that even if it does not violate the letter of the license, it violates the intent of the GPL license the Samba code is released under, which is to treat all recipients of the code equally.' He leaves the company at the end of this month. He explained why in a message sent to several Novell email lists, and the message included his letter to management."
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[+]
Post-Novell Interview With Jeremy Allison 65 comments
schestowitz notes an
interview with Jeremy Allison, of Samba fame, after he had left Novell in protest
over the company's deal with Microsoft. From the interview: "My guess is that the negotiations for the useful parts of the agreement (the virtualization part and the federated directory interoperability part) had, as Ron [Hovsepian] says, been going on for months and just before Novell wanted to seal the deal Microsoft turned up with 'there's just this one more thing we want you to sign...' and in desperation to get the other parts of the deal done they rushed it through."
[+]
Developers: Jeremy Allison's Advice to Young Programmers 101 comments
Hyram Graff writes "Jeremy Allison has written a wonderful piece with advice to young programmers. As someone who's been out of college for just over a year, I find it to be a very insightful piece. Please allow me to say, thanks Mr. Allison!"
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Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft couldn't care less if Apple Macs were all the rage in schools early on because that wasn't one of their markets. Schools aren't as comparatively profitable as businesses. Once Microsoft had conquered the business world, they then started paying attention to schools and libraries and took those markets away from Apple. If the Apple platform actually started to make major inroads in server rooms, office suites, groupware and provided a killer alternative to Exchange, MS would be actively trying to take them down a few pegs again. Many Linux distros are doing exactly that and that's why taking Linux down a few pegs is a necessity to MS. MS doesn't want Linux dead. They just want it to smell funny. Probably something like pee. (I keep doing that)
Parent
Novell would be the one with the fork. (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay.
But that does not seem to be happening.
So far it is just Miguel who supports it
I think you're confusing those items.
If the legendary Jeremy Allison moves to Red Hat or Canonical, he'll probably still be working on Samba. And when the GPL v3 comes out, it will probably be adopted by Team Samba.
So in that specific case, it would be Novell who would have to fork the project and do all the work without the help of Team Samba.
Huh? So Red Hat (where Alan works) is "second-rate"?
Or is it that Ubuntu is "crappy"?
I don't see that happening. Instead I see a company flailing at its declining marketshare and signing an agreement to FUD everything else Linux related.
Just like SCO did.
And Novell will die, just like SCO is dying.
Parent
They would run Windows, not Linux. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not seeing that. If people question Linux, they'll choose Windows instead.
Just like Novell's CEO saw when he tried to go head-to-head with Microsoft
No, the "easy choice" will be Windows. The "easy choice" in IT is always to go with a single vendor. That way there's no finger-pointing about why something won't work that way the salesperson said it would.
Why would anyone be looking for "full IIS compatibility" from a different vendor when they can have IIS itself? Migrations are expensive and the customers know that deals between IT companies can go sour. It's safest to involve the fewest companies and that means buying from the vendor selling the product itself. Not from someone promising "compatibility" with that product.
Linux has a few advantages over Microsoft products. And licensing is one of the biggest advantages for the end user. Once that is gone (and it is under Novell's deal), there really isn't any reason for the end user to consider "compatibility" with Microsoft's products when they can just go with Microsoft itself.
Particularly when Novell has to maintain its own "forks" of projects such as Samba because Team Samba has gone with GPL v3.
Parent
I think that THAT is the reason for this "deal". (Score:4, Insightful)
EXACTLY. And if you'll look at the SCO case, you'll see the exact same thing. SCO sued a couple of its own customers NOT because they were using Linux but because they did not comply 100% with the contract they had signed with SCO.
When Microsoft comes in for an "audit", they're not doing it to help you. They're doing it because they want more money out of you. And the only way to get more money out of you is to "find" that you are not "in compliance" with the agreement you signed.
Which is why it would be smarter for people to avoid Novell products which Novell is paying a ROYALTY to Microsoft for if you're looking to reduce your exposure to Microsoft lawsuits and/or reduce your costs to Microsoft.
Parent
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst part is that the bastardized Novell/Microsoft hybrid would probably the best-working version. (Hey, who better than microsoft to know the backward-compatibility quirks of Samba/CIFS?)
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
If MS/Novell create a better samba derived from the samba team's GPL code, they *must* provide access to the source code. Any improvements MS/Novell make to samba are guaranteed to become available to us, and they can never take it away.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then they'll just link to an external library that hides all the new functionality.
It's not LGPL (Score:5, Insightful)
The beauty of the GPL is that they cannot do that. That's why I support the GPL over all other licences, its track record to this day has been perfect in keeping free source free.
Parent
Re:It's not LGPL (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally think it's a tactic that shows signs of desperation; you can bet they've spent a lot of lawyer-years brainstorming ways to attack Free software, but it looks like they've got something here in the short term. It would be a dangerous move to be seen to endorse Linux even slightly, and shipping software to run on it would certainly do that -- but most of all I think it'd increase the exposure of Windows admins to Linux / Free software, which just increases the rate of attrition of MS mindshare. So in a couple more decades, OSes will be seen as far more of a commodity, and minimal, streamlined feature sets with straightforward modular components. And will include an old .au file of a man saying "My name is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce it 'Lee-nuhx' :)
Parent
It's not about copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You must provide access to the source code to the person to whom you delivered your derived work. Nothing in the GPL says that you need to provide access to the public.
You are correct that the genius is that distributing something that was under the GPL must be distributed under the GPL itself. Recursive genius, though some fudslingers call it viral genius.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You miss the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft could, for example, help Novell inject their IP and later tell users that they must pay or be sued for patent infringement.
I didn't support GPL v3 in the past but I do now. Let's close this loophole and shun Novell until they straighten up and fly right!
Parent
That is correct (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you have is Microsoft offering
Microsoft has never been known for playing fair and it's time for the entire world to work hard to simply make them irrelevant. Don't implement standards that are not truly open. Don't support Microsoft in ANYTHING they do. Demand that they be held accountable for their continued antitrust violations. Microsoft needs to be broken into at least three separate companies in order to level the playing field. This can easily be justified by their continued lawless actions and the effects those actions have on the IT world.
Parent
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that's the case; certainly, Allison's position sounds as if it is that the deal violates at least the spirit and possibly the letter of the license. Certainly, a high profile group of suppliers of GPL software included in Novell's Linux offerings raising the specter of litigation and license violations over the deal would undermine the primary purpose and destroy the value of the deal, which was, after all, to help Novell sell its commercial Linux products by removing uncertainty associated with them stemming from the specter of litigation over the IP violations.
If there is a cloud of GPL-related potential litigation seen surrounding Novell, all its done is traded one potential source of litigation for many potential sources of litigation.
Parent
Of course they can (Score:3, Interesting)
Won't revoke rights; Samba team too good for that (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, in the past, the Samba team has demonstrated a professionalism that has put their detractors to shame, and I hope they can continue to uphold their standards. Witness what they said to SCO when SCO accused the evil Samba team of spreading the deadly plague of Open Source (all the while distributing Samba with their SCO Linux). Here's the letter from Samba to SCO:
Translation: "Up yours, SCO." But they say it in such a way that it will carry weight in business circles. In the same way, Allison's resignation makes a clear statement.
It would be a mistake to do otherwise; if the Samba team says, "Well, then I *un*-give you the code! Nyaah nyaah!", it would epitomise in the minds of executive decision-makers that Open Source is run by a bunch of immature J.Random Hackers From China who will revoke your license at the slightest provocation.
One only hopes that Novell will show some more understanding of how much turd they have now placed their foot in, and make some public gesture to show the IT world that OSS is alive and well. Sort of like what EV1 did. Novell's done a lot of good for OSS. I hope they continue.
Parent
What about Nat Friedman? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please sign the Open Letter to Novell [techp.org]. I'd like to get that over 3000 signatures at least today. It's at about 2950 now.
Thanks
Bruce
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
You don't KNOW they're not in violation of the license. Intent is important. Clearly, they are not distributing the software any longer in a manor that is palatable to the people who write the code. That's a no-no. Also, they're trying for an end run around GPLv2, which is bad.
Frankly, I'd like to see it go to court - I believe a case could be made that they are NOT fully compliant with the license. That, or I'd like to see Samba go GPLv3.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm with you, pal. When I consider Steve Ballmer's comments [nwsource.com] regarding this deal, it stinks to high heaven. There's no way Novell or Microsoft will ever square this deal in my eyes in light of those patent threats made by the CEO of Microsoft. Novell's proper reaction should have been to turn right around and drop the deal once they heard what that creep was spouting. "Undisclosed balance sheet liability" my arse.
No matter what Novell does, they still look to me to have been bullied into this agreement. Most likely MS came to Novell threatening legal action and this is how they settled it. We weren't inside, and we'll never know, but that's what this whole thing feels like to me.
Parent
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
Novell isn't using their patents/IP to FUD against open source, they are using their partner Microsoft's patents/IP to FUD against open source. A technicality perhaps, but still wholly unacceptable.
Parent
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
To the above ACs who feel that delcaring that Novell is not technically breaching the letter of the contract means that the contract is not breached, do some reading up on contracts. The words are open to interpretation - with the goal of divining the intent of the parties. Knowingly misconstruing the meaning of a contract to evade its obvious intent is a breach of contract - according to Englo-American juris prudence.
-GiH
Not a lawyer, just a student.
Parent
Others can do a better job. (Score:3, Informative)
Here's one argument on how Novell is breaching the GPL: sample [slashdot.org]
I'd do more linking.. but it's lunch time.. [runs off to meet fiance]
-GiH
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, that's not what he's saying. You're close, though. What he's saying is that even if Novell is not violating the GPL, under which Samba is released, it still is not upholding the true intent of the license.
There's a difference. The actual statement is a hypothetical. Your version is an assertion.
Parent
What really happened (Score:3, Funny)
Ha ha only serious?
--Rob
Putting your money where your mouth is (Score:5, Interesting)
I really admire people who choose to live by their principles, even when it's hard or costly to do so.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So this leader of a popular software development project goes and gets his name splattered all over the web tied to an account of how strong his integrity is?
You can't buy marketing like that :-)
Winnowing The Herd (Score:3, Insightful)
As has been said before, Microsoft is trying to narrow its Linux competition to one or two then eliminate them later. The influx of corporate politics and big money/power stands to poison the whole notion of bazaar-style development. Big-Money has a way of doing that. Look at Debian and dunc-tank. That's hardly big money and it's already affected volunteerism at that project.
As is often the case, there are just a couple of people who carry such a strong sense of principals, that they choose a more uncertain path over a more predictable one that is the result of having more flexible principals.
I for one admire his sense of conviction.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The GPL is no longer sufficient for many coders (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA
I think this sums up both the reason why the GPL community is mad at Novell even if they didn't technically violate GPLv2 and why there is a need for GPLv3.
Some are saying that the community has no right be mad at Novell because they aren't technically in violation of the GPL. Fine for them. But many of those that contribute code to GPL projects do so because they believe in the intent of the GPL, which is that all who receive the code are to be on the same legal footing as all others regardless of how they receive it. If the GPLv2 is no longer sufficient to provide this guarantee, then changes are needed. And it is perfectly valid for Eben Moglen to craft the changes to plug specific legal-loophole, zero-day exploits in the GPLv2 such as this Microsoft-Novell deal.
Novell keeps trying to make this deal smell rosy by talking up the interoperability part of the agreement. Are they really so stupid that they do not see that the interoperability part of the deal is not what has GPL supporters upset? They could have made any number of deals with Microsoft to work on interoperability without trying to destroy the foundation of the GPL.
This makes me a sad Panda (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ballmer promptly started spewing once this deal was signed that customers of other Linux distros were at risk [somebody shut him up shortly afterwards]. This provides MS a wonderful FUD opportunity now that the SCOX farce is winding down. This implies that Linux actually infringes on Microsoft patents somehow without openly admitting it, and that Novell paid them off to s
Would GPLv3 protect against this? (Score:3, Interesting)
My understanding is that under GPLv3 Novell would have their rights to redistribute samba terminated if they themselves tried to enforce a patent claim against Samba.
Under GPLv3 would Novell have their right to redistribute Samba terminated if they knowingly introduced code that was patented by Microsoft into Samba? Also how could it be proven?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He chose to release his s
Re:Intent doesn't matter (Score:5, Funny)
Fortunately, YANAL, and you're dead wrong. Using your example, if you deliver Kevin Rose and 9 members of his family, you've fulfilled the letter of the contract, but will still be held in breach of it because you violented the intent of it.
Parent
Intent matters in contract law. (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't think that MS and Novell have had teams of lawyers going over everything for this deal, including the GPL. When it comes down to it, it's the letter of the contract that matters, not the intent that was in the minds of the writers.
You are about 170 degrees off true (mostly wrong, but not all wrong). A written contract is always subject to interpretation of meaning, definition of words, etc. The more complex the terms used in a contract the more likely it is to be open to interpretation. In American Jurisprudence, the normal goal in interpreting a contract is to reach a true understanding of the intent of the parties to the contract. Here, the parties are the GPL community and Novell/MS. The GPL includes several clear statments of in
Re:I don't understand this... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have large customers (people who spend money on software AND use Open Source) who run Windows and Linux side by side. Their NUMBER ONE complaint has been lack of interoperability.
Precisely. Users will think this is great, but it's not users who are writing the software being abused. Large users in particular (I work for a very large corporate user of Linux) will think this is great, because they're already paying for their support contracts and are basically seeing Linux as a commercial OS anyway - that's true in their case, because they're paying for support and restricting themselves to supported configs etc.. But it's the people writing the code that are objecting to their labour being used in this way, not the end users.
Cheers,
Ian
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It makes the Linux world look guilty of stealing from Microsoft.
And the second Novell gave Microsoft money, Novell ceased development on products that would compete with Microsoft.
Do you think that Novell isn't forever compromised by this deal?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
MS said they won't file suit against hobbyist developers. They didn't say anything about developers who are paid to work on Linux by companies other than SUSE.
Jeremy Allison has been quoted many times about some of the problems of making SAMBA work with Microsoft's SMB. Many of these problems have b
Pretty simple actually (Score:3, Insightful)
Good on him, it is his code!
Not like he has to work very hard at finding a new job anyhow.
Re:I don't understand this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft says it will sue users of Samba, but not if they give Microsoft money by being a customer of Novell (because a portion of the SUSE warantee agreement goes to Microsoft directly).
By doing this, Novell is violating my copyright and the copyright of every contributor to free software by redistributing my software to people who do not have the ability to redistribute my software (with all rights they received therein). The GPL expressly forbids this, both in intent and in letter.
Novell is now saying that when I said anyone they distribute my software to must be given the same rights to redistribute that Novell has, and be told as such, that I really didn't mean it. While the GPL says this means Novell no longer has the right to redistribute my software, I strongly suspect they think it doesn't say that either.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:is he tainted now? (Score:4, Insightful)
And why the developer community is so seriously dead-set against it. Any code contribution by Novell at this point has to be considered suspect against MS claims of infringement that Novell/its customers are supposedly safe from, but the rest of us are wide-open to.
Parent
Re:I applaud him! (Score:5, Funny)
"GPL3 ain't done till Microsoft and Novell won't run"?
Parent