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Post-Novell Interview With Jeremy Allison

Posted by kdawson on Sun Dec 31, 2006 02:55 PM
from the worth-paying-attention-to dept.
Novell Software Linux
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."
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[+] Jeremy Allison Resigns From Novell In Protest 344 comments
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."
[+] 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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Post-Novell Interview With Jeremy Allison 25 Comments More /

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  • Not exclusionary. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by khasim (1285) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Sunday December 31 2006, @03:08PM (#17417292)
    I don't think Ron Hovsepian is clueless or malevolent. I've met him and think he is a really nice guy.

    Being "clueless" does not exclude being "a really nice guy".

    Personally, I believe that he knew exactly what he was doing and decided to sell out to Microsoft for a LOT of money anyway.

    It was carefully prepared by Microsoft legal to try and bypass the GPLv2, and I think to their shame Novell helped them do this.

    Yep. He sold out to Microsoft for a LOT of money.

    Novell gave it to them without Microsoft having to do anything risky like suing Linux users (all of which would also be Microsoft customers). It didn't cost them much - only $400 million. At least when Sun sold out in the EU case they got $2 billion :-) .

    And that is why Hovsepian is clueless.

    He could have gotten a LOT MORE MONEY for selling out. He could have gotten over a BILLION dollars. Instead, he settled for a couple hundred million and the death of Novell.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by superpulpsicle (533373)
      The sickest part is that $400 million is practically bank interests earned for M$. If they know this tactic works, they can take out another $400 mil at redhat and other linux distros ending all the corporate flavors. It really sucks to know the whole community is at risk cause some CEO can't resist the money.

      • Except that Red Hat doesn't have a newbie in charge. Expect them to be a LOT more clueful than Hovespian.

    • Hovsepian's personal payoff... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by symbolset (646467) on Sunday December 31 2006, @05:30PM (#17418140) Journal

      He received 778,470 shares of stock awarded 12/20/06. http://money.cnn.com/quote/insiders/insiders.html? symb=NOVL [cnn.com]

      From this page you can see he's historically not a big holder: http://money.cnn.com/quote/insiders/insiders.html? symb=NOVL&mode=person&pid=101687 [cnn.com]

      778,470 @ $6.20 is $4,826,514. No doubt he was hoping for more presents under his tree. Perhaps there will be more for him after the dust settles. Certainly would have been nice for him if the Street had liked the deal and he got a good bump. Too bad.

      It's interesting that seven of ten managers listed here are new to the company in 2006, and almost all are new in the last 18 months: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NOVL [google.com]

      If I were a stockholder looking at that, and the recent change of course in the company, I might be concerned. The theme is familiar, but I can't remember where I saw it before... Maybe someone else will reply with that answer.

      • Novell troubles. (Score:4, Informative)

        by symbolset (646467) on Sunday December 31 2006, @05:50PM (#17418276) Journal

        Also, the company is having some trouble filing reports with the SEC, presumably because of options grants. http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=24382 [cio.com]

        Just days before this deal was announced they had an interesting 8K report filed: http://money.cnn.com/quote/sec/sec.html?symb=NOVL& sequenceid=1&guid=4732459 [cnn.com]

        They owed a ton of cash that was due in 2024, but callable in the event they failed timely filing of reports with the SEC. Apparently that Microsoft money saved their bacon on that one, since immediately after the deal was done it was reported the money had already been paid out to debtors. Their SEC reports should make interesting reading for some time to come.

        Being paranoid, though, I wonder if their accountants or the debtor or both aren't beholden to Microsoft's business interests in some way. That would be really scary.

      • I don't know why we don't hear more about things like this: http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=115 9 567622720 [law.com]

        FTA:

        The fact that Novell had guidelines for option grants -- and that directors strayed from them -- is particularly disturbing, said lawyers and academics.

        "It should be an issue of shareholder concern whenever a board changes its own compensation," said Kirk Hanson, the director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and a former Stanford University busin

  • I have one word for him (Score:5, Funny)

    by Omeger (939765) on Sunday December 31 2006, @03:21PM (#17417388) Journal
    COWARD. Him leaving will do nothing to Microsoft/Novell. He should've stayed and tried to destroy them from the inside, guerrila style.
    • No need.

      There's already a guerrilla force destroying Novell from the inside: its called the Novell Board. And the chosed method to destroy Novell? Management by objectives.

      No I'm not kidding.

  • Good Quote (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dozer (30790) on Sunday December 31 2006, @03:44PM (#17417510)
    From TFA, on how the deal can be GPLv2-legal and still wrong:

    If you're screwing over some of your major suppliers by following what your lawyers see as the letter of a license, not the good faith intent of the license, then you can't expect those suppliers to say "well done, you really tricked us on that one.....".
  • He doesnt know the full story but he quit his job in protest? If I were going to quit my job to make some kind of a statement I would want to be able to give an interview about it that started with something other than "My guess is that..."
    • 'guess' is probably the word he shouldn't have used. He should have said 'based on what I {know|was told}..'

      We all operate under imperfect information. Even you.
    • He doesnt know the full story but he quit his job in protest?

      Uh, he quit his job because they agreed to the deal. That part isn't a guess. The part that's speculation is exactly how and why they fell for the deal.

    • He doesnt know the full story but he quit his job in protest? If I were going to quit my job to make some kind of a statement I would want to be able to give an interview about it that started with something other than "My guess is that..."

      Yeah, because if I saw management making what I thought was a terrible strategic decision, and nobody was willing to provide an adequate explanation, nor even a proper recounting of events, I'd feel no motivation whatsoever to leave.

  • SMB2 in Vista (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hey (83763) on Sunday December 31 2006, @04:29PM (#17417794) Journal
    I read that Windows Vista uses SMB2. Is this a change to make the protocol better or is it just a change to make life difficult for Samba? Maybe Microsoft was required to explain the details of SMB1 in the antitrust proceedings. No problem they figured we'll just make a new protocol and it will take ten years for the courts to make us to release that. Brahhaaa.

    • Because MS have to provide backwards compatability for their older releases, the Samba team have the usual 10 years to learn the protocol varient.

      This is the same thing that kept IBM from defeating the plug-compatable vendors.

      --dave

    • Re:SMB2 in Vista (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KidSock (150684) on Sunday December 31 2006, @06:34PM (#17418492)
      I read that Windows Vista uses SMB2. Is this a change to make the protocol better or is it just a change to make life difficult for Samba? Maybe Microsoft was required to explain the details of SMB1 in the antitrust proceedings. No problem they figured we'll just make a new protocol and it will take ten years for the courts to make us to release that. Brahhaaa.

      First, Vista will of course also do SMB1. It tries to do SMB2 and falls back to SMB1. SMB2 is much cleaner and simpler than SMB1. I think the Samba guys probably welcome the change. Of course now Samba has to support both but they've already decipered most if not all of SMB2 and the SMB2 operations map to existing actions within their code so I don't think it's a big deal for them to support it. This is definitely not a subversive tactic by Microsoft. Contrary to popular opinion Microsoft is not subversive. They're too smart for that. They're passively negligent. They just don't take the time to make things integrate well with other non-MS software. The EU effort is not about SMB really. The focus is more about complex stuff like directory replication and the semantics of Windows domain management. SMB is very well understood. In fact, I would bet the Samba guys understand SMB better than MS.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Timesprout (579035)
      You missed the "My guess" part before that statement. In other words he does not know what the circumstances of the deal were. Fortunately though this lack of information and facts fits the Slashdot speculation model perfectly.

      • Re:Why the Rush? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by troll -1 (956834) on Sunday December 31 2006, @04:15PM (#17417714)
        Perhaps the speculation comes from observing history: See embrace and exten d [wikipedia.org] and read the findgs of fact [gpo.gov] in the Microsoft antitrust case

        It's not unreasonable to assume Microsoft's motive is to entangle its patents and proprietary code with Linux, then at some point down the road, have learned a thing or two from SCO, drag the GPL through the courts with and army of lawyers and gain legal grounds to start suing its competition.

      • Re:Why the Rush? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Jeremy Allison - Sam (8157) on Sunday December 31 2006, @04:29PM (#17417792) Homepage
        It is a guess, but it's a very good guess. From an interview with Ron Hovsepian

        http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9005462&pageNumber =2 [computerworld.com]

        "Their desire to do some things around IP [intellectual property] came up as
        one of the things they wanted to talk about."

        In addition Microsoft previously approached Red Hat with
        a request for exactly the same deal (Red Hat refused).

        I don't have 100% documented proof of my statement, which is
        why I started the sentance with "My guess is", but I still
        stand by it as my understanding of what happened.

        Jeremy.
        • Sorry but if anything that quote and interview only serve to invalidate your opinion that it was a last minute deal breaking request jammed into a rushed deal. It's clear from the article that Novell were well aware of the IP issue, discussed it and were also aware an identical deal had been put to and rejected by Redhat leaving Novell with clear vista for negotiation.

          • Re:Why the Rush? (Score:5, Informative)

            by Jeremy Allison - Sam (8157) on Sunday December 31 2006, @05:43PM (#17418222) Homepage
            Note that Ron in the interview doesn't say *when* the Microsoft
            request that :

            "Their desire to do some things around
            IP [intellectual property] came up"

            happened. I believe that this request came at the end of
            the negotiations, not at the start. I can't prove that,
            but but the timing of things makes sense from what happened.

            Jeremy.

    • Re:Sue samba? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Shaman (1148) <shaman@ko s . net> on Sunday December 31 2006, @04:03PM (#17417618) Homepage
      Best of luck to them. Samba implemented SMB before Windows supported it. IBM created SMB, Microsoft took it and added it to Windows with some extensions. At the very worst, they could gripe that the Samba team had reverse-engineered their extensions.

      But... Samba is created by an Australian team. DMCA won't reach them. So doing anything about the extensions is impossible. And, Microsoft was forced to document their protocol to the EU commission, which means that there is even documentation for interoperability out there in the public eye.

      So in short... no way for Microsoft to stop Samba. Even with their teams of huddled, sweaty lawyers, they're over their head on this one.
      • But... Samba is created by an Australian team. DMCA won't reach them.

        That might have been true before the recent "free trade" agreement.

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