Jeremy Allison Resigns From Novell In Protest

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."

Re:Excellent!

[Attrition_cp]

I wonder if developers jumping ship was part of Microsoft's reason for wanting the deal. more disenfranchisement means less open source competition (you could say they'll move to greener pastures but some could just leave). I realize even if that was true it would be a huge monetary waste for Microsoft, but tin foil hats are cheap. No, not trolling. It's a boring workday and I can cook up any plots I like!

Putting your money where your mouth is

[astrashe]

Whatever you think about what Allison has done, you have to repsect him for living up to his convictions. This sort of thing can't be good for your career, or for your bank account.

I really admire people who choose to live by their principles, even when it's hard or costly to do so.

If it's a matter of principle..

[Anonymous Coward]

..why didn't he resign immediately?

It's easy to be courageous with another job waiting.

Re:I don't understand this...

[Enderandrew]

Part of this agreement involves Novell paying Microsoft not to sue them.

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:Excellent!

[Eggplant62]

I don't care what Novell says. They're trying to smooth feathers is all. Go back and read the entire statement Ballmer made and tell me you didn't feel physically revolted by his words. I know I did.

Of course they can

[bonefry]

A software's author that licensed the project under the GPL or any other license STILL RETAINS THE COPYRIGHTS of that project. Thus ... the author of a software project can specifically forbid a certain individual or company from distributing that software. If the Samba team holds the copyrights of Samba ... go figure, they can.

This makes me a sad Panda

[rudeboy1]

SUSE 10.2 is my preferred flavor of Linux, and with all that is currently going on, I feel guilty for liking it as much as I do. I see it as a potential windows alternative down the line, once XP is sufficiently outdated, if 10.x keeps improving, cause I'm sure as hell not pissing money away on Vista. Now I feel like I'm being sucked back to the Microsoft teet even as I make plans to break away.

Re:I don't understand this...

[PenguinBoyDave]

I might be dead-wrong here. I might be so wrong that I'll lament ever supporting this. But I look at this as Microsoft finally admitting that Linux and Open Source are here to stay, and since they can't and won't beat it, why not see how to best work with it. The formation of the Port25 website and the Open Source lab is a good step in the right direction.

Intent matters in contract law.

[GodInHell]

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 intent - to create freely available open source software, to encourage contribution, and to prevent abuse by parties who would seek to seize that software and claim it for their own.

I'm not going to take the time to teach class in contracts, but the long and short is that judges (usually) interpret for intent, punish those who seek to abuse ambiguity, and interpret toward a useable contract (if an interpretation makes the contract void, they go with a different interpretation).

If I write a contract to deliver a dozen roses, but for some reason I think that carnation is called a rose and instead deliver a dozen carnations, I will be held in breach of contract. It doesn't matter what my intent was if I framed the contract improperly to ensure my intent.

That's actually not true. If the mistake is unilateral (only the other party made a mistake and you were not aware of it) then they are probably in breach - however, if any element of the contract suggests that the mistake was apparent at the time of contract (the price is far too low, there is evidence that you were show a picture of the final product, etc) you're boned. Judges will tend take a narrow view of parties who attempt to abuse contract language to enforce and unfair deal. If it is clear that the given interpretation is decidedly one sided, or that an interpretation requires ignoring common use of language and interpreted meaning of the contract - they will see it for what it is, abuse of the legal system, and rule accordingly.

Wikipedia has some information on mistake, and also interpretation: Mistake [wikipedia.org] / Interpretation of Tems [wikipedia.org].

-GiH

Novell would be the one with the fork.

[khasim]

This is what I predicted from the beginning. The goal here was fragmentation of the Linux development community. It looks like they could succeed.

Okay.

It's basic "divide and conquer" because there will be some developers who don't see much wrong with the deal and will support the Novell Microsoft deal and there will be others who will not.

But that does not seem to be happening.

So far it is just Miguel who supports it ... and everyone else who opposes it.

The ones who don't MAY start new forks/projects and join other distros, or... they may just move on to other things entirely.

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.

This ensures a two-tiered Linux world with crappy underdeveloped software in non-blessed distros (Gentoo, Debian, etc...) and second-rate (compared to Microsoft Windows solutions) software in the intentionally stunted Novell Suse Linux and anyone else who decides to sign on.

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.

Would GPLv3 protect against this?

[mpcooke3]

I'm interested to know if the GPLv3 would help stop this kind of deal.

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:Excellent!

[bb5ch39t]

But that person then has the right to redistribute. And if they do, then they must supply the source code. That is also a part of the GPL. You cannot take a GPL'ed program and say: "Here is a modified version and the source. But you cannot give it to anybody else!" Once the modified program is distributed to ANYBODY, then it can be distributed to EVERYBODY. And that cannot be stopped.

Re:Red Hat Opportunity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, here's a nice hiring opportunity for Red Hat - let's see if they take advantage of it.

To be honest I think I would rather see IBM pick up Samba and Jeremy. Not because I don't have anything against Red Hat because I don't. IBM has a lot more good lawyers should Microsoft start threatening lawsuits and IBM would be better equipped to stand up against any attack from Microsoft. Not to mention the fact that SMB originated at IBM.

You miss the point

[Eric Damron]

You miss the point. Novell and Microsoft are saying that they can release code under GPL v2 that is encumbered by patents. If this is the case FOSS CANNOT use that code without denying the freedoms that were the intent of the GPL.

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!

Re:You miss the point

[lawpoop]

Let me see if I understand what you are saying. They are creating works derived from GPL'ed code, but they claim that their contribution is covered by patents, so even if they were to distribute the code, end-users would have to deal with patented processes, ideas, etc. in that new code.

So there would be a kind of built-in conflict of the resulting code -- on the one hand, it's GPL'ed, but on the other hand, it's covered by patents. Is that about right?

They would run Windows, not Linux.

[khasim]

It's all hypothetical, but I'm speaking strictly from the vantage point of a non-technical person (I am an IT person, I'm just playing non-tech's advocate.) and that is likely the way they will see things.

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 ... and kept losing the deals.

"Oh... I heard that you shouldn't use RedHat in the server room because it can't run on the latest servers since they didn't go with the Trusted Computing option that Novell did". Or... "Yeah, I could use Debian to run a web server but this review I read said that Novell's Apache based web server has full IIS compatibility and is able to essentially duplicate the previous version of IIS". To those people, Novell is going to seem like the easy choice and the others will be fairly irrelevant.

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.

Re:It's not LGPL

[Znork]

Do note that many Linux vendors do not ship proprietary drivers because of that exact GPL requirement. You're entirely free to ship the components apart (like NVidia and ATI), letting the end user do the combination, but shipping the combined work is a violation.

Supposing a loadable module functionality for Samba that would allow a reasonably 'separate' entity to exist without incursions into the Samba sourcecode it might be possible for a third party to ship such a module and let the end users do the combining. But it would fairly painful to manage.

Re:You miss the point

[giminy]

Thank you. A few years ago I got flamed on slashdot for suggesting that patent encumbrance could be an issue for the GPL. This deal is making people "get it." Yay!

I recommend taking the GPL Quiz [gnu.org] for anyone that questions anyone else's understanding of copyright and patent issues. It's a great starting point to understand some of the issues, and slashdot would be a better place for it.

Re:What about Nat Friedman?

[Rimbo]

Bruce --

If I were a Novell executive, upon reading your second sentence, I would immediately think: "That's correct. This is in our best interests financially!" I would stop reading beyond that point; you just made my point for me, so any disagreement expressed would not be in my interests to investigate.

Novell doesn't care about betrayal, unless it affects their bottom line. Now, you and I both know that Novell's decision will affect their bottom line. So instead of patting Novell on the back for their wise financial judgment in the first paragraph of this letter, let's start the letter with a sentence that connects the dots for them?

I would recommend the following first paragraph:

The Open Source community would find little to criticize in your agreement with Microsoft, had it remained a strictly technical agreement. As the agreement stands today, it betrays the authors of the software you re-market and their users worldwide for a potential short-term gain that will lead to a certain long-term loss, as betrayed authors and users discard Novell's products and services in favor of those provided by Novell's competitors and partners.

That last sentence could be broken up, as it's a bit wordy, but you hopefully see my point. We have to get their attention, and that means showing them the money. Telling them that their agreement is for their own financial benefit will just steel their resolve.

Make that change, and I'll sign your letter.

Re:What about Nat Friedman?

[Bruce Perens]

If I were a Novell executive, upon reading your second sentence, I would immediately think: "That's correct. This is in our best interests financially!" I would stop reading beyond that point; you just made my point for me, so any disagreement expressed would not be in my interests to investigate.

I see. You believe that the phrase "it betrays ... for Novell's sole financial benefit" would be percieved as "we screwed someone to make money, great!, no need to read any more of this, there can't possibly be any negative consequences".

If that degree of cynicism applies, and it may well, there's little hope of convincing them of anything. Our only choice would be to follow a similar strategy to SCO - deprecate them and direct customers elsewhere until there's no business left. And that's what we're doing, because there never was very much hope that they'd "get" it, and we've handled situations like this enough times to know that yes, we'll be rid of them eventually.

I hope you can understand that I am wary of editing the document after 2973 people have already signed it.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Excellent!

[lawpoop]

Oh, now I get it. So that means that since it isn't MS developing GPL derived code, they aren't giving any implicit permission to use patented methods. Novell has an agreement with MS to use the patented methods, and they can develop GPL-derived code, but the recipients of Novell's GPL-derived code *don't* have an agreement with MS to use MS' patented software methods in the GPL code that Novell produced.

Now I get it.

However, this doesn't seem to be any kind of death knell for the GPL. If this were happening in the early nineties, it might be a problem, but we seem to have a critical mass of GPL software so that you can have an entire system that's GPL.

I predict that this patent-encumbered Samba can only boost Linux adoption. The customers for MS/Novell Samba will have Linux servers and windows desktops. There's no reason to use this if you don't have Linux servers. And if you have Linux servers already, you must use Linux on the server for reasons other than it's cheaper than a Windows license. Why migrate to Windows servers if you can have Linux servers with no software cost?

This type of software-patent work-around for proprietizing GPL code would seem to only work if there were an existing, well-developed GPL app that solely functions as a replacement or emulator for a proprietary program, and then, the proxy developer has to have an interest in creating and selling it. Sure, you can pay someone to create patent-encumbered GPL code using your patents, but then you have to get people to use it. That means that they have to have an agreement with you. So, just use the already free, already available alternative.