 |
|
 |
| |
Welcome to virtuallinux.org. You are currently reading the article "Jeremy Allison on Microsoft-Novell Deal". All articles on virtuallinux.org pertain to the ongoing assult on the worlds greatest Operating system. Continue on reading about "Jeremy Allison on Microsoft-Novell Deal"
Jeremy Allison on Microsoft-Novell Deal
Posted on Wednesday, January 03 2007 @ 07:42:55 EST by linuxwiz |
|
 |
|
 |
| |
Samba guru explains why he couldn't stomach
the Microsoft-Novell deal. “If you want to sell out, you should ask for
more," he says.
Jeremy
Allison is a hero in the open source community these days. After
spending two years at Novell, he decided to leave the Waltham,
Mass.-based software company for reasons of principle right after the
Linux-vendor signed a deal with Microsoft (see Microsoft, Novell in Linux Pact and Open-Source Guru Goes to Google).
The
agreement will allow Microsoft and Novell’s customers to use the other
firm’s intellectual property without being sued. As a result, Microsoft
will pay Novell $400 million. However, Mr. Allison and other open
source believers argue the pact violates certain rules of the GPL (GNU
General Public License), a popular free software license.
Mr.
Allison is best known as the co-creator of the Samba project, which
lets Linux and Unix servers talk to Windows servers. Mr. Allison
contends that the deal does not give equal treatment to all users of
the Samba code.
Before he starts a new job at search engine Google Tuesday, Mr. Allison answered some questions from Red Herring.
Q: Why did you decide to leave Novell so abruptly?
A: The resignation letter I wrote said pretty much why I was resigning. The fact that it
[involves] Microsoft is completely irrelevant. I’m leaving Novell out of respect for the terms of the GPL. [Novell
has] argued with me that it strictly doesn’t violate the terms of the
GPL (General Public License) and Microsoft’s lawyers have gone over
that very carefully. But it obviously is a violation of the intent of
the GPL, which is that everybody has the same rights to the software
and nobody has privileged access.
Q: How long did you consider it before resigning?
A:
I found out about the deal about five days before it happened. I feel
like this whole thing is a personal failure. When I first heard I was
excited, it was groundbreaking and [I thought] Microsoft was taking
open source seriously. The more I looked at the patent provision, the
less comfortable I got. I really, really want to like this deal. [I
told them] ‘tell me why isn’t a GPL section violation’—meaning you have
to pass on the same rights to the software that you received. You
cannot say that my customer and I are exempt and anyone that they pass
the software to is not exempt. [They] got more and more technical about
it but it looked like a patent license without actually using the
hideous words, it was just legal sophistry. It was playing with words
to go around the intent of the license.
Q: Do you think you could have made a difference?
A:
I wanted to like the deal but I should have complained earlier, and
that’s my failure. I let it go and when the actual event itself
happened, I watched it on streaming webcam from England,
I realized how damaging it was. I have an incredible objection to
Microsoft saying ‘Buy Novell and leave everything else.’ I thought
[Steve Ballmer] insulted the Novell people. He basically said if you
buy anything else you will have to look at serious IP issues. He issued
a threat at the event.
Q: What do you think went wrong?
A:
The problem was Novell was so eager to other parts of the deal that
they didn’t care enough about the patent part of the deal and that was
the only part of the deal that Microsoft wanted. What they want is to
be able to threaten other Linux users. In my mind Novell gave it away
cheap. If you want to sell out, you should ask for more. [Microsoft
will pay Novell $400 million]
Q: Do others at Novell have the same sentiments as you?
A:
I really can’t answer that one. I don’t think people at Novell are bad
or awful people. They just made a very bad mistake and treated their
main suppliers very, very shabbily; [they are thinking] well, we did it
because it gives us more money.
Q: Do you think the Microsoft/Novell deal will be successful?
A:
The people who are using Novell Linux [some of them] will continue to
do so. I think the proof of the pudding will be in the market share. I
don’t think it will improve the market share in terms of how much Red
Hat and Ubuntu have. [Novell and Microsoft] did that to get more market
share and that will not happen, so in that case, it will be failure.
All
this has done is put things so much under a cloud… I have a lot of
friends there, I really enjoyed the work. I said to them: I’m not
leaving Novell, you guys left me. If I would have stayed, I would have
broken my principles.
This
is going to simmer and die with the GPL version3 coming out in the
March timeframe. I would not be surprised if this falls apart. I think
a lot of projects will actually adopt the GPL v3 more aggressively
simply because of this deal. [Novell and Microsoft] have found a legal
hack on the GPL v2, they have found a bug in the code, and so the GPL
v3 is a fixed version of the license.
Q: What was the reaction at Novell when you told them that you were leaving?
A:
They asked me to reconsider. I had a lot of discussions with executives
and we agreed to disagree. My boss wasn’t surprised when I told him and
he’s a great guy.
Q: Why did you decide to go to Google?
A:
I had a really, really, hard decision to make. [Mr. Allison was
considering several offers]. To be honest, Google is doing some very
interesting and exciting things and I think Samba can be an important
part of it. I’m not speaking on behalf of Google, and I don’t know what
product plans they have. Samba will be used in a very interesting and
creative way.
Q: What do you think about Google’s efforts to implement open source?
A:
Google’s entire back-end infrastructure is Linux-based. It’s making
money by squeezing costs out of those systems and the [by tailoring]
Linux to work the way Google needs it. I think Samba will be used in
the same way.
Source
|
|
 |
 |
 |
| |
|
 |
|
| |
Article Rating
Average Score: 0
Votes: 0
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
Welcome Anonymous
Login:
Membership:
