Bonum Certa Men Certa

Our Interview with Jeremy Allison

Shane and I contacted Jeremy Allison, who has answered many of the questions which we thought our readers would like to see answered. I would like to thank Jeremy for taking the time to provide his input.


BN: We would like to hear about your experience with the deal: what and when you were told about it, your initial reaction, what you tried to do to fix it from within, and when/why you finally decided it was a case of irreconcilable differences.

Allison: When I first heard that Microsoft was going to take Linux seriously by doing an agreement with Novell I was delighted. But the more I looked at the details the more unhappy I got with the patent part. I tried to raise the alarm internally but was too timid with my criticisms until it was too late and the deal was signed (I heard about it about 5 days before it was signed). A nagging doubt is that if I had just spoken out louder against the deal I might have been able to change something, but I was too quiet until too late. It's hard to be the one saying the emperor has no clothes, especially whilst listening to others praising the finery of the silk stitching :-) .

I don't know exactly why Novell signed it. I don't think Ron Hovsepian is clueless or malevolent. I've met him and think he is a really nice guy. 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 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.

It was carefully prepared by Microsoft legal to try and bypass the GPLv2, and I think to their shame Novell helped them do this. I've spoken with Novell executives since I came out internally against the deal and their position on it has been "if it doesn't violate the GPLv2 what is your problem?" The problem is I do think it violates the intent of the GPLv2 if not the letter, as we explained in the Samba Team statement on this.

The intent matters. As I tried to explain in my resignation letter, 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…..".

The GPLv3 will fix any possible hole in the letter of the license (and Samba will hopefully move to it once the copyright contributors are happy with it). But in the meantime I don't want to give my efforts to a company that is willing to try and trick their way out of their license obligations on my software. When I talked to the Novell Executives we just had to agree to disagree. In part, I see this deal as a personal failure on my part.

We would like to know more about the reaction to the deal amongst the developers within Novell - are you the only person who is offended, are there other developers that have left or are considering leaving, whether 'less prominent' or not? How is morale in general amongst the rank-and-file Linux people since the deal?

Allison: I'm not going to speak for other developers within Novell. Like any large company there are a range of views. Some people agreed with the deal, some did not. Obviously you won't hear anything from the people who disagree whilst the whole company PR is set on presenting the deal as "a good thing". There is a healthy discussion on Novell mailing lists about this - I don't think I'm giving away any company secrets by saying that. Novell is not a monolith controlling its employees thoughts or actions, people are free to disagree with things the company does - it's one of the things that made it such a great place to work for me.

My contract with Novell prohibits me from soliciting or hiring people away from Novell for 1 year and I take this very seriously, so I won't comment on other people who may or may not leave, that's entirely up to them. I found this deal troubling enough to leave and I'm the only person I'm willing and able to speak for.

I'm sad because I don't think we needed to do this. We were gaining a lot of traction with SuSE Linux desktop, and from my perspective (admittedly not high up in the company hierarchy with views on revenue) we were winning. We had a good product, I was always extremely busy with new customer requirements, and was personally involved in winning new customers for SLED and SLES. It just feels to me like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Do you think that Novell will 'fix' the covenant with Microsoft and indeed be GPLv3 compliant, as Stafford Masie has promised?

Allison: I think Novell has very little power to alter the terms of the deal. If they had, I think they would already have done so. Remember the patent part of the deal wasn't Novell's idea, essentially it was forced upon them at the last minute. Novell is a victim, but they were a willing victim and that I can't forgive.

I'm guessing the effect of the GPLv3 is designed to make Microsoft want to cancel this deal, as that's where the real decisions lie.

What do you think about Nat Friedman and Bruce Perens' publicly calling on you to leave Novell as well?
[editor's note (shane): This question is worded awfully, and is my fault.]

Allison: Nat supports the deal for Novell, and has never called on me to leave. I didn't know Bruce had asked me to leave, but Bruce and I see eye-to-eye on many things, so it doesn't suprise me. I like and respect them both, although I'm obviously a little dissapointed in the Open Source/Free Software people within Novell who are publicly supporting the deal. I see them as damaging the Free Software/Open Source community, but then again they see my public reaction against the deal as damaging to the Free Software/Open Source community, so we just have to disagree on this.

I guess that any questions regarding 'how life at Google is' are premature since you haven't started there just yet, but I would like to know what you feels Google's interest in Samba is, and the direction of the project going forward.

Allison: Yep, very premature :-). I'm not going to comment much on why Google is interested in Samba, I'm hoping that will become apparent over time. Samba is becoming a more complete solution for integrating Windows and UNIX/Linux and we're filling out our implementations of CIFS and AD and (soon) SMB2. We're also heavily used in embedded systems - almost every disk drive in a box product you might buy at an electronics store is Samba inside :-).

If you have time, folks (on our site in particular) will want to hear about your take on the deal - its true meaning, its impact on Novell and on the community, and how you came to decide that there was no other choice but to leave Novell (what other avenues you explored from within first, and what responses were received).

Allison: Hopefully the text above covers much of that. The long term impact of the deal I think will be a negative for Novell and Microsoft, and I'm sorry about that. I don't think it will allow Novell to change the market share equation for Linux, which currently is overwhelmingly Red Hat as it just tries to put Linux under more of a legal cloud, which of course was what Microsoft wanted in the first place. 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 :-). This kind of money is irrelevent to a monopoly - they can simply print more. As Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen once said, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."

Hopefully the GPLv3 will make this deal irrelevent, but the problem for Novell is that people will not forget why the GPLv3 had to be changed to exclude their sleazy deal. No one will blame Microsoft, people expect sleaze from Microsoft :-). It's the previously clean and upstanding competitor who has been damaged by this, and I feel really bad for the excellent engineers at Novell who have had their reputations tarnished over this.

I think eventually even the deals strongest supporters will come to feel it was a big mistake.

We would like to thank you enormously for taking the time to respond.

Allison: No problem - Happy New Year to you all, you families and all your readers !

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Layoffs and Shutdowns at IBM, Not Just Microsoft
Same as Microsoft
With Workers Back From a Holiday Weekend, Microsoft Layoffs Carry on, More Waves to Come
Now it's Monday and people are bad to work, even some journalists
You Need Not Wave a Rainbow Flag This Month to Basically Oppose Arseholes Looking to Disrupt and Divide the Community
Don't fall for it
What Miguel de Icaza and Microsoft Lunduke Have in Common
Similar aims, different methods
 
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025
The FSF's (Free Software Foundation, Inc.) 2025 Summer Fundraiser Already Past Halfway Line
This is where GNU/Linux actually started
Mozilla Had No Good Reason to Outsource Firefox Development to Microsoft
What does Mozilla plan to do when GitHub shuts down?
Mozilla Firefox Did Not Die, It Got Killed
To me it'll always look like Mozilla got killed by its sponsors, especially Google, which had a conflict of interest as a sponsor
Dan Neidle, Whom Brett Wilson LLP SLAPPed (on Behalf of Corrupt Rich Tax Evaders), Still Fighting the Good Fight
Neidle fights for the poor people
Wayland Should Start by Dumping Its Very Ugly Logo
Wayland wins the "ugliest logo" award every year
Stop Focusing on Hair Colours, Focus on Corporate Agenda
If someone commits a crime, it does not matter if his or her hair was mostly white or there was no hair or a wig or whatever
Links 07/07/2025: Science, Conflicts, and a Fictional K-pop Group
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/07/2025: Being a Luddite and Announcement of Gotify
Links for the day
Links 07/07/2025: XBox Effectively 'Dead', DMCA Subpoena Versus Registrar
Links for the day
The 'Corporate Neckbeard' is Not the "Good Guy"
Works for IBM
The Nasty Smear (and Stereotype) of "Neckbeard" or "Greybeard" is Ageism
This is the sort of stuff they might try to volley at critics of Wayland
Why Many of Us Use X Server and Will Continue to Use It For Many Years to Come
Don't make this about politics
Microsoft's Nat Friedman Became Unemployed the Same Time the SLAPPs Against Techrights Started Coming From His Friends (Weeks After We Had Exposed Scandals About Him and the Serial Strangler, His Best Friend, Who Got Arrested a Few Days Later)
Nat Friedman is not "Investor, entrepreneur"
Brett Wilson LLP Uses Threats to Demand Changes to Pages or Removal of Pages Without Even Revealing Which Staff Member Does That (Sometimes People From Another Firm!)
This has been in the public for years
Dan Neidle Said "It Really Then Became a Job of Tormenting" Lawyers Like Brett Wilson LLP (Who Threatened Him for Exposing Crimes, Just Like They Threatened My Wife a Few Months Later)
he and his wife decided to take on the evil people and their evil lawyers
Large Language Models (LLMs) Externalise Their Cost to the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
"The forty-sixth Free Software Bulletin is now available online!"
Weeding Out Extremism in Our Community
To me it seems like Microsoft Lunduke is rapidly becoming like a "hate preacher" who operates online, breeding an extremist ideology or trying to soften its image
Censorship Versus Fact-Checking and Quality Control
It's not censorship but a matter of quality control
Reinforcing the Allegations Some More, Bryan Lunduke Digs His Own Grave
In his latest episodes he merely repeats his own lies, which I debunked using evidence right from his own mouth
Global Warming and Free Software as a Force of Mitigation
we'll need to think about Software Freedom, not just brands like "Linux"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 06, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 06, 2025
Gemini Links 07/07/2025: BaseLibre Numerical System and TUI Rant
Links for the day
[Video] "Copyleft Isn't a Bug."
"Copyleft isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. GNU GPL forced the world to treat code like a public good."
Being in Social Control Media Means Exposing Oneself to Heckling
Richard Stallman does not (either himself or directly) post to any social control media
Links 06/07/2025: Airlines Perils, Scams, and Breaches
Links for the day
Two Risks to Companies: The Microsoft Culture and the Microsoft Tools
Novell was killed by a form of "social engineering" by Microsoft
It's Hard to Trust People Who Worked - Not Only Those Who Still Work - at Microsoft
Bryan Lunduke is just what people would call an "arsehole of a person"
For the Second Time, Bryan Lunduke From Microsoft is Siccing Racist Trolls and Vandals at Me
You're only reinforcing the point we made yesterday
Links 06/07/2025: End to End Encryption at Risk, Reuters Twitter ("X") Account Withheld in India
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/07/2025: Tinylog and Certification Rotation
Links for the day
Links 06/07/2025: Climate Change and "The Right to Criticise"
Links for the day
PCLinuxOS Sites Coming Back, Gradually
let's just be patient
Social Control Media, Even If Based on Free Software, Still Has Many Problems
a distraction from what actually mattered and still matters
IBM is Not Your Master
IBM makes friends with people who exclude the majority of the population: women
Help Fund the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
If you have some dollars to spare, go support the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 05, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 05, 2025
A Short History of Attacks on Techrights (and Boycott Novell Before That)
good opportunity to tell again the story of several (not all) attempts to silence us
The Mainstream Media Took 4 Days to Realise Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan and Fired Everybody
We estimate that Microsoft has had about 29,000 layoffs since January
Leadership in Free Software
Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.