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Post-Novell Interview With Jeremy Allison
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."
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.....".
Be easy on him, won't you? He has to be careful on his words since he's previously signed an employment contract with Novell and is thus is a bit less free to talk about Novell for the time period when he was employed at Novell. If he speaks too blatantly without concrete proof, he risks being sued, and such a suit wouldn't advance his cause. Such an outburst would also hurt his reputation among future employers who might fear that he might start a vendetta against them if they slip up.
Right now, he's left Novell on principle (not an easy thing to do), and has been able to be respectful to Novell even though he violently disagrees with their betrayal. You can't fault him for being professional or being a class act.
But... Samba is created by an Australian team. DMCA won't reach them.
That might have been true before the recent "free trade" agreement.
Software patents delenda est.