Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Yep. He sold out to Microsoft for a LOT of money.
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.
COWARD. Him leaving will do nothing to Microsoft/Novell. He should've stayed and tried to destroy them from the inside, guerrila style.
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.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Where did you expect it to be published ? Microsoft.com ? Novell.com ?
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.....".
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.
...Steve
I stand corrected. The unsourced speculation you linked too clearly proves the original uninformed speculation was actually fact.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Perhaps the speculation comes from observing history: See embrace and exten d and read the findgs of fact 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.
It is a guess, but it's a very good guess. From an interview with Ron Hovsepian
m mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9005462&pageNumber =2
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?co
"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.
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.
He received 778,470 shares of stock awarded 12/20/06. http://money.cnn.com/quote/insiders/insiders.html? symb=NOVL
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
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
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
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
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
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.