p2pnet.net News:- Samba programmer Jeremy Allison has walked away from Novell as his protest against the heavily criticized Novell / Microsoft deal which Linux Journal’s Nicholas Petreley said, “stinks to high heaven“.

Allison isn’t quite as verbal, calling the agreement only a “mistake,” but it’s one which will be “damaging to Novell’s success in the future,” he says in his resignation letter, quoted by Groklaw.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, I know *nobody* wants to hear this but I’ll not be able to live with this if I don’t say it publicly at least once,” he says in part, continuing:

Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is *nothing* we can do to fix community relations. And I really mean nothing.

We can pledge patents all we wish, we can talk to the press and “community leaders”, we can do all the right things w.r.t. all our other interactions, but we will still be known as GPL violators and that’s the end of it.

For people who will point out to me we don’t “technically” violate the GPLv2 here’s an argument I recently made on the mailing lists.

“Do you think that if we’d have found what we legally considered a clever way around the Microsoft EULA so we didn’t have to pay for Microsoft licenses and had decided to ship, oh let’s say, “Exchange Server” under this “legal hack” that Microsoft would be silent about it - or we should act aggr[i]eved when they change the EULA to stop us doing this?”

The Microsoft patent agreement has put us outside the community, and there is no positive aspect to that fact, and no way to make it so. Until the patent provision is revoked, we are pariahs.

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Also See:
stinks to high heaven - Samba attacks MS, Novell deal, November 18, 2006
Groklaw - Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal, December 21, 2006

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