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Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)Posted Dec 22, 2006 4:21 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333)Parent article: Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw)
Interesting quote here:
"Unil the 29th, I'm really busy fixing some last issues for Novell, I don't want to leave them a product in bad shape."
First off.. It's a big mistake for Novell to do the patent thing with Microsoft. It's going to cost them. GPLv3 for them is going to be very ackward and if any other developers leave it's horrible for them. There is no need for the 'community' to 'punish' Novell any furthur. They are doing it to themselves.
It's a good agreement otherwise, this Microsoft Novell thing. For example OpenXML support in OO.org is a kick-ass move. Very business smart, very benificial for the community. Some governments may be adopting ODF for political reasons, but aside from that in the real world defacto standards truimph paper standards every single time. Nobody is going to stop using Office because it doesn't support ODF.
Also it's showing that Microsoft is now selling Linux to their customers. Sure they are doing is so that people running Novell services on Suse can run Suse in a Windows VM as people use Microsoft's tools to migrate away from Novell, but that's just how it goes.
(PS. if you want to 'punish' Novell the best possible way you can do it is to create a effective and easy to deploy open source-based network directory system to rival Active Directory and eDirectory... which the Free and Open Source world lacks completely. Beleive me, I've done secure LDAP and kerberos on Linux using open source software and it doesn't come close to what you can do with AD at the ease at which it integrates into Windows desktop. Not even close, not even to the AD that was released nearly 6 years ago with Windows 2000, much less the modern one.)
But I love that quote.
He worked for Novell, but he perceived SAMBA as a product he is selling to Novell. Since he didn't like what Novell was doing he was free to just get up and leave.
No anti-compete agreements. No NDA to interfer with his work. He still retains rights and ability to work on Samba at any company he wants.
This is a total turn around compared to what it seems that most professional programmers working in the industry does. In other big companies they are almost servents to the corporate board. How many developers working on Microsoft's SMB stuff can just get up with the source code and go work for Novell or Google or whatever just because they feel like it?
To me this shows the practical application of Freedom as granted to programmers under the GPL...
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Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw) Posted Dec 22, 2006 12:31 UTC (Fri) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link] While I do agree with you that de facto standards often triumph over "paper" standards, it is important to note that Office OpenXML is neither. Nobody uses it and it is not an official standard (yet).
I think it is dishonest to pretend like the new document format will be widespread just because all the old Office formats are. Mass migration to a new format will take a long time no matter which format it is. So far OpenDocument has a larger marketshare than OpenXML, which has zero.
Tomorrow may be different, of course, and I may have to take all this back. Until then, however, with no documents "out there" the only thing an independent implementation of OpenXML will accomplish is increased acceptance in public organizations.
Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw) Posted Dec 22, 2006 17:43 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] "if you want to 'punish' Novell the best possible way you can do it is to create a effective and easy to deploy open source-based network directory system to rival Active Directory and eDirectory... which the Free and Open Source world lacks completely"
Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw) Posted Dec 23, 2006 12:06 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] That's a LDAP server.
Active Directory and eDirectory system uses LDAP for holding information, but it goes far beyond that.
You have easy integration into AD built into every windows desktops. You can perform all sorts of authentication on many different services and have fairly decent ways to visualize information and allow more normal people to add users and set permissions on network file systems etc etc.
It's kinda like the difference between having a file system for a operating system versus a operating system.
Right now it's possible to have something that does most of the important functionality of AD/eDirectory using Kerberos + LDAP + dozens of other packages, but there isn't anybody out there offering a coesive FOSS solution for it and it's very difficult to setup and very difficult to administrate.
Nothing like Small business server were you can have one somewhat-experianced setup a small business with a Active Directory system were more normal staff are able to add and remove users and such.
This isn't nessicarially a bad thing. I feel personally that Single Sign On is overrated and is a HUGE security risk. It's much safer to have individual servers with individual passwords for everything. There isn't much of a real technical reason for SSO/AD/eDirectory for a small business...
But nowadays Active Directory is the _minimal_ requirement for most of the things you'd use Windows servers with Windows desktop for in most any sized business. It's what people want and what they expect.
Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw) Posted Dec 24, 2006 0:34 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] " That's a LDAP server.
Active Directory and eDirectory system uses LDAP for holding information, but it goes far beyond that. "
Just curious. Have you actually tried it out? Can you mention specific features that you found lacking?
Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw) Posted Jan 5, 2007 18:06 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] What's missing? Group policy objects, to start with.
Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw) Posted Dec 22, 2006 19:39 UTC (Fri) by cpm (guest, #3554) [Link] "Some governments may be adopting ODF for political reasons, "
And the same, and other governments may be adopting ODF because it's
Jeremy Allison Has Resigned from Novell to Protest MS Patent Deal (Groklaw) Posted Dec 23, 2006 11:55 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Politics is what your talking about.
Liberty is essentially a political persuit. The idea that information should be aviable to all end users without having ot pay Microsoft is a political thing.
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