Samba's Allison Dumps Novell For Google

The deal between Microsoft and Novell that will promote SuSE Linux to Windows customers proved too much for Jeremy Allison, who has cited it as his reason for departing Novell and its SuSE Linux team. Concerns over the patent agreement reached as part of Novell and Microsoft's deal has motivated Allison to submit his resignation to Novell. A copy of the letter Samba is one of those open source works that made system administrators truly excited over the past decade. With Samba, a system running the Linux operating system could be configured to handle print and file duties for Windows desktop clients, and do so invisibly to the users on the network. That meant older hardware could be packed with voluminous hard drives and a copy of Linux for far less expense than a newer system complete with Microsoft licenses to act in the same capacity. Samba might be the most significant project to emerge over the years, save Linux and the Apache web server. Samba's supporters have protested the Novell-Microsoft agreement almost since it was made public. On November 12th, the Samba team