One of the leading developers of the Samba system, Jeremy Allison, has resigned from his job at Novell in protest of the agreement the company has with Microsoft.

Allison, who worked on the Suse Linux distribution at Novell confirmed that his beef is with the patent agreement that allows the two companies to collaborate on technologies that will allow interoperability between the operating systems.

He believes that until the patent provision is revoked, Novell will be seen by the industry as “pariahs”.

In his letter to management and the industry he said: “My main issue with this deal is I believe that even if it does not violate the letter of the licence it violates the intent of the GPL licence the Samba code is released under, which is to treat all recipients of the code equally.

“Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is *nothing* we can do to fix community relations. And I really mean nothing.” Allison said that he hung around at Novell waiting for the agreement to be changed, but as it has not been altered he has opted to say goodbye in protest.

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