Given that the Samba project will definitely start using the third revision of the General Public License (GPLv3), which should be in place by March next year, Novell will now face the task of having to develop Samba on its own from March onwards. Its remaining Samba developers will have to create a fork of the project - using code from the older versions which are under GPLv2 - and move ahead.

This will add some overhead to Novell's business costs. Those who support the FOSS community will be hoping that Allison's resignation will cause some rethinking at Novell. I fear, however, that this will not be the case.

Microsoft's primary motive in signing the deal was to undermine Novell and separate it from the general FOSS community. In that, it has succeeded. There will be a split in the developer community as well as some will have no objection to continuing to work for Novell. Once again, this is a plus for Microsoft.

Lest I forget, there will be a few gains for Novell - a few more dollars in the bank. Profits may rise temporarily and some of the suits will pocket their bonuses, while clinking their glasses together. Meanwhile the vultures will start hovering over Novell.

The other gain for Microsoft is that, having created some measure of confusion over GNU/Linux within a largely clueless business community, there is a much better chance that businesses will now opt for Windows in the server room, despite its technical shortcomings. It will start to be seen as a safe business decision - though it could be a disastrous one for the business concerned.

Either Red Hat or Canonical (the company that develops Ubuntu) are bound to snap up Allison as soon as they can. This would be a major hiring for either company. Red Hat is likely to be the winner - again.

Within Novell's ranks, there are still some well-known so-called open source developers who remain unabashed apologists for the deal. But I wouldn't want to deal with their hypocrisy right here - no, that deserves a full column after Christmas.

Have a peaceful Christmas, everyone!

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