Jeremy Allison
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| Born | 1962 (age 50–51) |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Programmer |
| Employer | |
| Known for | Samba |
| Website | |
| www.samba.org/~jra/ | |
Jeremy Allison is a computer programmer known for his contributions to the free software community, notably to Samba, a re-implementation of SMB/CIFS networking protocol, released under the GNU General Public License.
Other contributions include the early versions of the pwdump password cracking utility.[1]
Free software evangelism
During his career, Jeremy Allison has consistently defended the free software approach:
- He pitched making Vantive code free software to its founder.
- He persuaded Michael Tiemann to use the GNU General Public License for Cygwin.[citation needed]
- He similarly convinced Tim Wilkinson to put the Kaffe virtual machine for Java under the GPL.
- He was involved in Silicon Graphics' decision to put XFS for Linux under the GPL.
This commitment to free software culminated with his decision to leave Novell in protest of a patent deal that was considered by many as a FUD attack on Linux and other free software, and by Allison as breaking section 7 of the GNU General Public License.[2]
External links
- Jeremy Allison's web page
- The Low Point, a View from the Valley, Allison's monthly column in Linux User and Developer
- Why a secret patent deal won't help Linux/Windows Interoperability, detailed interview with Allison about the Novell/Microsoft patent pact and his decision to leave Novell
- Ubuntu has the strongest chance to take Linux mainstream (interview on TechRadar.com)
- How Sun's need to control the code cost them the company (blog entry)
