Jeremy Allison has decided to part amicably with Hewlett-Packard Co. and move to Novell Inc. He states that he has no problem or issues with HP and feels it’s a fine company doing great things in the Linux world. He does feel that he’ll have more opportunities to evangelize Samba and Linux at Novell.

He was quoted in this NewsForge article that he has been impressed with Novell since his attendance at BrainShare 2004 but it has taken till now to actually decide to leave HP.

For thoes who were not in attendance, we (Utah Linux User Group leaders) organised a large multi-LUG speaking event at Brainshare 2004 where Miguel De Icaza spoke on Mono. Also in attendance were Jeremy Allison and John H. Terpstra of Samba as seen in this picture with the Utah LUG leaders.

So, what does this mean for Novell and Linux… good things I imagine. Novell is doing a great job at really becoming a Linux company and putting all it’s effort into not only producing a high quality line of Linux products but also actually becoming a real part of the Linux and OpenSource community.

Jack Messman stated at that Brainshare 2004 that Novell would always give back to the OpenSource community more than it took away. That’s a great policy for any company that uses OpenSource internaly or externaly to follow. Hopefully more companies will take that stance publicly as well. It’s imperative that Novell continues to act on that policy. OpenSource types typically have a hard time trusting commercial entities who start taking intrest in their projects. Doing more to support OpenSource rather than a “take take take” policy will do wonders not only for trust in the releationship but more importantly, there’s a reality that exists – what’s good for Linux and OpenSource is good for all thoes who use it. Businesses need to look at their relationship with OpenSource as symbiotic – the more they give back, the more it benifits them.

So, I’m happy to see Jeremy Allison take a position at Novell and wish him the best. I wonder if we can get him to talk at a SLLUG meeting soon….