An interview with Jeremy Allison

LinuxWorld interviews Samba maintainer Jeremy Allison.

LinuxWorld Editor Don Marti has some questions, and Samba maintainer Jeremy Allison offers some answers.

You have the distinct honor of being one of the first major projects to adopt the GNU General Public License, Version 3. When did you do that?

Well, we had this discussion about it inside the team, after the license was released. And we were fans of it in the first place. We were on the committees that helped develop it. And so you know there was various discussion about it internally. But, essentially, we liked it enough to decide that this was, this was a good thing to do for the project and for our users.

What specific changes between the old Version 2 license and the Version 3 license did the Samba team find appealing?

We like that we can now use code under the Apache license. So we now have compatibility with that, which is very good. And I just think it tightens up the license in a few areas. So, it’s basically there to use internationally. Most of the comments about GPLv3 have been about the DRM issues. And to be honest, no one has ever really used Samba in that kind of way. So, I don’t think this really concerned us very much. The other thing that I think we’re happy about is the clarification on the patent protection.

In GPL Version 2 you could not distribute GPL software and then put a patent license on top of it. But in GPLv3 the patent-license language seems to be a little bit broader.

The old section seven in the GPLv2 essentially said that you couldn’t cut separate patent cross-licensing deals. And that language is much clearer in section 11 in GPLv3. And so, so we’re pretty happy about that. There was some movement toward what the GPL calls discriminatory patent licenses. And the GPLv3 clarifies the intent that, that those kind agreements are not allowed.

So you can’t buy out of patent lawsuits for one customer?

Yes, basically. And that’s very much in the spread of what we intend with code and what we would like is that essentially everybody’s together. Everyone who uses it has the same rights and the same responsibilities.

As far as the effect of the license change on users goes, is there any kind of impact that I might see switching from a V2 to a V3 licensed Samba on a company server?

No. I can’t see anything that would cause any problems whatsoever. Most customers just using Samba, to be honest, don’t know offhand what license we’re under, and they just want it to work. I don’t think that will be any problem at all. The people who need to look at the license are people who are shipping Samba as part of a product, OEM, and essentially redistributing Samba so that’s Linux distributors, people are putting Samba in NAS and other appliances, and as as matter of good corporate policy, their lawyers should take a look at the new license. But, to be honest, I don’t think there’s anything in there that’s going to cause anyone any trouble, at least most people distributing Samba right now are within the GPLv3 anyway, we think. Obviously, you can’t exactly say that you know what everybody’s doing.

Are there other free software or open source projects that might be using or linking to Samba code that need to take this into account?

There might be some issues with people who have released code under GPLv2 only. There are some issues with that GPLv3 libraries, and the issue isn’t the GPLv3. It’s actually the fact that the GPLv2 code is incompatible with GPLv3, because the GPLv3’s list of conditions is different from GPLv2, and the code that’s under v2 only essentially the list of restrictions on that are fixed. So they can’t link with code that is different. If the code is GPLv2 or later, as most code is, then there’s no problem there. They’re completely compatible. But people who have used v2 only, they might have to look at upgrading their licensing.

Looking ahead, there’s a Samba Version 4 in progress. And one of the features that I’ve noticed people talking about on that one is increased compatibility with Microsoft Active Directory.

Yes, indeed, yes.

Would users be able to swap out their Active Directory servers entirely once they switch over to Samba 4?

That’s the goal. That’s the goal in the same way, then they can swap out their old NT4 domains with Samba 3.That work is still ongoing. It’s a long and a slow and a difficult job. As you can imagine, it’s quite complex. What I’m expecting actually is that Samba 4 initially like Samba 3 was when most people were using Samba 2, Samba 3 came out. People will be running Samba 3 and 4 kind of in mixed modes. So they’re running Samba 4 for the domain controllers and then Samba 3 for their main file and print. And eventually, the whole thing will merge into some horrible multiheaded hybrid in the same way that the original Samba 2 and 3 did. But it’s all fun. There’s lots of things going on. But everything from 3.2 onwards will be under the GPLv3.

So when you plan releases or introduction to new features in Samba, do you take into account the release schedules of some of the enterprise Linux distributions?

If we can, yes. We tend to have our own release train. But sometimes, the trains are leaving the station at the same time. So, we’ll try and help. If anyone comes to this and says you know I have a product I want to ship in the next 10 months, what should I use? We always find and advise. We always try and advise what we think is safe for people to start using and shipping. So, yes, I mean we work with people who want to use Samba commercially very closely.

So Samba 3.0.x and previous versions are still under GPLv2, and you’re going to be maintaining those under that license.

Yes, that’s right. There’s no changes there. Once 3.2 ships, the 3.0.X releases will essentially be in security-update mode only, where they don’t get any new features or developments, but it’s a security whole list is still then we’ll obviously we’ll fix that and do a new release, the security features. And, we tend to do that as long as people want to ship those versions, which is normally you know six months to a couple of years basically.

Well, there are enterprise Linux distributions that still have old versions of Samba in them that people are still keeping up to date.

Yes, that’s right, yes. I mean we have Samba team members who work for those distro vendors. The official team releases tend to go back sort of six months to a couple of years. But obviously, the enterprise Linux have their own people, and they backport even further.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Come to the LinuxWorld show to see the Golden Penguin quiz show.

That’s right, Golden Penguin Bowl again this year.

Which I will be hosting again, and I’ve started to work on the costume. And it will be interesting. It will be an interesting and fun show.

Sounds great. Linux World Conference and Expo, Aug. 6 through 9.

Yes, I should be making a complete utter fool of myself again, so if you want to see that you should really come and look.

All right. See you in San Francisco.