More backlash over the Microsoft-Novell deal from the open-source community: Jeremy Allison, developer on the open-source Samba project and a Novell employee, is leaving the company, according to various online reports today. The Samba team has been outspoken in its opposition to the agreement.

In a statement published on Groklaw, Allison writes:

As many of you will guess, this is due to the Microsoft/Novell patent agreement, which I believe is a mistake and will be damaging to Novell's success in the future. But 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.

In related news, Red Hat reports quarterly earnings after the market closes today. Microsoft, Oracle and Novell are likely to be major topics of Red Hat's earnings conference call, given the events of the past couple months.

Update: Allison is going to Google, Mary Jo Foley reports.