Jeremy Allison
# Jeremy Allison

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.

## Career

### 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.
* 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.

