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Well, that was the idea with CIFS. Microsoft embraced it, and then extended it to become SMB.

There's also a problem because of the history of DCE/RPC from the "Open Software Foundation" (Open Group) which predates OSS. Microsoft more or less did what you suggested they would with BSD'd code. http://www.samba-tng.org/docs/tng-arch/tng-arch05. html Truth is stranger than fiction.

Microsoft, at some point, contacted The Open Group, wishing to license DCE/RPC. The Open Group's charter mandated at the time that they charge USD $20 per seat. Clearly, Microsoft considered this, in light of their expected market impact, and decided to reimplement DCE/RPC themselves, as MSRPC. It is no coincidence that one of the key founders of Apollo [Paul Leach] is still working for Microsoft. http://www.samba-tng.org/docs/tng-arch/tng-arch05. html

So basically the Samba team is doing what they believed was too ambtious in 2000, thus leading to the forked Samba - TNG project. Am I correct?

Judging from the results probably Tridgell & co. were right...

Agreed. All the technical issues are solveable, and in fact have been solved at some level; and the namespace would not significantly change in size regardless of structure (unless it shrinks majorly, as name-squatting becomes far less profitable).

The problems are non-technical. One is the FUD being spread about the technical issues (I am *really* tired of hearing all this nonsense about a supposed technical need for artificially scarce namespace) and another is the problem of rule creation and enforcement.

ICANN and the Department of Commerce control the rule-making and enforcement process (by holding the root nameservers hostage). It seems that they will not allow a better system to evolve.

Internet users' best bet is probably to end-run ICANN. Just as we can use samba and samba-tng to defeat Microsoft's attempt to dominate our networks, we can use OpenNIC and friends to obviate ICANN.

PS: I included the definition of obviate because I got savaged for using it in a post once. I can use the most arcane networking terms imaginable and nobody complains, but use a slightly offbeat non-technical word and everyone's suddenly too busy flaming me to look it up. ;^>

I guess I should have read the status page. Let me rephrase the question: what are people's experiences with this?

Well to answer my question it appears Samba-TNG is what I should be looking at... Specifically the Samba TNG and Unix Accounts with LDAP page and the other documentation here.

Looks interesting...

Congratulations should also go to Luke Kenneth Caston Leighton who engineered most of the PDC-related code and who undoubtedly made samba 2.2 possible. Check out www.samba-tng.org for more info on PDC development (TNG = the next generation).