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MS getting rid of SAMBA?
BenRussoUSA writes "In this ZDNet story . Brian Behlendorf of Apache, Jeremy Allison of SAMBA, Miguel de Icaza of Ximian and now MONO and Eric Allman of Sendmail are all quoted in a story regarding a nasty rumor. Microsoft may be planning to include a Microsoft patented technology at a crucial interoperability point in .NET and maybe the next version of CIFS. Could this spell the end of SAMBA?"
A quick search on the United States patent database for all patents from 1996 to the present with the word "password" in the abstract and the assignee having the word "microsoft" reveals 11 patents. It appears that this one : 5,719,941 Swift , et al. February 17, 1998 "Method for changing passwords on a remote computer" is indeed the patent in question. The abstract is : Abstract A method for changing an account password stored at a physically remote location is provided. After initiating a password change sequence, a user submits both an old and a new password to its client machine. Thereafter, the client computes two message values to be transmitted to the server. The first message is computed by encrypting at least the new password using a one-way hash of the old password as an encryption key. The second message is computed by encrypting the one-way hash of the old password using a one-way hash of the new clear text password as the encryption key. The server receives both messages and computes a first decrypted value by decrypting the first message using the one-way hash of the old password, previously stored at the server, as the decryption key. The server computes a second decrypted value by decrypting the second message using a one-way hash of the first decrypted value as the decryption key. The server compares the decrypted one-way hashed value, transmitted in encrypted form in the second message, to the pre-stored hashed old password. If the two values are equal, then the server replaces the old password by the new password. (look for yourself at www.uspto.gov if you don't believe me)
AFAIK, you can't patent software in Australia, where Samba is developped. So, even if there were such a (US) patent, it would not stop Samba. Well, there might be a small period where Samba would not work while they are busy catching up (i.e. implementing the new algorithm), but the next version all would be back to normal.
CIFS = Common Internet File System, also known as a slightly updated version of SMB, also known as the Windows file-sharing protocol. There is nothing really Common or Internet about it. (Did Microsoft give it this name?)
SAMBA = the SAMBA project, a free implementation of an SMB file server for non-Microsoft systems. SAMBA also includes directory services and other Windows NT Server features, so you could theoretically replace a WinNT box with an old Pentium running Linux.
By adding proprietary and patented encryption into the next version of the SMB protocol, SAMBA will no longer be able to emulate a Windows NT file server. At best, Microsoft clients would warn the user that they are not using a 'secure' connection, scaring management and IT support into buying a new Microsoft server. At worst, it could mean that Windosw XP cannot connect to SAMBA servers at all, forcing people to switch to Microsoft servers.
This is another effort by Microsoft to lock you into using their products. You will no longer be able to choose the type of server you want to run, if you want Windows XP compatibility.
There are two possible hopes:
1) Microsoft doesn't make this encryption a requirement to connect
2) Someone writes a SMB-compliant network driver for Windows XP
Is this true? Consider this article from Fortune about Rambus, in which they were dinged for not disclosing a patent to a standards committee.
The article mentions that Sun and Dell got in trouble for similar things, and had to license the patents royalty-free. Dell had a patent on VL-BUS technology, and Sun had one on DRAMs for SparcStations that Kingston complained about. The Dell story (from 1996) is summarized here and this is from the FTC, while the Sun case (from this year) is mentioned here and here.
- adam
(I fully suspect they do have a whole file cabinet full of patents, but I'd like to see them before I start making assumptions about the future of open source.)
Not only do we not know the specifics of the alleged patent, but we don't know if it's trivial or not. There's no guarantee it won't flunk the prior art or novelty tests.
*Very* good point. I didn't say they were planning to enforce it. I didn't really want to talk about it much at all, and wish it hadn't ended up at ZDnet or Slashdot to be honest. I tried to get Charlie to remove this section from the article, but it was one of the only pieces of evidence that he had about patents, and in his judgement that made it important enough to mention.
It's not "sensationalist jounalism", though. Charlie is trying to make an important point which I will discuss below.
The reason I spoke about it at all is that my personal feelings are that implementing *NEW* Microsoft-revisioned protocols is a waste of people's time. Once they've become a de-facto standard, like SMB, then we have no choice but to try and implement them, just in the same way that Abiword, StarOffice and KWord have to load Microsoft Word file formats.
But to start implementing new Microsoft designed protocols and *help* them become ubiquitous is insane. All IMHO of course.
I don't think Microsoft is planning to wipe out Samba and it is sheer paranoia to speculate on that point.
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.