Microsoft Releases CIFS Docs -- Free Ball & Chain

juan large moose writes: "Microsoft has released documentation on the CIFS protocol suite, but there may be a catch. The license says that the documentation is available for review, but no one may implement the described technology without signing a 'royalty-free' license agreement. Some reviewers are reporting that the document provides less information than the earlier IETF DRAFT CIFS specification, and may in fact be a cleaned-up version of an outdated Storage Network Industry Association CIFS Document. These other documents do not have the restrictive license."

Comments

Re:impact on samba

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not. Samba folk probably know the most of the stuff in the docs Microsoft has released. See:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/24490.html

JLM

Re:impact on samba

[juan large moose]

It may not be clear to the moderators that CIFS and SMB are the same thing (well, the former being a "marketing upgrade"). Not unreasonable, as the lack of distinction is somewhat obscured.

--JLM

On a somewhat related note

[The Slashdolt]

Microsoft has released source code to their .NET CLI for Windows XP and FreeBSD. It has been released under their shared source license. Article and download available here.
I am a (java)developer, so this is a huge deal to me. I submitted it to slashdot yesterday and it was rejected. It is posted over on kuro5shin somewhere. I would think this would be VERY helpful for the mono team.