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provides less information than the earlier IETF DRAFT CIFS specification, and may in fact be a cleaned-up version of an outdated Storage Network Industry Association CIFS Document.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

impact on samba

[Anonymous Coward]

does this mean that samba will do a better job of SMB now?

Waiting for ...

[4of12]

...someone like Jeremy Allison to describe the practicalities, not only of the licensing terms, but also the accuracy and the completeness of this specification document.

I have to wonder, too, just how relevent the information is from the standpoint of timeliness.

Is this something that is practically out of the bag anyway and therefore of little effective monetary value to Microsoft at this time?

It's almost certainly of some political value for them to release an interface specification of any kind at this point in time, considering the stakes at risk at the outcome of their current trials and settlement agreement.

Someone from the Samba team, someone that attempts to reverse engineer things like SMB, Active Directory and NTFS would have a much better insight into the meaning of this than most people.