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Samba Team Responds to Microsoft CIFS Spec License
Jeremy Allison - Samba Team writes: "The Samba Team has released a statement regarding the Microsoft CIFS specification license and its effect on Samba. Regards! Jeremy Allison" Reading this and the Microsoft CIFS Technical License raises a number of issues worth considering. The statement maintains that the specification details an old implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol, one Microsoft itself has abandoned. One wonders if the only reason they release such docs are as props for a court case or something.
Regardless of whether what you suggest would or would not be legal, it isn't necessary. As the article points out, the document is obsolete and the methods it describes are not even in use by Microsoft anymore. Besides, they are inappropriate for a Posix/Unix implementation, so alternative methods have been in use for some time anyway.
First off, the site is NOT slashdotted. Check for yourself. This is blatant karma whoring.
Second, this is an imposter, not the real CmdrTaco. The real CmdrTaco has a userid of #1, not #564483.
I believe the poster you replied to asked his question with a jesting undertone, but you afforded him/her the courtesy of a serious reply, and so I'll do the same to you.
While it's unlikely that Microsoft has used any code from the Samba project, it's certain that they optimised their SMB/CIFS implementation in Windows 2000. And prior to that, it had been verified (and heavily marketed, if you remember) that SGI servers running Samba achieved better performance than Windows NT servers. Hence it is not impossible that this served to motivate Microsoft to improve their implementation, proving how the benefits of GPL'ed code fosters innovation and betterment.
However, the SMB protocol was not created by Microsoft. If any one entity, corporate or otherwise, is to be credited with the design of this protocol, it is IBM corporation. It IS true that Microsoft then developed the protocol further from its early LANMAN days, however.
Posting as an AC because I don't feel like losing my job... I do some work on CIFS and there is indeed some samba code in the codebase. Their implimentations of some functionality is portable to Win32 and more efficient than the in-house code we had previously. Rather than rewite it ourselves, samba code was taken and obfuscated. After all, who's going to find it? And good luck proving it.
I've been on my manager about taking such unneccessary risks, but he'll have none of it. He likens it to how the IIS team just used sendmail as a base for smtp server, even though that case is completely different due to the embrace and extend-friendly BSD license.
Your thoughts could be answered with a simple google search.
;)
http://main.mswinxp.net/~lpackham/smbclient/
Of course, it requires Cygwin. But, a drop in replacement for something that is proprietary to begin with and comes bundled with all windows version sounds kind of ridiculous, doesn't it.
I found the other news link for today on the Samba home page even more interesting. Could this be the motivation behind the strange licensing hijinx?
The portions of the SMB tree that these pattents apply to have been abandoned by Microsoft because they have a flaw in their design.
Conjecture is that the flaw affected the naming of files, or possibly handling the case of file names, though with Unix/POSIX I am not entirely certain. For all I know the flaw or flaws affected how a directory was identified.
I tend to doubt that there is anything preventing a port of SAMBA to Win32, other than demand. As SMB is installed by default, the only reason that a user would look for an alternative is that there is a bug that prevents the user from accomplishing whatever task SMB/Samba is required to accomplish.
While I as a network maintenance person may feel the security threats built into the Win32 implemntations of SMB from Microsoft are sufficient reason to migrate to some other solution, I tend to suspect that most CIO and other upper management personell are not so inclined.
As I recall, there are alternative protocols available, including IPX over IP, as well as IBM's APPN that could provide some of the same services, however it would surprise me if any business switched to any of those at this point in their history either. If you wish to investigate, open your network control pannel, and "Add a protocol". I belive that you will find protocols from Banyon, IBM, Microsoft and Novell.
Then again, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
You never know...
By using the original document as input for your document, you are creating a derivative work of it, and you must therefore obey the license you "obtained" the document under.
You would therefore have no right to issue such a derivative work under the GPL, and you, and anyone who built on your work (and so on down) would have their asses sued off by MS until they stopped.
Of course you might say "but how would they know I copied/adapted/altered their work" - but thats a different question. If you based your work on theirs you have to obey their rules.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
We would like to also point out that these patents cover an obsolete section of the CIFS/SMB protocol that Microsoft themselves have abandoned in their own products long ago. Microsoft abandoned these "raw" protocol operations in CIFS because their basic design is fatally flawed. FUD. Plain FUD. The license as the statement says covers an onlder version. So it will not really affect the development , atleast thats why i inferred, correct me if I am wrong. M$ is most probably using FUD, to scare. they wouldnt dare to doanything which will stand against them in the court case so glaringly. The may be evil but they are not Fools
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Not really. SMB was created by DEC for their Pathworks software and by IBM (see http://samba.anu.edu.au/cifs/docs/what-is-smb.html ).
Strike one more Microsoft innovation from the list.
I thought Windows XP home version did drop TCP/IP from the LAN choices
;-)
You're kinda right, but your terminology is getting murky. Either you don't use Windows, so you simply don't know the lingo, or you are a Windows User, which means you are clueless
WinXP Hemos Edition has TCP/IP. (Maybe that's just becuase IE is part of the OS, and TCP/IP be the language of the Internet...) What it doesn't have is the ability to take part in a Windows Domain. (you know, the thing with the PDC and the BDC or maybe just some DCs. That thing that I do at work when I'm not on slashdot.)
Yep, with XP Home Ed. you're in perma-Workgroup mode, which has the effect of making Windows XP Home Edition utterly useless in any decent sized (as in more than ten WinBoxen) office.
It also makes it pretty hard to save about $300 by buying a Dell Refurbished for the office, because 95% of them have either Windows ME (barf) or Windows XP Home Ed (not compatible). But I have to admit, I kinda enjoy the challenge of ferreting out the occasional Dell refurb system with XP Pro or 2K.
Steven says: Dude, you're getting a Dell!
Firstly MS RPC is not "on top of" DCE RPC. It is an implementation of DCE RPC. Secondly if you make an RPC call, it can go over a variety of transports -- one of the great things about DCE RPC. Most windows boxes from NT4.0 onwards are configured to use IP by default.
Some more errors:
- RAP is not a layer in the stack for most of what you describe, only for the actual RAP functions, such as NetShareEnum. Most operations (such as open/read/lock) don't use it at all.
- Named Pipes are not "on top of" transactions. Transactions are an option for Named Pipes.
- Named pipes aren't on top of SMB. They are one of the things you can open using SMB, i.e. a type of file in a special part of the filesystem. The analogy is with character or block fifos in unix.
I might as well say:If you reduced it all down to copper wires imagine how efficient it could be! All you'd need is different voltages! Just code your application to read directly from an ADC!
NO ID: BEING FREE MEANS NOT HAVING TO PROVE IT
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Microsoft system of printer sharing is based on having a printer-specific driver for each printer. This permits the application to invoke a printer-specific options page for any printer, past, present or future, without having to decide which printers they wish to support. It also allows the printer to support a variety of spool formats, from plain text to PCL, PostScript and GDI.
It also in turn allows printer manufacturers to add new, arbitrary features to their printers to control things like color models, printing multiple pages in one, draft modes of different types, control of different dithering models used when printing graphics, control over paper input trays, collation, stapling, and so on and so forth. The user is not forced to use the lowest common denominator, because the manufacturer supplies the GUI.
But if the manufacturer can't be bothered to produce a driver...
For what it's worth, I'll bet you can get it to work using a driver for another printer made by the same manufacturer on the client machine, if you can be bothered. Try the manufacturers website. They often have step-by-step instructions for this sort of thing. I'm assuming you are the same AC...
NO ID: BEING FREE MEANS NOT HAVING TO PROVE IT
You're not listening, are you? /would/ be able to use it.
The other prong will be a group that will write win32 applications that will take advantage of the Samba extensions to the CIFS and distribute the app for free.
Under this scheme, Windows clients