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.

Comments

Testing Waters

[Bouncings]

Although this particularly license has no real implications, and I think we can be sure Microsoft is aware of this, perhaps their is a more sinister goal here: testing the waters of anti-GPL and/or anti-free-software licenses.

What would happen, for example, if Windows were "licensed" to exclude its use in conjunction with certain free software -- such as -- oh say -- Wine. Wine works better with Windows binary libraries accessible, and Microsoft might be thinking about some kind of anti-free-software clause in the Windows license.

I suspect this obsolete Samba license is just a beta test of their newest scam.