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Microsoft's Slap at Samba

Posted by timothy on from the thumbwrestling-with-satan dept.

Rollie Hawk writes "Microsoft's latest attempt to reconcile with the European Commission's antitrust rulings against the company may result in another victim. It seems their offer, if accepted, will strike a considerable blow at a leading competitor in the realm of file and printer sharing. The popular open source suite Samba stands to be the recipient of a backhanded slap from Redmond if the offer stands and the European branch of the Free Software Foundation is taking it personally. Though Microsoft is offering to make some information regarding interoperability available to competitors, it's only under the condition that implementations are not open source. According to FSFE president Georg Greve, "the proposal specifically precludes the information from being used in a free software implementation, such as the Samba workgroup server software." How is Samba being specifically targeted? Greve argues this is because "Samba is the only remaining major competitor of Microsoft in this market.""

14 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. Our offer. by PopeAlien · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sure! we'll make the source code available as long as people aren't allowed to look at it, think about it or talk about it.

    --
    air and light and time and space
  2. The Dark Lord of the Sith by Colonel+Panic · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's interesting how Gates is looking more and more like Lord Palpatine in recent years. The chin especially looks similar. I expect that Gates will be wearing a hood soon.

    1. Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith by dyfet · · Score: 4, Funny
      Perhaps claiming he was horribly mutilated by FOSS activists, too? And what young FOSS hacker will he take as an apprentice?

    2. Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith by Chosen+Reject · · Score: 4, Funny

      He might be evil but that kind of comparison is just outright wrong. Please don't disgrace the Sith like that.

      --
      Stop Global Warming!
      Just say no to irreversible processes!
    3. Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith by deaddrunk · · Score: 5, Funny

      Miguel D'Icaza

      --
      Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
    4. Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith by rpozz · · Score: 4, Funny

      I have absolutely nothing better to do tonight.

      http://img247.echo.cx/img247/1036/gateslord2rn.jpg

    5. Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith by BrynM · · Score: 2, Funny
      Here you go. Just whipped it up. There's two versions:

      DarthGatus01.jpg
      DarthGatus02.jpg

      The first one turned out the best.

      --
      US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
    6. Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 3, Funny

      Every time I hear people comparing Gates to a star wars villian, I think of some 30 year old wearing a star trek uniform in his parent's basement ranting against Bill. Thanks, PA!

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
  3. A simple solution by cmburns69 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Charge $0.01 for a very liberal license to use samba. That keeps it non-free, and allows it to be used anywhere.

    --
    Online Starcraft RPG? At
    Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
    1. Re:A simple solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Do you offer any volumn discounts?

  4. Re:As the old saying goes... by T-Ranger · · Score: 5, Funny

    My prefered quote would be: "Having a meeting with Bill Gates is like going on a date with Mike Tyson: you should expect to get raped"

  5. Re:Admiration by lordsid · · Score: 3, Funny

    unless you also mention something about being modded down then some smart mass will mod you up. just as I hopefully get modded down for this, right?

    --
    IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
  6. so much slapping by pintomp3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    i'm bill gates, bitch!

  7. Re:Admiration by Stankatz · · Score: 2, Funny

    I have no idea what this thread is about because I browse at +5.