Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Slap at Samba
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.""
You have to admire Microsoft's ability to turn what seems to be a damaging situation into something that might actually benefit them!
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
Can someone explain to me how Microsoft sees itself in the position to make demands? They've been found guilty of anticompetitive behaviour and have been sanctioned accordingly. "Your honor, I offer to go to prison if I get 24/7 internet access, a laptop and a PS3." I'd be the laughing stock of the judicial system.
Look, Bill, let me explain something to you. The purpose of a government is to protect people from forces that are more powerful than themselves and which will harm them. Gangs. Nuclear terrorists. Wildfires. One of those things is monopolies: companies that have a stranglehold on a necessary commodity. We have laws that prohibit companies that hold a monopoly from behaving in certain ways. Preventing interoperability with competing products in a universal network is one such behavior. If MS had 50% of the market, SAMBA wouldn't have a case. But they have more than 90% - a technical monopoly.
If you have trouble with the big words, ask Melissa to explain them to you.
That you are going to really hear it now?
You somewhat have a point, but it overlooks the purpose of a corporation. The State of Washinton gave Microsoft a corporate charter, with the idea that they would produce something of value and perform a service for the state (ie: its citizens). Let's ignore the fact that this is an overseas matter for now.
To say that we should protect corporations from losses due to alternative products would be disasterous. We are supposed to demand that Microsoft works in our best interest (as long as they have that charter) and we are not supposed to think of theirs. I know this isn't how things are; but how there were and how they should be.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Simple: Microsoft has clearly established and abused a monopoly and there is no efficient market for the type of software sold by Microsoft.
Governments in a capitalist society have a duty to ensure efficient markets in those areas that are not natural monopolies (and to ensure natural monopolies are not abused).
Think of this as punishment for Microsoft's past abuses of its monopoly if you will, or think of it as governments acting to regulate companies that operate in a manner that is detrimental to a free market and hence to their citizens.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
once this data is out there it will become much harder [impossible?] for the samba team to say they reverse-engineered the protocols as opposed to receiving the information from a licensee in violation of ms' rules...
then samba is considered tainted and is open to injunction against distribution.
just my dos centavos.
sum.zero
This is a bunch of bullcrap. The Samba team did not have that information available. In fact, the protocols and codes were reverse-engineered to obtain interoperability.
But let's say, for just a minute, that Microsoft somehow wants to pull Samba into this ridiculous web of deceit. Nobody said that this has been approved already. And if enough people raise hell at the EU, this will be turned down. Besides, when someone points out that the EU undoubtedly uses Samba in possibly thousands of EU government computers (at various levels in government), this will get turned down extremely quickly.
Microsoft can continue to turn defeats into stunning victories, but the tighter they close their fists, the more computers slip through their fingers. And there will be a day when no computer in the world runs anything with the name Microsoft on it. I guarantee it. Many empires that were bigger and more powerful than Microsoft are now but a footnote in a history book. Where is the Roman empire? I don't care if it lasted a thousand years before it fell. Microsoft will not be so lucky, especially as they piss off increasing numbers of individuals, companies, and even governments with their business practices, prices, and defective products. And even if Samba is somehow supposed to be banned from the EU, there are billions of people all over the world, and thousands of Samba programmers who live outside the EU, and rest assured they will continue to use and develop it anyway.
Why a commercial company should be forced to dismantle and hand itself over to open source.
Hullo? The monopolist is not being asked to hand over any code. They are being asked to simply provide the information neccessary for competitors to inter-operate with microsoft windows.
Please explain how that amounts to microsoft "dismantling itself"
> Why a commercial company should be forced to dismantle and hand itself over to open source.
Dismantle? Dismantle?? What kind of drugs are you on? Providing documentation is not the same as being dismantled! And as for why, well, you might as well ask why a private citizen has to go to jail. It's because they were convicted of a crime and are being punished. I mean, duh!
> It's not like Samba could be commercially harmed by Microsoft's actions.
Geeze, even for slashdot, this is a silly comment. Hasn't the "free speech, not free beer" quote been posted about a million times? Of course Samba can be commercially harmed by Microsoft's actions! Vendors like IBM, HP, Sun, Red Hat, Novell, and yes, even SCO sell Samba. Just because none of them have exclusive rights to the code does not mean it's not a commercial product! Locking out Samba harms dozens, maybe thousands, of companies, as well as consumers, for the private benefit of just one company. That is the definition of antitrust.
HTH, HAND
It's funny how earlier MS said they wanted to work with the F/OSS community. It's things like this that provide reason why no one should trust MS.
It doesn't preclude "free" implementations. It requires the addition of a notice to any software which consumes it (similar to how the GPL requires you to include the GPL with copies of your software, or software you derive and distribute).
This requirement makes it GPL incompatible, but hardly precludes free implementations.