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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
As usual, Microsoft turns stinging defeat into a brilliant victory. I have but one question, however, how much of all of this does MS in fact actually own? I mean, all the base LANServer stuff was jointly developed with IBM, and I'm sure IBM wouldn't be too happy with MS trying to shut Samba down.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
"When you have dinner with the devil, make sure you have a long spoon".
If anybody at the EU Commission is still in love with Microsoft, that should wake them up. I hope.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Won't this proposal likely be rejected too then, seeing as IIRC a major reason the previous one was rejected was because it disallowed open source implementatins?
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
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.
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.
the European politicians asked European computer industry representatives for whether this was a good solution. And since most of them have just as much stake in closed, proprietary solutions as Microsoft, they all nodded in agreement.
Microsoft loves this because they know they can kill any commercial competitor they like through either FUD or just buying them; they just haven't figured out how to kill competition from FOSS.
FOSS advocates need to be vocal and clear that this is not an acceptable solution and that it will hurt competition and that it will hurt the economy.
I thought people/companies were free (as in speech!) to release their code under whatever license terms they wish. Does "free as in Free Software" actually mean "whatever the FSF deems acceptable"?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Has Microsoft shared interoperability info in the past? Sure if this is accepted it won't make the Samba team's job any easier, but its not going to make it harder than it already is. These guys are amazingly good at reverse engineering MS's stuff. Sure it would be nice if the EU made MS give away the keys to the castle, but really do we need it? All this doom and gloom is completely unfounded.
Samba hasn't had this data in the past, and they've managed to write a darn good SMB/CIFS server. This won't end the Samba project by any means.
I'm not saying MS shouldn't have to share the data, I'm just saying if they don't it won't be the end of the world
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!
So now a non-oss company of SAMBA team members makes one closed source binary that contains only the necessary functions and sells the rights to distribute the binary for $1 to SAMBA. All of the tools that utilize that binary are still open, and any functionality that REQUIRES knowledge of the MS code, must be implemented in that binary. MS is happy, the Linux world is happy, I'm happy. Not as thrilled as if they would allow OSS to use this info, but still happy!
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
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!
I don't see how this will affect Samba. They've never had access to how SMB/CIFS works in the past, how will not having access to it now affect them?
If anything it shows how strong Linux & F/OSS is. I'd say it's more of a compliment rather than an insult.
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It's not like Samba could be commercially harmed by Microsoft's actions.
Oh SURE they can! They can simply sue Samba devs for "using our specifications illegally as stated in blahblahblah".
The samba devs would have to prove that they did NOT in fact read the specs. Frankly I don't know how this is different from software patents.
It isn't a copy of MS technology. It is a copy of DEC and IBM technology, with a few mods so it will also work properly with MS technology...
Oh well, what the hell...
People have incorrectly assumed that Samba must implement the methods described in these patents. In fact, the methods described in these patents are quite inappropriate for a Unix/POSIX CIFS implementation such as Samba. It would not even be possible to implement the methods described in these patents in a portable POSIX application. Instead, Samba treats the SMBreadbraw and SMBwritebraw protocol elements in the same way as all other elements of the CIFS/SMB protocol. This means that Samba should be completely unaffected by the existence of these patents. Microsoft claims that Samba is infringing anyway.
After all, I am strangely colored.
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.
Asking to allow competition with all but its main competitor.
What is all this about? Isn't it about allowing competition?
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Putting aside criticism of a decision that would support this suggestion from Microsoft, what's to stop the Samba people from incorporating and "selling" their product for $1 (or Euro, or whatever), if the stipulation is that free software can't make use of this?
It would of course require a change in license. But, apart from developers who have a moral objection to terms like this and would no longer work on the project, wouldn't it still be a viable project? Would people no longer be willing to work for free on "dollar-ware" -- especially if the idea is to beat Microsoft at its own game?
Maybe the project would fork: Samba would continue to more or less reverse engineer, and a new project could make use of Microsoft's publication.
This is just a thought. Please, no flames!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
It's down to Microsoft's good grace that it still exists at all.
From what I understand, Samba was created through reverse engineering, and the main reason MS hasn't sued is because basically, they can't - it's a product designed solely for interoperability, and any case would (hopefully) be thrown out.
"If MS had 50% of the market, SAMBA wouldn't have a case"
Even in that case Samba would have a winning case.
You have ALWAYS to allow for interoperatibility; if you don't like it, just don't play the game. Bill Gates is free to take his money and smoke it if he wants (well, even literally, I think that in the States firing a money note is not considered "destroying federal property" now), but if he wants to "build thingies" that interoperaty with anything else, he should allow for anything else to interoperate with hims.
Even in the USA with such corporate-favouring laws you should have present the "Lexmark case". I don't think Lexmark holds 50% of any bussiness, still they lost regarding the "unofficial" tonner marketeers.
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"
[i] Why a commercial company should be forced to dismantle and hand itself over to open source.[/i]
It isn't being ordered to do that. MS is a monopoly. Not necessarely illegal, but hurts the consumers just the same. In order to mitigate that unnecessary damage, monopolies are usually regulated.
In this case, the EU doesn't want this company, especially since it is foreign, to hinder any competition in the market. MS does that, or has the power to do that, very well with its control over proprietary protocols and desktop dominance. The EU wants to dismantle this control to create an even playing field, so that anyone (including open source) can implement their own tools to use those communication channels as well as MS. The hope is that the market will foster more competition and thus benefit the consumer.
They aren't ordering MS to turn over all its code and copyrights. Just the way they setup (not implemented) certain communication components.
Of course with Politics out and above swinging maddly, they probably shot a bit high. They learned from our DOJ, if you shoot at the target, MS will nudge it just enough to miss. The EU is shooting really high and hoping after all the delays, back and forth mumbling, and what not, the arrow will at the least hit the edge of the target.
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!
> 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
Anti-trust action can be a harsh solution.
Look at the case against Alcoa Aluminum back in the 1940's (or possibly 50's). They were not carrying out any predatory practices against their competitors, just innovating better and faster ways to make and deliver aluminum.
Because they did it so well, they left their competitors in the dust and dominated the market.
The U.S. government forced them to give their trade secrets to their competitors and make major adjustments to their pricing and marketing to allow their less-worthy competitors to profit and gain market share.
So, the precedent is there for the same kind of thing to happen again.
"If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime." - Unknown
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
Samba itself can only be harmed if Microsoft uses this declaration as a wedge to enforce what it sees as its rights to a proprietary protocol (that they (a) didn't originally create, and (b) published a couple of RFCs about).
But... Sun and IBM and RedHat and HP and Novell, who all use the Samba server in their OS offerings to compete with Microsoft, will definitely be harmed by this decision if it stands.
As to why a monopolist aggressor should be forced to dismantle itself, a corporation is an artificial entity created to serve the needs of the citizens; in relatively recent times, a corporation is a demi-person. If we can inflict significant penalties (most of a person's life) for crimes, what is irrational about forcing a monopolist to disclose protocol documentation?
Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry -- Mark Twain
**slaps head** The yoda misquote aside...
big business should be protected from open source because it wipes out their profits without any commercial gain and impacts taxable income!
Like IBM, Redhat, and dozens of other businesses out there right? Oh, those don't count? Even for businesses that don't have a direct stake in OSS, there's a huge capital advantage because it allows businesses to shift capital away from non-core expenses. ie. they're not wasting money on software. Thus businesses as a whole are strengthened becuase of OSS. Only the relatively few boxed software companies will feel the pinch. The rest do better.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
...(thus making it public knowledge),... Ummm, I think that is the whole point. The EU wants those interface protocols (not code) to be completely open for everyone to use just as freely as MS is able to. Its another matter to lose ownership and have it fall into the public domain.
Breakfast served all day!
Perhaps Samba should start charging a penny for the software. And ignore "piracy". And oops, mess up the CVS firewalling and permissions so that everyone can get at the code.
Vote Libertarian
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.
Nope.
You're repeating yourself, and it's still no.
Repeating yourself again, using imagery to reinforce it, and again...no.
Samba is not a competitor to Microsoft. Samba does not run on Microsoft Windows. Microsoft does not sell or market it's SMB protocols separately from Windows. Microsofts SMB protocols have not been ported to any other operating system on which Samba runs.
Microsoft refusing to open source their protocols and methods does not disadvantage the Samba project, principally because nothing has changed anyway. Samba arose from reverse engineering SMB messages sniffed out on a network. And Samba engineers will continue to improvise, adapt, and overcome like they always have. That adaptability is what makes OSS better than proprietary solutions.
Now go back to sleep, chicken little.
Why a commercial company should be forced to dismantle and hand itself over to open source.
This is similar to the IBM anti-trust suit in the 1980s where IBM was using different connectors on their models to prevent third-party companies from making compatible hardware. The court forced IBM to use the same connectors for all models in the same family. Some of these connectors became defacto standards for serial and parallel interconnectivity. Microsoft needs to be held to the same standard for software interoperativity.
Microsoft themselves offer an NFS client and server as part of their "Services for Unix" download.
http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine .html
I guess the world owes him a living. Notice the date on it.
C|N>K
i'm bill gates, bitch!
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.
"Samba is the only remaining major competitor of Microsoft in this market."
Uh, what market is that? File serving? EMC, Network Appliance, SNAP, and others might challenge that. Maybe I really just don't understand what "market" is being referred to here.
Why not just write an open source "Samba Service" for windows which will provide the same functionality without relying on the "Inner Party" (redmond) to provide a closed solution. As an added bonus, you won't have to wait for a "hotfix" or "service pack" when security issues arise.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
This has already been discussed at length by the industry analysts last week when the EU indicated that it was likely to accept Microsoft's proposal. See http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/zd/200506 02/tc_zd/153327.
There were effectively two requirements resulting from this case: Selling a version of Windows without Media Player, and Licensing the technology behind its Server protocols.
It's the latter case that the EU can't do much about. Microsoft wants to charge a per-copy license fee for implementations of its Server protocols. The EU's ruling requires Microsoft to license the protocols, but explicitly allows the company to charge fees for the licenses. OSS projects hate this "per-seat" license because it doesn't work with their model of giving away copies without even keeping track of how many are in existence. So the OSS community is lobbying the EU Commission to reject ANY per-seat license fee, because it destroys their ability to use such a license.
Unfortunately for the OSS community, the EU Commision doesn't just represent OSS groups: it also represents all the makers of proprietary software throughout Europe. And these proprietary software vendors actually support Microsoft's position here.
See, per-seat licensing is an extremely common way to sell software; revenue is generated in direct proportion to the popularity of your product. These proprietary software vendors are scared at the thought that any company should be forced to give up this form of sales because it is "incompatible with OSS competition." So when the EU shops around this Microsoft proposal to industry leaders, most commercial software companies will probably indicate their satisfaction with Microsoft's per-seat license proposal. They certainly don't want to set up any legal precedents for future run-ins with Open Source competitors claiming THEIR license fees are "unfair."
Very interesting artical. It also says that the IDL descriptions would be extreemly useful. If Microsoft was only concerned about sharing the source code then they would be happy to give these so called IDL descriptions.
"There is information that the Samba developers want to see: the IDL descriptions for remote procedure calls. These underpin tasks such as adding users, and adding quotas and shares, and Samba developers have successfully decoded them over the wire. But it's hard work.
"These IDL descriptions are *key* for providing interoperability with Microsoft clients," wrote the team in a submission to the EU commissioners earlier this year. "If these IDL descriptions were published, open and equal interoperability with Microsoft products would be greatly enhanced (although still not perfect)."
Allison says the Samba team has requested the IDL definitions from Microsoft annually, most recently at the 2001 CIFS conference, without success."
It's one thing to charge for an fork...but without food, that cutlery is just worthless hunks of metal and plastic.
That argument makes no sense at all. For one thing, people CAN and SHOULD be able to offer free and "Free" food. My mother obtained strawberry plants--at no cost--form a fellow parishoner many years ago. They have since thrived and MULTIPLIED and now mum's strawberry patch is too large for her to manage. She put many plants in the compost but gave some to me so I could grow them in the back yard. The ladies out there also sell fresh strawberries, pies and preserves at farmer's markets in addition to giving away stuff to friends.
There you have it--the biological version of "peer-to-peer file sharing". There is no law against the "unauthorised duplication and/or distribution of strawberries" that a large corporation can use to restrict individuals or potential competitors from making strawberries. International dumping laws are the closest thing, and they only apply to governments and large companies who sell at a loss to deliberately eliminate a competitor.
Microsoft is trying to be like Monsanto--who has new breeds of oilseeds and grains and is trying to use the patent system to restrict and control a natural process. Neither is right in doing that. Microsoft's solution around CIFS is like Monsanto saying "we'll publish the information on our roundup-ready Canola, but that co-op of Saskatchewan farmers or that university research group cannot ever make a royalty-free version to compete with our variety".
In both situations I think this is damaging to society--especially in ther case of agriculture. Food is much too important to be the proprietary domain of a molopolistic enterprise. While software is not an important basic need for people, it is nonetheless a vital part of the global economy, so I believe Micorosft's proposed remedy is entirely insufficient. It holds a monopoly over a protocol that enables information exchange important to the functioning of most business systems. MS has demonstrated in the past it cannot be trusted with SMB/CIFS as it has made changes to deliberately break reverse-engineered systems. Microsoft should've been ordered to relinquish control of the protocol to a standards body like ECMA/IEC/IEEE/ISO...and prohibited from applying restrictions of use which are obviously targeted at preventing their main competitor from operating under the terms of its own choosing.