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Microsoft Getting Paid for Patents in Linux?
kripkenstein noted an Interview with Jeremy Allison where the interviewer asks 'One of the persistent rumors that's going around is that certain large IT customers have already been paying Microsoft for patent licensing to cover their use of Linux, Samba and other free software projects.' and Jeremy responds
"Yes, that's true, actually. I mean I have had people come up to me and essentially off the record admit that they had been threatened by Microsoft and had got patent cross license and had essentially taken out a license for Microsoft patents on the free software that they were using [...] But they're not telling anyone about it. They're completely doing it off the record."
Since I'm creating a "talk-to-myself" thread here. I have a question for the Windows guys out there.
I've been about 2 years now without using Windows regularly, having started my own company that uses Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX instead. Back when I was still working for a Microsoft Solutions Provider, they made a big stink about how the latest versions of Windows didn't require WINS or NetBIOS for name resolution and SMB. Last night my wife had to work late (tax season, accounting firm) and she had a single user with a Mac laptop that needed to do PPTP VPN, everyone else was using some proprietary "VPN through Internet Explorer" solution. Was easy enough to set up, but she was concerned about the user not being able to "browse" to the nas, which of course was SMB. Mac's "Network Neighborhood" as it were, doesn't populate with all of the networks shares.
This has been a sore point with me for years, and most Windows admins just don't "get it". Name resolution doesn't get you network neighborhood population. Machines have to broadcast (ie, netbios) that they are available and sharing. On Macs, but default they use zeroconf and multicast dns to accomplish this, ie everyone gets a hostname.local name with IP resolution as their LAN IP address. This doesn't happen in windows. Windows uses NetBIOS to accomplish this.
In either case, PPTP is a routing protocol, and despite pulling the wool over your eyes, you do NOT have an IP on the system physical subnet. Broadcasts such as NetBIOS and mdns do not cross subnet barriers. I've had people tell me for years that they can make network neighborhood populate over (pptp) vpn. I make it work for my clients using bridged OpenVPN, whereas you *are* on the same subnet, and broadcasts do get there, but at a performance loss.
Is there some sort of Windows voodoo you admins are using, do you cheat somehow, or what? I told her to just send her an e-mail with a link:
smb://nas.windowsdomain.loc/share%20name
She can click that and it will work, presuming you're pushing one of the directory servers as her dns server. If you push windowsdomain.loc as a search parameter, then you could do just:
smb://nas/share%20name
She was using a Firebox firewall to do the pptp vpn, and apparently you can't push the search parameter. yay. Anyway, Windows people, what's the voodoo here, or am I right and it just can't be done using PPTP?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Mods, buy a clue. I'm the GP, and wanted to reach the guy, but he didn't post his e-mail address. Gawd.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Much as it sucks getting modded down, it WAS off-topic. I'd do the same thing, but I don't fear negative karma.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.