Yeah, badly worded subject. What I meant to say and didn't, was that you support Windows users by providing client software for an alternative network filesystem. Samba becomes irrelevant, because it is replaced. No need to worry about Microsoft threatening open-source developers with lawyers. Of course it would have to be extremely easy to use and better than Windows file sharing, because you would have to make it good enough to make users think twice about upgrading to MS next operating system that breaks everything.
This is beyond my knowledge of filesystems and their implementation, but maybe a current open-source or free network filesystem should be improved or created to eliminate the need for samba.
Is this feasible?
In my mind, I think that if people can come up with a clone of the Windows file-sharing mechanism, wouldn't it seem possible to come up with an open-source network filesystem that is at least comparable? Add in good client support on at least Mac OS, Windows, and Linux (and hopefully other OSes as well) and hopefully make it solid enough for widespread adoption in Linux distributions or whatever your favorite open-source OS is, and I think that SMB/CIFS becomes irrelevant. Maybe it could be as simple as improving Linux's implementation of NFS and providing quality client support for non-UNIX operating systems (again network filesystems are not my area of expertise).
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Yeah, badly worded subject. What I meant to say and didn't, was that you support Windows users by providing client software for an alternative network filesystem. Samba becomes irrelevant, because it is replaced. No need to worry about Microsoft threatening open-source developers with lawyers. Of course it would have to be extremely easy to use and better than Windows file sharing, because you would have to make it good enough to make users think twice about upgrading to MS next operating system that breaks everything.
This is beyond my knowledge of filesystems and their implementation, but maybe a current open-source or free network filesystem should be improved or created to eliminate the need for samba.
Is this feasible?
In my mind, I think that if people can come up with a clone of the Windows file-sharing mechanism, wouldn't it seem possible to come up with an open-source network filesystem that is at least comparable? Add in good client support on at least Mac OS, Windows, and Linux (and hopefully other OSes as well) and hopefully make it solid enough for widespread adoption in Linux distributions or whatever your favorite open-source OS is, and I think that SMB/CIFS becomes irrelevant. Maybe it could be as simple as improving Linux's implementation of NFS and providing quality client support for non-UNIX operating systems (again network filesystems are not my area of expertise).
Or maybe I'm being too optimistic? I hope not.
Just my two cents.