Microsoft's Slap at Samba 406
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.""
Admiration (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Admiration (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Admiration (Score:4, Insightful)
Without applications, a computer and an OS is still "just a worthless hunk of metal and plastic".
Re:Admiration (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Admiration (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you define what the "basic" application is? To a web surfer, the browser is a basic application, to a photographer photoshop is a basic application.
I think your arguement about everyone wanting a free(dom) OS is flawed - techies want a free OS, most non-techies don't care since they don't have the skills to use that freedom anyway.
Personally I don't see a problem with paying for a closed source application if you need it, so long as your data is stored in an open format. Of course, in my experience, FOSS software is usually great for most jobs and I have no real need to buy closed software. And from my techie point of view, I prefer FOSS because I can fix bugs and hack in new features myself, but for the average user this is a non-issue.
bad analogy award goes to... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 bac
Re:Admiration (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Admiration (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm still not sure how much a family drinks has to do with the price of tea in china, or the price of gas in the U.S. Yes, it does in fact have economy of scale over most other liquids, but we are talking about gasoline here. It's a fairly high demand substance, which should drive the price up. It's not
Re:Admiration (Score:3, Insightful)
Only nobody drinks 40 gallons of milk per week...
And to be fair, milk is subsidized by our federal government. So its real cost is higher.
~Rebecca
Re:Admiration (Score:5, Insightful)
if those are free then anyone is able to build a competing product and the user can jump from one to the other with little or no problems. be it a open source or a closed source product...
this could allso slove the problem of lost information based on it stored on formats that are no longer supported by any current application.
i wonder, if someone found some old first gen ms office files on a floppy somewhere (if they even have a computer with a floppy drive) would they be able to read the content of them with current apps?
Re:Admiration (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Admiration (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Admiration (Score:2)
Re:Admiration (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Admiration (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are one of those moderators who mods things you don't agree with down, please mod this post down too so that you don't spend that modpoint elsewhere. Thanks.
Re:Admiration (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Admiration (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Admiration (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Admiration (Score:3, Insightful)
~S
Same Ol' Same Ol' (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Same Ol' Same Ol' (Score:4, Insightful)
However, they may own enough of the aspects of it that make it difficult to interoperate directly with DCE-RPC or are involved in specific areas like login (with NT4-compatibility mode, for example) to make life somewhat annoying.
IIRC, DCOM is basically a subset of DCE-RPC and omits the strong security stuff anyway.
Finally, this is hardly a brilliant victory. I.e. Samba is hardly worse off today than it was before simply because this does nothing more than attempt to preserve the status quo.
Re:Same Ol' Same Ol' (Score:2)
Our offer. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Our offer. (Score:2)
The best way to protect ideas is to never ever tell anyone about them. [popealien.com]
As the old saying goes... (Score:3, Insightful)
If anybody at the EU Commission is still in love with Microsoft, that should wake them up. I hope.
Re:As the old saying goes... (Score:5, Funny)
Will it be rejected? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Will it be rejected? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Will it be rejected? (Score:3, Informative)
No: the commission doesn't have a choice here (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [yahoo.com].
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."
Re:No: the commission doesn't have a choice here (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case you have Microsoft, convicted of largely destroying the competitive marketplace, is now specifically precluding the one competitor they do have from using their documentation. THis is not a question of the fairness of per-seat licensing fees IMO, but rather a question of fostering a competitive marketplace.
What I would like to see the EU do here is produce an opinion which says something to the effect that per-seat licensing is not acceptable here simply because there are no viable competitors left outside of the open source implimentations, and that such a judgement cannot be generalized to other companies where some semblance of competition still remains.
The problem is that this proposal is specifically designed to protect Microsoft's monopoly in these areas. Furthermore, you have another issue in that such licensing fees could be further used to subsidize the sale of WIndows, thereby allowing them to drop their prices at will in order to destroy competition (hey, it would still be sold above cost once those licensing fees are applied against it).
THis is not a good idea. But I agree that it should not be generalized too much. The market is not ready right now for too much pressure to be placed on closed source vendors as a whole....
Sad. (Score:2)
I hope the EU tells Microsoft off.
The Dark Lord of the Sith (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith (Score:2)
And by the way, does anyone have a larger version of the Gates-Borg picture? I think it'd make a nice addition to my desktop and cell phone's wall papers.
Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith (Score:2)
It seems to already be the right shade of pale; no photoshop (or Gimp) work needed there.
Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith (Score:2)
Sure!
http://carcino.gen.nz/images/index.php/04980e0b/4
Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith (Score:5, Funny)
http://img247.echo.cx/img247/1036/gateslord2rn.jp
Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith (Score:3, Funny)
DarthGatus01.jpg [networkoftheapes.net]
DarthGatus02.jpg [networkoftheapes.net]
The first one turned out the best.
Re:The Dark Lord of the Sith (Score:4, 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!
I'm baffled (Score:4, Insightful)
just remember... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:just remember... (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft Shared Source Initiative (Score:2)
"Shared Source" wasn't court-ordered (Score:2)
So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this thing final? (Score:2)
I hope the targetting of Open Source is rejected. If you want to write code and share it with people you should be allowed that freedom. Not having documentation hasn't STOPPED the SAMBA project... it just takes longer and is a bit more problematic when it comes to ironing
Re:Is this thing final? (Score:3, Informative)
That may be your first clue that this wasn't a criminal case. Sun Microsystems brought a complaint to the Commission of European Communities claiming that Microsoft's business practices went against EU treaties. Hardly the same thing as being tried for robbery or murder. You can read the details [eu.int] of the case for more.
This was predicted. (Score:2)
Why is anyone surprised?
So? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
then samba is considered tainted and is open to injunction against distribution.
just my dos centavos.
sum.zero
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
According to at least one of the Samba developers documentation wouldn't be useful anyway:
(Source [theregister.co.uk] - Found via the Implementing CIFS [ubiqx.org] book)
Re:So? (Score:2)
Fine by me. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fine by me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fine by me. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fine by me. (Score:2, Interesting)
What does it matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
If anything it shows how strong Linux & F/OSS is. I'd say it's more of a compliment rather than an insult.
Re:What does it matter? (Score:2)
It's definately NOT a compliment.
There are many facets. MS could argue that licensees of its proprietary information providing source code to work with such information create a scenario in which a plethora of competing products could quickly and easily be created, interoperating with their closed standard.
The fact that Samba was reverse engineered doesn't turn this into a compliment at all.
Now, what I would argue is that if the Linux community really wanted to hammer a point home, a third party s
Re:What does it matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
"The proposal specifically precludes the information from being used in a Free Software implementation, such as the Samba workgroup server software."
This is a long way from (a logical conclusion that) "Microsoft Wants To Ban Publishing of Samba". Well, OK that might _want_ to, but it only precludes free/open projects from using their specifications.
The SAMBA team have not used published standards (because there weren't any) so far, so it should make no difference. Now,
Microsoft FUD again. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
All but Samba is the same of... (Score:3, Insightful)
Asking to allow competition with all but its main competitor.
What is all this about? Isn't it about allowing competition?
One dollar (Score:2, Interesting)
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 fo
Re:One dollar (Score:2)
Re:One dollar (Score:3, Informative)
Apple, Unix (Score:2)
If Microsoft keeps trying to force companies to choose, the list of arguments against Microsoft will only get longer.
A simple solution (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not free software, it is licensed per site. In order to use this software, you are required to pay one cent per site. For the purposes of this license, a site is defined as a planet with people on it.
Re:A simple solution (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
How does this change anything? (Score:2)
Lic. vs public domain (Score:2)
It's "their property" and forcing them to give it away is hard even for most governments. Forcing them to license it to some 3rd (for profit) organization isn't evil...
Just doens't help us., esp. with DCMA...
Easy solution... charge a penny for Samba (Score:4, Interesting)
Work with us? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong: Samba is not a "Competing" Product (Score:3)
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 [samba.org].
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.
Open Letter to Hobbyists (Score:3, Informative)
so much slapping (Score:4, Funny)
What a load of tripe (Score:5, Insightful)
This requirement makes it GPL incompatible, but hardly precludes free implementations.
Why not just go completely Open Source... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2, Interesting)
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 interope
You do know... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
The EU doesn't like the fact that you can't remove IE and you can't remove Windows Media Player from Windows and that it's already installed from out of the box.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
No, you don't understand, obviously. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:No, you don't understand, obviously. (Score:3)
Exactly.
Many of you will remember the Kerberos fiasco. MIT demanded that MS release their changes to Kerberos or stop using the name, so they released the spec as a
Some slashdotter copied the text straight into his post, with the subject line of "To all my employees..." MS eventually threatened
Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
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"
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2, Informative)
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 pro
Re:I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:I don't understand... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 wh
Re:I don't understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 i
Re:Competitor (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Competitor (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Samba rules! (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)