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Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK)
Over at ComputerWorld UK, Glyn Moody analyzes the recent news from the Samba world, finding it mostly positive. "First, it confirms that there are groups within Microsoft who are willing to work in good faith with the free software world – whatever their chair-hurling boss may say. Judging by Tridge's comments – and contrary to my own impressions – it also demonstrates that there are people within the European Commission who really get this open source stuff, and want to nurture it. That's something that goes well beyond this agreement, since it is likely to impact future decisions too."
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Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 25, 2007 14:34 UTC (Tue) by mbottrell (guest, #43008) [Link] Andrew Tridgell and Jeremy Allison who head up the Samba team should be commended for the often long and laborious job of wading through all the legal mumbo-jumbo and working with MS and the EC... for not only the benefit of Samba, but for many OSS based products. This is indeed a huge step forward for OSS development, and shows that persistance in 'non-traditional' geeky coding areas such as legal workings are just as important as the latest technical breakthrough. These new bridges built with Microsoft will indeed ensure the Samba team can respond quicker to protocol changes in the Microsoft networking space. This is not only big for those using Linux/BSD/OSX, but anyone buying a consumer NAS product these days (which more often then not ships with bundled Samba software). Hopefully this is the start of true interoperability between proprietary products and their OSS equivalents. The SAMBA/Microsoft arrangement is likely to be studied for other OSS projects to be able to replicate and work more closely with their equivalent commercial products.
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 25, 2007 14:53 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] > This is not only big for those using Linux/BSD/OSX, but anyone buying a consumer NAS product these days (which more often then not ships with bundled Samba software). Ya.. Especially with products like this coming down the pipe: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3943657768.html You can get a 1TB model for under 1K now. Linux on a embedded Sparc proccessor with 256megs of RAM and a 5 year support warrentee (performance issues, hardware, periphrial support). Hopefully with a little updating these sort of things will begin to support LDAP and sport active directory compatability, which shouldn't be far into the future if Samba4 stuff gets off the ground. No per-seat licensing, no software licensing costs, plug-n-play with web-based GUI, etc etc.. hopefully GPLv4 keeping these things open... This represents a tremendous value for small/medium businesses. Absolutely blows any proprietary offering out of the water in terms of value if you do not need the higher-end 'enterprise' features. I could see even larger orginizations buying these as sort of secondary-level 'work group' controllers that take care of a small part of a much larger orginization.
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 25, 2007 16:29 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Oh on a completely side note.. the Sparc proccessor design used in those Netgear NAS things I linked to heavily leverages the LEON1 VHDL, which is released under the LGPL. http://www.kaltech.co.il/LEON%20SPARC%20RAID%20Processor%... I did not realise this before.
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 25, 2007 19:11 UTC (Tue) by jwb (subscriber, #15467) [Link] It also sucks. Take it from someone who owns one. Those Netgear/Infrant NAS machines can hardly push 5MB/s, much less the 100MB/s implied by their gigabit ethernet ports.
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 25, 2007 22:02 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well 5MB/s is pretty pitifull. For a thousand bucks I'd expect about 10 times that much.
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 26, 2007 5:24 UTC (Wed) by spot (subscriber, #15640) [Link] I'm not surprised in the slightest. A sparc32 core? That part of the kernel is so utterly unmaintained and dusty that it barely builds. (Yes, I know it is LEON, and that code isn't in the upstream Linux kernel, but its still based on the upstream sparc32 code. House of cards, and all that. Even money says its 2.4 based.) It would be far more interesting to see something based off the sun4v (niagara) family of CPUs, since that is an "open source" cpu.
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 26, 2007 18:10 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] It was 2.4-based until recently; just this month they released new firmware that's 2.6-based.
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 26, 2007 16:19 UTC (Wed) by pointwood (subscriber, #2814) [Link] I own one too and I agree with you, the performance isn't exactly mindblowing and the webinterface isn't exactly the greatest design ever either (it's slow and unnecessarily bloated). Other than that though, I quite like the little box.
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 26, 2007 21:37 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Maybe some hacking is in order. It would be interesting to see how well tuned these guys have their setup. I wouldn't be suprised at all that they just paid a third party to get the drivers and the kernel working and just threw on a older version of Samba, like from Debian Sarge or whatnot, with all it's defaults. Hardware folks don't realy seem to be able to do a good job software-wise a lot of the time. Two different worlds.
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 26, 2007 23:23 UTC (Wed) by pointwood (subscriber, #2814) [Link] Well, they was actually resonably responsive to be honest, but maybe that has changed since being bought by Netgear...
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 25, 2007 20:49 UTC (Tue) by mszeliga (guest, #42499) [Link] "First, it confirms that there are groups within Microsoft who are willing to work in good faith with the free software world – whatever their chair-hurling boss may say." Silly little me was under the impression that this was something EC told MS to do... and not something some guys in Redmond did just to cooperate with the OSS community for fun, friendsip and love (they would btw. be fired if they did it behind the back of their bosses).
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Dec 30, 2007 11:17 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] "People in MS" != "MS" You're employeer does not represent all the views and opinions you have, right? (Even though they do control you for a significant portion of your life)(Unless, of course, your independent contractor or own your own business.) :)
Samba's Big Step (ComputerWorld UK) Posted Jan 4, 2008 17:06 UTC (Fri) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] """ Silly little me was under the impression that this was something EC told MS to do... """ No. The agreement allowed for per copy royalties by Microsoft. It was not particularly friendly to OSS. Microsoft went the extra mile in making this OSS-friendly agreement. The most interesting thing about it, in my opinion, is that they did not *have to* do it. But they did. Good on Microsoft! And I don't say *that* often.
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