A year since Microsoft's EU appeal failed

[Posted October 23, 2008 by cook]

Samba's Andrew Bartlett has written a report on recent Samba/Microsoft interoperability events. "Over the 2 weeks at the end of September 2008, I attended two interoperability events in the US, one in Santa Clara and another on Microsoft's campus in Redmond. This has been an amazing year of changes for those of us with an interest in interoperability with Microsoft, and these two events are an excellent example of the change in practice. In short, Microsoft organised an industry plug fest for CIFS and AD technologies and then invited the Samba Team to it's home campus for a week of hands on testing with their engineers. This follows up on documentation of over 100 protocols delivered, well over 100 requests for clarification answered, Samba code debugged and fortnightly conference calls held." (Thanks to Rahul Sundaram).

A year since Microsoft's EU appeal failed

Posted Oct 23, 2008 16:43 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

That's sad that only two people are working on the AD stuff right now.

This is a critical peice of Linux infrastructure, I am surprised that companies are not doing more.

Think about it... There are dozens and dozens of companies out there that are producing 'NAS'-style devices that offer windows file sharing capabilities and the vast majority of those are going to be running Samba.

With Samba4 they could offer full Active Directory interopability plus the ability to be it's own Active Directory server. A full Windows domain controller built into their products. The amount of small businesses and home offices that would love to have that is staggering. Put a nice web interface on it and it'll absoluetely be very very competitive against Microsoft's SBS stuff.

Combine that with Openchange and the ability for that to be a Exchange replacement with Outlook compatibility (not to mention the ability for Evolution to natively integrate into Exchange/AD with full MAPI support) then NAS people could offer a fantastic value.

Hell, for a mid-end style NAS all it would be would be a firmware update and people would have the ability to replace their Windows servers with ease.

A year since Microsoft's EU appeal failed

Posted Oct 23, 2008 20:28 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link]

Very nice information, thanks for the update.

Microsoft must be applauded for doing the right thing and they really seem to do everything they can to help the Samba team. Thanks Microsoft!

FSFE's side

Posted Oct 23, 2008 20:50 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Funny timing. I just redid FSFE's antitrust leaflet.

Must compare to see if I missed anything.

FSFE's role

Posted Oct 24, 2008 11:38 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Since it was often misunderstood, I've put up a blog entry about FSFE's role and motivations in the case.

A year since Microsoft's EU appeal failed

Posted Oct 26, 2008 13:40 UTC (Sun) by mab (guest, #314) [Link]

I wonder if this has anything to do with the push to sharepoint. The MS sales guys that visit us are now saying that file servers are a thing of the past and that the MS Office intergration with sharepoint's document management is the future.