What is Digg?74 Comments
- sp0rk, on 12/21/2007, -2/+79How did you manage to find an image that so well exemplifies all of the article?
- dgh1973, on 12/21/2007, -2/+47FTA...
"Microsoft was required to make this information available to competitors as part of the European Commission March 24th 2004 Decision in the antitrust lawsuit, after losing their appeal against that decision on September 17th 2007."
Right, that explains the "why" then... lord knows they wouldn't cooperate with open standards on their own. - thebman990, on 12/21/2007, -0/+23They can GPL the source code of the implementation of the protocol, not the specifications themselves.
- Jon99UT, on 12/21/2007, -0/+20This is great news, and well overdue!
- barc0001, on 12/21/2007, -4/+20Satan skates to work tomorrow?
- mythicflux, on 12/21/2007, -3/+18Windows Live Search of course.
- edzilla, on 12/21/2007, -1/+14It's not a question of a change of heart, they were _forced_ into it by the european union.
- Stonekeeper, on 12/21/2007, -0/+12This really is great news. The onus is on MS to keep their end of the bargain (updates to documentation). Congratulations, the samba team and the EU.
- max420, on 12/21/2007, -0/+12I love how it just grabs the first image it finds. A lot of the time it grabs an image that is completely unrelated to the article itself.
- geminitojanus, on 12/21/2007, -3/+15They lost a similar case in the USA in the late 90s, but the Justice department gave them a slap on the wrist. It was only after the EU started fining them millions per day that they actually decided to disclose the information (not that they really needed to; their stockholders might have been pissed about it, but Microsoft has more than enough cash in the bank to withstand that kind of cash draw for the next decade or more).
- fkr3, on 12/21/2007, -7/+18But.... but....
Schestowitz'll be along shortly to finish my sentence. - geminitojanus, on 12/21/2007, -2/+13That's the EU case. Look up United States Justice Department v. Microsoft 1999. Note that the American's never enforced any of the sanctions they placed on Microsoft from their various losses. The EU almost immediately started pulling millions from Microsoft a day, and their tune changed quite quickly.
- Abominous, on 12/21/2007, -1/+11Good, hopefully they'll iron out some of the bugs too.
- permenentwaves, on 12/21/2007, -1/+10In general I will agree with that. However, companies with monopoly status must play by different rules.
- chris9902, on 12/21/2007, -0/+9***** sake don't any of you read the article?
- Atomic1fire, on 12/21/2007, -2/+10Non disclosure
and gpl
am I not getting something or is GPL considered disclosure - geminitojanus, on 12/21/2007, -0/+8The NDA prohibits them from disclosing information about the protocol, but not disclosing an implementation of it. Someone could then take Samba's implementation and reauthor a document that explains the protocol, however. This is how most reverse engineering works, and how Linux is able to get drivers for certain pieces of equipment (mainly video related equipment, such as encoders and decoders and graphics card drivers in the case of Intel (and slightly so, AMD/ATi, though they have released information without an NDA after being legally sanitized).
- geminitojanus, on 12/21/2007, -7/+15How about I do it instead:
But.. But.. They lost an antitrust case nearly 10 years ago that said they had to do this, and they're just doing it now?? Wow I wish I had Microsoft's stones and could just ignore the government asking for taxes for 9 years and not get thrown in prison or sanctioned for it. - hamobu, on 12/21/2007, -1/+9Amazing news! It is easier to pull the teeth out of Bill Gates's mouth than it is to get specs from Microsoft.
- baalzebub, on 12/21/2007, -9/+16they paid 10 grand for it too, i bet it only works until microsoft updates something or releases a new version, and then what? another 10 grand?
- sirhomer, on 12/21/2007, -0/+7Well that plan was foiled. Don't worry Microsoft will be back in a week or so with a replacement plan to kill open source.
- sirhomer, on 12/21/2007, -0/+7Then they get the changes as well. I'm not sure how long this lasts, maybe it's perpetual (forever).
- Sunuva, on 12/21/2007, -1/+8I would guess that part of the contract ensured future operability. Why would Samba give $10000 for this unless they were somehow guaranteed the specs wouldn't change tomorrow? Not to mention that networking protocols are the type of thing you don't want to change. It would be stupid of MS to change a protocol or service because they already have many consumers of that service that would have to change as well.
- db113456, on 12/21/2007, -1/+7Nope, this sounds like great news. So unless Microsoft lists the patents it is claiming , it will not be able to claim them later on, that alone would have justified a thousand diggs, the rest is icing on the cake
- sirhomer, on 12/21/2007, -0/+6Reverse engineering a spec from source is a lot easier then from a binary blob though, it's kinda silly.
- baalzebub, on 12/21/2007, -0/+6both replies are correct, it seems microsoft will update the APIs or whatever for Samba as well (as needed), my bad...
- Ryosen, on 12/21/2007, -2/+8That's because the DoJ was ordered to cease their case against Microsoft a few weeks after Bush took office. It was one of his first official acts.
- inactive, on 12/21/2007, -1/+7it's a tarp!
- andycr512, on 12/21/2007, -0/+6Ah, thanks. That makes more sense.
- edzilla, on 12/21/2007, -0/+5Which is pretty much the same deal linux driver developpers offered any company that asked for it.
- Ancestor, on 12/21/2007, -6/+1010 years? How about 3 months? This wasn't result of the old US case, but of a newer European one:
"Microsoft was required to make this information available to competitors as part of the European Commission March 24th 2004 Decision in the antitrust lawsuit, after losing their appeal against that decision on September 17th 2007" - vuke69, on 12/21/2007, -0/+4Begin? Where have you been?
- buckrogers1965, on 12/21/2007, -0/+4MS has been convicted in every jurisdiction for violating the law. They have to obey the law in order to remain in business. The same as everyone else.
- mikedoth, on 12/21/2007, -0/+4I read this earlier on Linux Today. This is great news, hopefully will allow the folks to improve Samba. I just wonder if this will allow for better integration into the environments?
- inactive, on 12/21/2007, -1/+4So now OpenSource projects only need to pay €10,000 to get a list of patents the may or may not infringe on so they can code around them. There also not aloud to pass this information onto anyone else because of a NDA. Expect to see a lot of patches rejected from projects for no apparent reason and functionality yanked from them (at least the official binary builds, they can't of course tell the distros which beens they are not allowed to enable.
Anyone know what is covered under the NDA? I mean if it says your infringing patent #xyz you can just go look that up on the patent registry.
This also doesn't cover puppet companies suddenly popping up and claiming patent rights on things not covered in the MS agreement, the as the Internet IP troll company currently suing Novel and Redhat over virtual windows they somehow got from Xerox. - dgh1973, on 12/21/2007, -3/+6"""
Non disclosure
and gpl
am I not getting something or is GPL considered disclosure
"""
The code that comes from the documentation will be open, but the documentation itself is release under an NDA. Yeah, it's a little muddled but in essence it seems pretty straight forward, no? - MrDo, on 12/21/2007, -1/+4Wasn't there a plan to make a new protocol that will be wrapped in IP, DMCA, whatever.
It seemed obvious because then they could discontinue support for the old protocol in their desktop OS.
Followed by profit because no Open Source can make an implementation because the required license would not allow the source code to be available. And reverse engineering would not be allowed(because of IP). - hyperair, on 12/21/2007, -1/+4About time I say! On a side note doesn't Samba work very well already? My Samba server has done far more than a regular Windows XP computer can do, in terms of file sharing that is.
- andycr512, on 12/21/2007, -6/+8I'm a tiny bit suspicious. As Jeremy Allison of Samba said in this podcast ( http://twit.tv/floww14 ), the entire purpose of SMB2 (Vista's network file transfer protocol) was to "f*** with Samba". As a result they ended up with a very bad standard. I'm not exactly convinced that they would have a change of heart about the issue.
- mjPayne, on 12/21/2007, -0/+2Builds a snow devil too.
- geminitojanus, on 12/21/2007, -0/+2The NDA might actually cover the patent numbers, but that doesn't matter; Samba itself is documentation of CIFS/SMB, and thusly it can be used to regenerate a design document for the project. Patches typically have come only from people who understand the protocol, so you can pretty much trust anything coming from the Samba group to be correct (except for obvious software flaws that don't have comments like /* here for microsoft compatibility */).
The same goes for people implementing various hardware drivers; go take a look in X.org at the hoops they've had to jump through for a good laugh. Oh, and €10,000 and your signature on the NDA gets you a copy of the full documentation to the protocol, which is not that expensive when it comes to implementing standards (I think we spent over a thousand just on the PDFs containing the documentation for a small section of MPEG-4, and once we get it implemented we're looking at several thousand a year for licensing). - Ryosen, on 12/21/2007, -0/+2Best news I've heard all day.
- jpohl, on 12/21/2007, -0/+2I see what you did there
- gn0stik, on 12/21/2007, -0/+1Does this include MAPI?
- rentmitchum, on 12/21/2007, -0/+1When I hear the word Samba my mind immediately fills in "de Amigo" after it. It is my avatar after all, if it can be seen as Amigo goin nuts at the end of kicking the ***** out of a song.
- morphir, on 12/22/2007, -0/+1*lure* *lure* and the trap snaps!
- newl, on 12/21/2007, -1/+2Outstanding news.
- rickcarson, on 12/21/2007, -0/+1Faster than light?
For the Lakota? - geminitojanus, on 12/21/2007, -0/+1It should, but it probably doesn't. The US, had they actually enforced anything, would have required them to release specs for any client-server protocol including MAPI.
- inactive, on 12/21/2007, -1/+2I agree with you superyounan1
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