arrivé hier sur la liste samba-fr@???
désolé pour ceux qui y sont aussi abonnés, mais je pense que ça peut interesser
tout le monde.
---------- Message transmis ----------
Subject: [samba-fr] Analysis of the MS Settlement (J. Allison & A. Tridgell)
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 16:20:50 +0100
From: Sylvestre Taburet <staburet@???>
To: samba-fr@???
Jeremy Allison & Andrew Tridgell, membres de la samba team commentent les
récents avatars du procès MS, et les implications sur samba. Attention, je ne
tiens absolument pas à démarrer un troll, c'est juste de l'information.
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-11-06-005-20-OP-MS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---- Jeremy Allison & Andrew Tridgell: Analysis of the MS Settlement and What
It Means for Samba.
Nov 6, 2001, 08 :28 UTC
The Samba Team would welcome Microsoft documenting its proprietary server
protocols. Unfortunately this isn't what the settlement stipulates. The
settlement states :
"E. Starting nine months after the submission of this proposed Final Judgment
to the Court, Microsoft shall make available for use by third parties, for
the sole purpose of interoperating with a Windows Operating System Product,
on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (consistent with Section III.I),
any Communications Protocol that is, on or after the date this Final Judgment
is submitted to the Court, (i) implemented in a Windows Operating System
Product installed on a client computer, and (ii) used to interoperate
natively (i.e., without the addition of software code to the client or server
operating system products) with Windows 2000 Server or products marketed as
its successors installed on a server computer. "
Sounds good for Samba, doesn't it. However, in the "Definition of terms"
section it states :
"Communications Protocol" means the set of rules for information exchange to
accomplish predefined tasks between a Windows Operating System Product on a
client computer and Windows 2000 Server or products marketed as its
successors running on a server computer and connected via a local area
network or a wide area network. These rules govern the format, semantics,
timing, sequencing, and error control of messages exchanged over a network.
Communications Protocol shall not include protocols used to remotely
administer Windows 2000 Server and products marketed as its successors. "
If Microsoft is allowed to be the interpreter of this document, then it
could be interpreted in a very broad sense to explicitly exclude the SMB/CIFS
protocol and all of the Microsoft RPC calls needed by any SMB/CIFS server to
adequately interoperate with Windows 2000. They would claim that these
protocols are used by Windows 2000 server for remote administration and as
such would not be required to be disclosed. In that case, this settlement
would not help interoperability with Microsoft file serving one bit, as it
would be explicitly excluded.
We would hope that a more reasonable interpretation would allow Microsoft to
ensure the security of its products, whilst still being forced to fully
disclose the fundamental protocols that are needed to create interoperable
products.
The holes in this document are large enough for any competent lawyer to drive
several large trucks through. I assume the DoJ lawyers didn't get any
technical advice on this settlement as the exceptions are cleverly worded to
allow Microsoft to attempt to evade any restrictions in previous parts of the
document.
Microsoft has very competent lawyers, as this weakly worded settlement by the
DoJ shows. It is to be hoped the the European Union investigators are not so
easily fooled as the USA.
A secondary problem is the definition of "Reasonable and non-Discriminatory"
(RAND) licensing terms. We have already seen how such a term could damage the
open implementation of the protocols of the Internet. If applied in the same
way here, Open Source/Free Software products would be explicitly excluded.
Regards,
Jeremy Allison,
Andrew Tridgell,
Samba Team.
--
Sylvestre Taburet - MandrakeConsulting
Mandrakesoft S.A. - 43, rue d'Aboukir, 75002 Paris - FRANCE
+33 (1) 40 41 00 41 -
http://www.linux-mandrake.com
-------------------------------------------------------
--
CF : les rouleaux à l'intérieur sont plus larges, j'imagine que ça doit
améliorer le contact avec la boule.
JMG: C'est vrai que c'est vachement plus agréable...
-+- JMG in Guide du Macounet Pervers : Bien nettoyer ses boules -+-
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