Samba Project to Provide Windows Protocol Access to All Open Source Developers

"Thanks to the Samba project, documentation about Windows networking protocols is now available to free software developers who want it. With the help of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), Samba has hammered out an agreement for obtaining the documentation and has set up the new Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF) to make it accessible to other free software projects.

"The announcement marks the end of nearly a decade of litigation that began when Sun Microsystems requested documentation for the Microsoft Active Directory to build software interoperable with Windows. When Microsoft refused, Sun lodged a complaint with the European Commission, which launched a five year investigation into the issue. The investigation quickly expanded beyond issues of interoperability to include questions about software bundling as well..."

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• Everything You Know About Networking Just Changed(Dec 24, 2007)
• Samba Team Receives Microsoft Protocol Documentation(Dec 20, 2007)