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Microsoft

Microsoft Releases CIFS Docs -- Free Ball & Chain 29

Posted by timothy from the just-like-with-cracker-jacks dept.
juan large moose writes: "Microsoft has released documentation on the CIFS protocol suite, but there may be a catch. The license says that the documentation is available for review, but no one may implement the described technology without signing a 'royalty-free' license agreement. Some reviewers are reporting that the document provides less information than the earlier IETF DRAFT CIFS specification, and may in fact be a cleaned-up version of an outdated Storage Network Industry Association CIFS Document. These other documents do not have the restrictive license."
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Microsoft Releases CIFS Docs -- Free Ball & Chain More

Microsoft Releases CIFS Docs -- Free Ball & Chain

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  • impact on samba (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28, 2002 @02:56PM (#3243283)
    does this mean that samba will do a better job of SMB now?
    • does this mean that samba will do a better job of SMB now?

      I think someone needs to review the moderator guidelines. Why should this be marked "offtopic"?

    • Re:impact on samba (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Probably not. Samba folk probably know the most of the stuff in the docs Microsoft has released. See:
      http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/24490.html

      JLM
  • Why all this wailing and pissing about MS not providing free and unfuckingfettered access to their shit? Here's the deal, and I will be as fucking concise and clear about this as possible: If CIFS doesn't give you a stiffy, then use something else. If the licensing agreement makes you clench your fist and scream "mothafucka mothafucka mothafucka mothafucka" then don't use it. Quite simple. I'm no MBA. I didn't write any books that got reviewed on slashdot, but I will tell you this: Microsoft doesn't want people competing against them with their own products.

    If I give a bum a roll of pennies, and he clenches his fist and socks me in the junk destroying my ability to bring profane motherfucking babies into the world, I'll be upset, to say the least.

    But think about this small cornnut studded turd of wisdom: their Common fucking file system won't be too fucking common if developers don't use it.
  • 1) What reviewers? We've got links to the other versions of the docs, but no links to anybody who has compared them. Any chance of reading what they have to say?
    2) I d/l'ed the M'soft document, and although it refers to the license, I don't see the actual thing that I would be expected to sign and return. Am I missing it, or has Microsoft stashed it somewhere else?
  • This is just the same crappy CIFS documentation that microsoft has been recycling since the mid 90's in yet another doc format.

    The facts are that without the DCE/RPC portion of the spec, you've got to get your reverse engineering hat on.

  • Waiting for ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @05:12PM (#3244312) Homepage Journal

    ...someone like Jeremy Allison to describe the practicalities, not only of the licensing terms, but also the accuracy and the completeness of this specification document.

    I have to wonder, too, just how relevent the information is from the standpoint of timeliness.

    Is this something that is practically out of the bag anyway and therefore of little effective monetary value to Microsoft at this time?

    It's almost certainly of some political value for them to release an interface specification of any kind at this point in time, considering the stakes at risk at the outcome of their current trials and settlement agreement.

    Someone from the Samba team, someone that attempts to reverse engineer things like SMB, Active Directory and NTFS would have a much better insight into the meaning of this than most people.

  • Heard both 'Tridge and Allison speak at different times about how bad the SMB/CIFS documentation is, and that it would be nearly impossible to build a complete interoperable implementation form this so-called 'specification'.

    SMB/CIFS wasn't planned as much as serially kludged from DOS/LanMan on through Win2k. MS looks back hopefully on this and re-writes a specification document which does not conform to real behavior 'on the wire'. This was the assertion of Jeremy Allison at an expo event in San Francisco, coinciding with the debut release of Windows 2000.

  • Is this kind of thing even legal? I mean, how can they enforce such a stupid license? If they want to distribute information, how can they tell us how to use that information?

    (Note: I have not read the article.)

    License: By reading this comment you agree to shoot yourself in the head. Twice.

    • Is this kind of thing even legal? I mean, how can they enforce such a stupid license? If they want to distribute information, how can they tell us how to use that information?

      Say hello to the United States Patent Office [uspto.gov]. Microsoft owns defensive patents on many software technologies but has a history of licensing many of them royalty-free to all comers. (Heck, even the W3C allows patented technologies into its standards, as long as the patents are licensed royalty-free.)

      Note: I have not read the article.

      Figures, since the article is not in a standard format (it's a compressed Windows help file in a self-extracting WinZip archive). To access this Windows help file without agreeing to the self-extractor's license, simply use any popular unzip tool [info-zip.org]. HEY MICRO$OFT, I'M WEARING A "DMCA ME" SIGN!

  • Am I missing something? The page says it's this file system that will work regardless of the underlying operating system, and yet, one of the "system requirements" is a certain operating system, nevermind WHAT operating system...

    Shouldn't it be operating system independent?

    • The page says it's this file system that will work regardless of the underlying operating system, and yet, one of the "system requirements" is a certain operating system, nevermind WHAT operating system...

      The file system that the document describes will work on any OS, but the document itself is a compressed Windows Help file inside a zip file.

  • On a somewhat related note (Score:3, Informative)

    by The Slashdolt ( 518657 ) on Friday March 29, 2002 @12:50AM (#3246478) Homepage
    Microsoft has released source code to their .NET CLI for Windows XP and FreeBSD. It has been released under their shared source license. Article and download available here [microsoft.com].
    I am a (java)developer, so this is a huge deal to me. I submitted it to slashdot yesterday and it was rejected. It is posted over on kuro5shin somewhere. I would think this would be VERY helpful for the mono team.

  • According to this post [samba.org] on Samba Technical, the Storage Network Industry Association [snia.org] will soon release version 1.0 of their SMB/CIFS documentation. Version 0.9 has been available for some time.

    The SNIA doc was based on the earlier Leach/Naik IETF draft, but was updated based on input from many sources, including IBM, HP, the jCIFS Team [samba.org], Microsoft, NetApp, the Samba Team [samba.org], and others. The new SNIA doc does not have the licensing restrictions of the Microsoft release.

    -- JLM

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