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On Saturday 20 April 2002 13:10, you wrote:
i'm puzzled - i thought SMB was an open protocol - there's an article about it in this month LXF. it's an interview with the guy who runs SAMBA development.
But MS are doing their usual thing, changing some detail of the protocol, so that it doesn't work with other systems. A sort of reverse of "good engineering by good neighbours cooperating for the common good " which is what we should by now be seeing. They are of course wholly unreformed, indeed I would not rule out some courts deciding that such conduct while in the midst of their lawsuits amounted to demonstrating contempt for the court, as well as the rest of the world. Now software copyright is a sensible idea, but software patents, as applied in the US and to an alarming extent in the EU now, are a really bad idea. They do not fulfill the purpose of the patent, but also tend to be granted for things that are obvious, and things that were worked out long ago by people other than those who produce them. But if MS can change SMB by adding a patented "extension" to it then they can seek to sell licences and obviously are not inclined to sell licences to anyone other than large firms. Gates declared himself many years ago, to be an enemy of open source and free software, and as the MS model of business begins to falter (it is) the frenzy to make any other model impossible is growing. I think we are heading toward a cusp. Personally, I like NT4, and see no need to go beyond it. -- From one of the Linux desktops of Dr Adrian Midgley http://www.defoam.net/ -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.