COURT solicited comments!: Was: Analysis of the Microsoft Settlement from a Samba perspective.

[mitchlist]

Jeremy:

Just wanted to pass this snippet I saw from 
slashdot  
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/07/053230
which says: 
             Public Comment Period In MS/DOJ Battle
           Posted by timothy on Wednesday November 07, @07:03AM
           from the tap-your-mind dept.
           PacketMaster writes: "Somthing that I didn't know,
and perhaps many others didn't
           know is that now this settlement by the federal government
and some of the states will
           go back before the judge and be opened for a 60 day
commentary period by the public
           as required by the Tunney Act (See Sec 5,USC Sec 16).
This is a great opportunity for
           everyone to send in their intelligent and informed
opinions on the matter. If some of the major
           developer groups (i.e. Samba) would put together a
well-thought-out and easy-to-read commentary
           on their concerns, maybe we as a community can affect
the process. See the ZDNet article for more
           information." No forum for public comment is up yet
(first, the proposed settlement must be published in
           the Federal Register), but should be in the near future

Here is the link from the ZDNet article:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5099256,00.html?chkpt=zdnnp1tp02

It would be a great thing if you "Brains" behind samba can write
an easy to understand (after all she IS a judge...) 
explanation of the problem and why it doesnt work for everyone.
Worst case I will be happy to submit it if there are no other
samba team members in the US.
Mitch B

>--- Original Message ---
>From: jra at samba.org (Jeremy Allison)
>To: lwn at lwn.net
>Date: 11/5/01 11:16:39 PM
>

>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.
>
>-- 
>To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read
the
>instructions:  http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
>