[Samba] Sernet 4.3.X package is no longer free :/

[Mark Foley]

On Tue, 22 Sep 2015 23:51, Rowland Penny <rowlandpenny241155 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I find it hard not to see some plan behind the fact that the Samba AD component
> is not available from the major distros. 

Just my two-cents: I installed the out-of-the-box Samba 4.0 from the Slackware
64 14.1 distro (still considered a "major distro"?), and have since updated from
the Slackware repos to 4.1.17.  The AD/DC bit ran perfectly from day-one, no
problems at all.  This server does quite a lot.  It is working as a replacement
for SBS 2008 and does "Windows Authentication" for all office WIN7 workstations,
redirected folders, remote desktop login, mail using Outlook/IMAP/Dovecot, DNS,
DHCP, the Samba log lets me monitor rogue DHCP connections and failed AD login
attempts, and more! AD is managed via RSAT from a WIN7 workstation ...  no
complaints or problems at all in the 8 months I've been running it live
production.  I'm no guru; this was my first Samba4 AD/DC installation (after
abandoning a long and fruitless attempt to use OpenChange). 

Support-wise, this maillist helped me solve a couple of minor problems.  So far,
the vanilla "major distro" version works fine and I don't feel the need for paid
support, though I do favor the idea generally (and would like such for
Dovecot, btw!). 

--Mark

-----Original Message-----
> Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2015 23:51:29 +0100
> From: Rowland Penny <rowlandpenny241155 at gmail.com>
> To: samba at lists.samba.org
> Subject: Re: [Samba] Sernet 4.3.X package is no longer free :/
>
> On 22/09/15 23:11, John Gardeniers wrote:
> > I've been following this thread with a degree of interest and it's 
> > fascinating to see the various points of view being thrown about. I 
> > personally believe the truth lies somewhere near that line that is 
> > clearly dividing people into two opposing camps.
>
> No, the truth is that Sernet can no longer afford to provide the Samba 
> packages for free, someone has to pay for them, but the number of people 
> downloading them for free, outweighs the people buying support packages.
>
> >
> > So, playing Devil's advocate: I find it hard not to see some plan 
> > behind the fact that the Samba AD component is not available from the 
> > major distros. Sorry, but I can't help feeling this is part of 
> > Sernet's plan to start charging what really is an exorbitant price for 
> > their packages. 
>
> What?? the problem (if you can call it a problem) is that the rpm 
> distros want to use the kerberos they use for everything else (a not 
> unusual thing to do) but Samba uses heimdal instead, this is the reason 
> that you cannot get AD DC packages for those distros. Debian had a 
> similar problem, but they tried to use their distro heimdal kerberos and 
> it wasn't the same version that Samba uses and this lead to problems, by 
> the time this was sorted out, Jessie was frozen and so you can only get 
> 4.1.17 for stable Debian releases. Sernet had nothing to do with any of 
> this!
>
> > I haven't tried to do so yet (but it's probably the way we will go 
> > forward) but if building the packages and achieving production quality 
> > results really is as easy as some are claiming, why has that not been 
> > done for the major distros?
> >
>
> It is easy to build Samba, but it means using the Samba supplied 
> versions of things like kerberos etc and it all ends up in 
> /usr/local/samba, as for why the distros do not supply uptodate 
> packages, see above, there is nothing sinister in it at all, it is just 
> either bad luck or a sheer lack of enough hours in the day.
>
> > For those comparing the prices to those of Microsoft, please remember 
> > that this is an annual cost with Sernet but a one-off for Microsoft, 
> > making the examples I've seen people using quite nonsensical. In other 
> > words, for those who are choosing Samba purely for cost reasons you 
> > will be financially better off staying with Windows. However, for many 
> > that is neither the main nor the only reason to use Samba. Regardless, 
> > we each make that decision based on our own criteria and nobody else 
> > needs to hear anyone bitch about it.
>
> >
> > Can we please drop this topic, which has become a massive waste of 
> > bandwidth and serves no real purpose.
> >
>
> In this we do agree, this topic should come to an end, it serves no 
> purpose at all, except to moan about the fact the packages will no 
> longer be freely available.
>
> Rowland
>
> > regards,
> > John
> >
> >
>
>
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