1. Samba and Microsoft Andrew Tridgell Samba Team (please ask questions during the talk!)

2. A new approach Cooperate on protocol knowledge Compete on implementation

3. Rough timeline ● Early cooperation ● Had good technical relationship with Microsoft engineers in mid 1990s ● Relationship deteriorated ● Much less cooperation from around 2000 onwards ● Anti-trust action in Europe (1999 to 2007) ● Lawyers got involved – court decided that Microsoft should share protocol information ● WSPP/PFIF agreement (late 2007) ● Microsoft and PFIF agreed on terms to provide technical information ● Open cooperation (now) ● Microsoft releases documentation publicly!

4. Samba and the PFIF ● PFIF ● Protocol Freedom Information Foundation ● Established December 2007 ● A legal entity that allows free software projects to take advantage of the WSPP protocol program ● Protocol documentation available under a non- disclosure agreement, but compatible with the GPL ● Guarantees provided for at least 5 years of updates and corrections

5. Open documentation ● WSPP and MCPP docs now public ● Under a liberal license ● This release goes much further than the WSPP/PFIF agreement requires ● What does this mean? ● We can now build an open community for cooperation on protocol knowledge ● All of the previously secret documentation under WSPP/PFIF now available to everyone

6. Does PFIF still matter? ● Yes, but not as much ● Using the documentation under the PFIF provides some additional guarantees, particularly around patents ● The PFIF also provides some additional guarantees on documentation updates and corrections ● Should you join the PFIF? ● Yes, if you develop free software that uses the WSPP protocols ● How do you join? ● See me at SambaXP

7. Technical Cooperation ● This is the good stuff! ● Lawyers are now sidelined, engineers have taken over ● We have a public forum for protocol discussion ● We will be participating in a file system plugfest at Microsoft in June ● Microsoft will actively participate in the CIFS plugfest in August ● We have started planning how we will cooperate on test tools

8. Significance for Samba ● What does all this mean for Samba? ● We should no longer get bogged down due to lack of protocol knowledge ● We will be able to directly cooperate with Microsoft engineers on interoperability issues ● The skill set required for some aspects of Samba development has changed ● Not a magic bullet ● Samba won't suddenly change overnight ● Implementing all of the new protocol information we now have will take a long time

9. Introductions Microsoft engineers, please stand up!