An announcement from Samba . . .

A recent document released by Microsoft has led to some concern within the Samba community regarding patents and licensing. The Samba Team wishes to reassure the Samba community that this document will not have any impact on the use or further development of Samba.

The Microsoft document is a license agreement attached to a technical document which provides information regarding the CIFS protocol. The CIFS protocol (also known as the SMB protocol) is the core protocol that Samba implements to provide seamless filesharing interoperability with Microsoft networking products.

The key concerns that have been raised over this document are:

• Whether the Samba Team needs access to this document for future developments in Samba
• Whether the patents mentioned in the Microsoft license agreement have any impact on current or future usage and development of Samba
• Whether the anti-GPL components of the Microsoft license will change the use of the GNU General Public License for Samba

To reassure the Samba community each of these concerns will be addressed.

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