Inside Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Server: Apple replaces Samba for Windows networking services

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  • Reply 81 of 107
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by d-range View Post


    I'm not saying GPLv3 is bad or that Samba should not use it, just that it would probably see more use and more contributions if it had a license more like the BSD license. That would allow software companies to actively incorporate and contribute to the project instead of just using it as-is and deploying it alongside the stuff they write themselves. The example I gave where software companies often shun GPL licensed code or try to work around it in ways that allows them to use GPL code without 'infecting' their own codebase was just meant as an example to show how GPL licensing *does* in fact limit usefulness for other companies than just Apple.



    The fact that GPLv3 asks even more 'freedom' from people using GPLv3 licensed code does not really help here. After everything I've read about GPLv3 I'm still not sure what good it brings compared to GPLv2.



    I don't think you are really thinking this through. What company wants to contribute to something that can then be used against them in the marketplace? If anything, it is the GPL that is a more appropriate license for "interesting contributors" because it puts EVERY ONE on an equal footing including you, me, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle or some garage startup you've never heard of.
  • Reply 82 of 107
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by oomu View Post


    NO you are WRONG !



    you commentators are wrong about gpl2/3



    about the reasons you think it's explaining why apple remove samba you are wrong : GPL 3 ask the same thing than GPL 2.



    it just has new provision to protect the goal of GPL 2 in remote web services (it was a way to circuvment the GPL 2 : put the modified source code behind a web interface and "voilÃ*" : no need to distribute a binary and then to provide the source code to users !"



    but for pratical use for Apple, it's NOT what you think.



    if apple has a problem with GPL3 _OR_ Samba, it's not the reason you think.



    -

    it seems difficult to believe Apple can recreate a complete cifs stacks from scratch.



    it's surely a fork of the samba project. else : wow !



    -

    Linux Torvalds is not against the gpl 3. He had doubts of the need, nothing else.



    For the Linux Project, you have to understand EVERY contributors to the kernel KEEPS their property of their own source code.



    So if you want to change the licence of the whole linux kernel project, you should ask the permission of all contributors. (it's a lot of people and companies)



    And, the gpl 3 doesn't bring useful (or urgent) protection to the health of the linux project, so the kernel maintainers are not interest in re-licence to the GPL 3.



    it's nothing else.



    -

    others project as samba or gnu (and others) ask contributors to give the property (or permissions) to the foundation managing the project to contribute to the main official trunk of the project.



    it has advantages and defaults, it's a choice suiting whatever needs the project has.



    -

    please, you don't need to romance things or to add polemics to be excited by changes.



    Apple doing its own cifs stacks ? WOW ! it's already "wowah" like that.



    You are very, very confused. The GPLv3 does not close the server loophole you mention. There is a license that does that, the GNU Affero GPL (usually referred to as AGPLv3), which is endorsed by FSF and is GPLv3 compatible.



    While we are at it, the GPLv3 does not just have a single new provision over the GPLv2, it reworks a lot of the language, and changes all sorts of things with regards to derivative works, patents, etc.



    Also, Linus most certainly does have serious issues with the GPLv3, which can be seen every so often when a fight about it breaks out on LKML. In particular, he feels Tivoization is a good thing, and one of the explicit goals of the GPLv3 is to prevent that. If you actually did a google search for "Linus GPLv3" or "Linus Tivoization" and read through a few of the more recent list archives that came up you would know that, but here are some links to various things he has said about on the issue:



    http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/17/303

    http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=118236278730043&w=4



    http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=198002077 (a fairly detailed interview with him about a draft version of the GPLv3, but most of his stubstantive issues with it did not change in the final version)



    There is nothing wrong with the liking GPLv3, and there is nothing wrong disliking it. There is something wrong with just making stuff up out of nowhere to justify your position.
  • Reply 83 of 107
    limvallimval Posts: 1member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by foljs View Post


    Oh, and your (bad) english and syntax, does not inspire much confidence in your understanding of licences...



    And your (bad) manners do not inspire non native speakers to contribute to this forum.
  • Reply 84 of 107
    boogabooga Posts: 1,082member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JEDIDIAH View Post


    Apple simply shouldn't be doing anything that makes the GPL3 a problem.



    The problem with the GPLv3 is that one gives up all rights to sue on any patent not just covering but even *related to* the technology in question. If Apple were ever to release anything under GPLv3, it could compromise a lot of their ability to make money off their work. As we all know, a lot of people are trying to duplicate Apple's successful products lately, and while Apple publishes a lot of source under BSD license (WebKit, LLVM+clang, streaming server, etc), they protect their core inventions from copycats.



    IMHO, companies who participate in GPLv3 projects are pretty naive, and it will likely bite them down the line.



    If Apple rolled their own CIFS/AD stack, I wouldn't be surprised to see them BSD it and pull a WebKit.
  • Reply 85 of 107
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Booga View Post


    The problem with the GPLv3 is that one gives up all rights to sue on any patent not just covering but even *related to* the technology in question. If Apple were ever to release anything under GPLv3, it could compromise a lot of their ability to make money off their work. As we all know, a lot of people are trying to duplicate Apple's successful products lately, and while Apple publishes a lot of source under BSD license (WebKit, LLVM+clang, streaming server, etc), they protect their core inventions from copycats.



    IMHO, companies who participate in GPLv3 projects are pretty naive, and it will likely bite them down the line.



    If Apple rolled their own CIFS/AD stack, I wouldn't be surprised to see them BSD it and pull a WebKit.



    IANAL, but I don't think this is correct. If you look at the GPLv3 license you will see:



    "Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version."



    Note the phrase "the contents of its contributor version". I don't think that implies that you are granting a blanket license to "..any patent not just covering but even *related to* the technology in question". You are granting a patent license that covers the contents of the version of the code you shipped ("conveyed" under GPLv3 terminology).



    I'd be interested to read opinions of *real* lawyers though :-).



    Jeremy.
  • Reply 86 of 107
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JEDIDIAH View Post


    None of what you are saying is the least bit relevant. We are talking about the reverse engineered version of someone else's file system here. This isn't the hot new arcane technology we're talking about. This is simple stuff that everyone needs to be able to share and use to communicate.



    SAMBA is the perfect example of something that is outside of the core business and is so far removed from your core competitive advantage as a company, that there is no value in keeping it proprietary.



    There really is ZERO value to there being any proprietary aspects associated with it.



    That includes both the source code of the implementation as well as any underlying patents.



    Apple simply shouldn't be doing anything that makes the GPL3 a problem.



    Unless they want to stick CFIS support into the kernel for some reason...as in Solaris. Then GPL is a huge problem. There's no indication that BSD/MIT/Apache licensed projects suffers from lower levels of corporate collaboration/contribution than GPL ones.



    Exhibit 1: Android.



    Quote:

    At this point, Apple users should be scared and suspicious rather than making up all sorts of lame excuses. Of course they are not but that's another matter.



    FUD. There's no need to fear the removal of Samba in Lion any more than the removal of Java.



    Quote:

    If anything, this seems to be part of a larger strategic move away from open systems. Apple has begun to focus primarily on systems that are inherently hostile to Free Software (even of the GPL2 variety).



    More FUD. Moving away from GPL isn't moving away from open systems. The release of LLVM and Clang under a permissive license is one indicator that what you claim is completely false and fearmongering.



    Moving away from "free" software and toward open source is a good thing.
  • Reply 87 of 107
    krreagankrreagan Posts: 218member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bobrik View Post


    GPLv3 does not prevent anyone to use the software commercially. It just has conditions that Apple finds unacceptable.



    So in Apple's mind it prevents them from using it



    KRR
  • Reply 88 of 107
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by lgerbarg View Post


    You are very, very confused. The GPLv3 does not close the server loophole you mention. There is a license that does that, the GNU Affero GPL (usually referred to as AGPLv3), which is endorsed by FSF and is GPLv3 compatible.



    Heh, even RMS fears Google and isn't completely insane enough to create that large and obvious a schism. My read was that Google basically said to the FSF that if the draft 2 language went forward then GPL was dead to them.
  • Reply 89 of 107
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ghostface147 View Post


    I am naive when it comes to this, but does this mean SMB is going to be a lot more reliable?



    Seconded.



    On a related note, I hope someday they put a default in OS X of not leaving friggin' DS_store files everywhere. Annoyiiinng.
  • Reply 90 of 107
    k.c.k.c. Posts: 60member
    I'm surprised to read that there's going to be a separate release of Lion Server. I thought it was being built into the standard OS and all you had to do was enable it.



    How will the separate release of Lion Server be different ?
  • Reply 91 of 107
    I'd be interested to see if Apple is writing their own CIFS implementation. However I must slightly object to Jeremy's references of the companies using Samba. I can attest working for a company that sells a CIFS implementation to various large companies that some companies in his list have already purchased and/or are purchasing a replacement to the Samba solution and often one of the primary reasons is around GPLv3. Samba supporting GPLv3 does hurt Samba, regardless of whether Jeremy and/or team want to admit to this fact or not.
  • Reply 92 of 107
    outsideroutsider Posts: 6,008member
    In order to hide .DS_Store files we have just edited our smb.conf file to include this line under [global]:



    hide files = /.DS_Store/.*/



    and any other invisible Mac files that show up on Windows.
  • Reply 93 of 107
    looplessloopless Posts: 325member
    I am surpised no-one has bought up the elephant in the SAMBA room , and probably one reason why Apple dumped them ... the disastrously delayed release of 4.0 final.



    Seriously this is a complete embarrassment to the SAMBA team. I am sure Apple just gave up in frustration at the snails pace of development.
  • Reply 94 of 107
    jowie74jowie74 Posts: 540member
    I just hope this means faster connection/authentication to Windows servers from a Mac. Using Samba, I sometimes have to wait for about a minute from choosing the connection to it actually opening up.
  • Reply 95 of 107
    Enter 2012 February and lion after more than 7 months can't search smb shares via the finder... So much for the rhetoric and petty squabbles on protocols and licences apple made sure that the end user got effed at the end and the problem was transposed to them...
  • Reply 96 of 107
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by myapplelove View Post


    Enter 2012 February and lion after more than 7 months can't search smb shares via the finder... So much for the rhetoric and petty squabbles on protocols and licences apple made sure that the end user got effed at the end and the problem was transposed to them...



    Mine searches SMB shares just fine. I can connect to windows machines and linux running samba. Check your network config and the home group settings in windows.
  • Reply 97 of 107
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by benanderson89 View Post


    Mine searches SMB shares just fine. I can connect to windows machines and linux running samba. Check your network config and the home group settings in windows.



    Yeah let me just check it again cause this widely reported issue might simply be my imagination and it's not as if I spent the better part of three days for a workaround...
  • Reply 98 of 107
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by myapplelove View Post


    Yeah let me just check it again cause this widely reported issue might simply be my imagination and it's not as if I spent the better part of three days for a workaround...



    Its not a problem with the Mac, NetBIOS/SMB in general is pretty unreliable and rather slow.

    I have 4 SMB computers on my network (two macs named "Ratchet" and "Clank", a windows called "benjamin-pc" and a headless Linux server called "Denver").



    benjamin-pc can see Clank and Denver from windows explorer, but it can't see Ratchet. Ratchet can see Benjamin-pc and Clank from the Finder, but not Denver. Clank can only see benjamin-pc from the finder.



    I've never known SMB/NetBIOS to be reliable on a wireless network. On a wired network its far better, especially ones with a domain controller. I have no problem browsing SMB at work with a Mac.
  • Reply 99 of 107
    I guess you are one of the lucky ones then, what can I say, there's extensive feedback on this to apple and the support fora and it's to do woth lions implementation of smb2 and I too was referring to wired networks.
  • Reply 100 of 107


    As I have already pointed out in comments in the linked-to articles, there are many commercial companies shipping GPLv3 Samba, and despite dire warnings from a competitor (who was recently purchased to take the SMB code off the market for any other users)  the companies I listed are *still* shipping GPLv3 Samba. In fact there are now more OEM users than when Apple first announced they were removing Samba due to GPLv3.


     


    Here's a good link on a talk I gave on why GPLv3 is a better license for commercial use than GPLv2:


     


    ftp://samba.org/pub/samba/slides/linuxcollab-why-samba-went-gplv3.pdf


     


    My gut feeling about Apple and GPLv3 is on slide 20:


     


    "GPLv3 prohibits locked down “app  store” models, where devices will only install signed binaries from a third party whom they must trust completely"


     


    Which tells you more about where I think Apple are planning to go with later versions of MacOS X.

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