In an announcement on the Samba mailing list, the development team announced that after internal consideration… we have decided to adopt the GPLv3 and LGPLv3 licenses for all future releases of Samba.
The announcement also noted that the forthcoming version 3.0.26 version of Samba has been renamed 3.2.0 to make it clearer which version of the project takes which license. Anything numbered 3.2 or later will be GPLv3, while anything 3.0.x and earlier will remain on GPLv2.
Our View
The adoption of GPLv3 by the Samba project is significant given the popularity of the open source SMB protocol implementation, which enables file and print communication between Windows desktops and non-Windows servers.
As such, the adoption of GPLv3 could prove significant for Microsoft, which maintained last week that it would not be bound by the terms of GPLv3 even if v3 code is included with Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise implementation, for which Microsoft has been providing subscription certificates.
The release of Samba code under GPLv3, beginning with the forthcoming Samba 3.2, could put that theory to the test. According to the Free Software Foundation, which created the GPL, as soon as Novell ships code licensed under the GPLv3, the patent protection promised by Microsoft to Novell SUSE users will pass to all users of v3 code.
Microsoft denied this was the case last week, maintaining that none of its actions are to be misinterpreted as accepting status as a contracting party of GPLv3 or assuming any legal obligations under such license.
Novell has committed to implementing GPLv3 code in SUSE Linux Enterprise, and Samba’s popularity makes it a project that would be difficult not to keep up to date with.
Assuming the FSF is correct, if Samba does end up being the project that causes Microsoft’s patent protection to pass to all GPLv3 users, there will be some happy people amongst the Samba development team.
Many of the core Samba developers had been Novell employees, but resigned en masse in late 2006 in protest at its deal with Microsoft, having earlier urged the company to reconsider the patent agreement. While Jeremy Allison was hired by Google, Red Hat picked up four other key developers.
