The 10th anniversary of "Welcome to the SAMBA Domain" quietly passed on
Thursday 28th of August, 2007, without acknowledgement. When Paul
Ashton and Luke Leighton initially reverse-engineered and
published
the NT Domains protocol, the floodgates were opened to both
Free Software and Proprietary CIFS vendors to interoperate with Microsoft's
flagship product, Windows NT, at an unprecedented level.
The anticipated reprisals from Microsoft did not happen: incredibly,
instead, quiet mutual respect and cooperation crystallised the CIFS
protocols into formal specifications (some of which were quietly
handed out, whilst others had to wait until they were prised from
Microsoft's fingers by the U.S. Dept of Justice and the E.U Commission).
In the intervening eleven years, an enormous amount has been achieved,
yet, frustratingly, an enormous amount has not. This article outlines
the accomplishments to date, and highlights the incredible things that
could be achieved if some specific strategic inter-project free
software cooperation took place. Also outlined are some hints as to
how that can be accomplished, citing examples of prior proven work
in which it has already been achieved, but not yet adopted.