Microsoft play both sides of that coin. Back in the mid/late 90's they were trying to position CIFS as an "open" protocol (the term "open" may mean different things to different corporate entities). Following their stunning victories in the Pro^H^H^HAnti-Trust trials they decided to charge fees for access to the technology.
Until the last few years, Microsoft did regularly publish CIFS documentation. The archives are still on-line at: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/drg/cifs/ Some of it is very useful stuff. Combine that with the SNIA doc and you have enough to get off to a good start. You hit a wall, though, when you try to implement the MS-RPC calls. CIFS has become, in many cases, a transport for MS-RPC. A lot of functionality is now handled via RPC, and the majority of the RPC stuff isn't openly documented. As for Microsoft "owning" CIFS... They have a proven monopoly on the desktop. They therefore "own" the client side of the CIFS protocol. That, combined with the extensive amount of undocumented RPC calls, some flags and features that are not described in the SNIA doc, etc., puts them in a position to extend their desktop monopoly to the server. That would be illegal, though, so to prove to the courts that they are not trying to extend or perpetuate their monopoly they offer licenses to the technology to competitors. If I remember correctly (I don't have the URL for the site) you can get information about those licenses if you can provide a Dunn & Bradstreet number (to prove your financial worth) and are willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement before-hand. Chris -)------ On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 07:38:00AM -0800, Esh, Andrew wrote: > The following article implies that Microsoft is selling licenses for CIFS, > as if they control the ownership of that protocol: > > http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=27508 > > My understanding is that CIFS is an open protocol, and it is characterized > as such by Microsoft on this page: > > http://www.microsoft.com/mind/1196/cifs.asp > > What do you folks think? Is this just a mix-up of terms? > > --- > Andrew C. Esh mail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Adaptec, Inc. > 2905 Northwest Blvd., Suite 20 763-557-9005 (main) > Plymouth, MN 55441-2644 USA 763-551-6418 (direct) > > -- Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/ -)----- Christopher R. Hertel jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/ -)----- ubiqx development, uninq. ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/ -)----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] OnLineBook -- http://ubiqx.org/cifs/ -)----- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
