By Uno Engborg

April 11, 2002

Looks like we will need some free NFS for windows, to make it simple for windows users to access standard Unix fileservers if samba will be forced to shut down. And then, it will be much easier to switch to Linux/Unix altogether.

19:16

By Jeremy Allison

April 11, 2002

We are currently consulting with the FSF legal council and will be making a public statement soon. In the meantime, "Don't Panic" :-). We're not expecting any changes over this....

Regards,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

19:37

By Clay Berlo

April 11, 2002

> Looks like we will need some free NFS for windows, to make it simple for
> windows users to access standard Unix fileservers if samba will be forced
> to shut down. And then, it will be much easier to switch to Linux/Unix
> altogether.

I'm just guessing something like this isn't all that difficult, given that the source is already freely available and nothing really "new" needs to be cobbled together? If so, why who'd like to start on this project with me, right now? Put out a "Windows Client for Linux Networks" and make it freely availabe on download.com or something. :o)

19:48

By Jeremy Allison

April 11, 2002

> I'm just guessing something like this isn't all that difficult,
> given that the source is already freely available and nothing
> really "new" needs to be cobbled together?

Actually, it's very difficult. The reason is that Microsoft don't document the internal API's you'll need to know to write the thing. You've heard about "hidden" API's in Windows ? This is one of them.

This is one of the reasons we wrote Samba. If a NFS client for windows was easy to write we'd have done that years ago instead :-). Rembmer - Microsoft is full of *really smart* technical people who are *dedicated* to making sure you *have* to use their products, protocols and file formats..... Don't underestimate them.

Regards,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

20:43

Copyright 2002 http://www.linuxtoday.com/