Andrew Tridgell Completes OSDL Fellowship

Samba creator wraps up Samba 4 technology preview, returns to IBM

BEAVERTON, OR., February 1, 2006 - The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux®, today announced that Samba creator Andrew Tridgell has finished his work on Samba 4 at the Labs and will return to his position at IBM. Tridgell leaves OSDL after a one-year fellowship that began in January 2005. He will continue as project leader for Samba with renewed emphasis on key programs at IBM.

''OSDL provides a venue where open source leaders can focus on specific projects in order to move them forward without distraction,'' said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL. ''Andrew’s dedicated focus to Samba 4 while at OSDL has given the community and end users an immeasurable asset with which to adopt and deploy.''

The Samba 4 technology preview was released last week with significant progress made on each of the projects’ five major goals: protocol completeness, extreme testability, non-POSIX backends, fully asynchronous internals and flexible process models. Samba is used by millions of people around the world and is a critical component of Linux in the enterprise, allowing Windows® clients to access a server's filespace and printers via the SMB (Server Message Block) CIFS (Common Internet File System) protocols.

''An enormous amount of progress towards the completion of Samba 4 was made while I was an OSDL fellow, which culminated in the release of the first technology preview release of Samba4 last week,'' said Tridgell. ''Having time to concentrate just on the one project really helped. Many thanks to OSDL for providing the fellowship and supporting Samba development.''

About the Open Source Development Lab

OSDL - home to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux - is dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux. Founded in 2000 by CA, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel and NEC, OSDL is a non-profit organization at the center of Linux supported by a global consortium of more than 60 of the world’s largest Linux customers and IT industry leaders. OSDL sponsors industry-wide initiatives around Linux in telecommunications, in the enterprise data center and on corporate desktops. The Lab also provides Linux expertise and computing and test facilities in the United States and Japan available to developers around the world. Visit OSDL on the Web at http://osdl.org/.

OSDL is a registered trademark of Open Source Development Labs, Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Third party marks and brands are the property of their respective holders.