Today the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF), a non-profit organization created by the Software Freedom Law Center, signed an agreement with Microsoft to receive the protocol documentation needed to fully interoperate with the Microsoft Windows workgroup server products and to make them available to Free Software projects such as Samba.
Microsoft was required to make this information available to competitors as part of the European Commission March 24th 2004 Decision in the antitrust lawsuit, after losing their appeal against that decision on September 17th 2007.
Andrew Tridgell, creator of Samba, said, "We are very pleased to be able to get access to the technical information necessary to continue to develop Samba as a Free Software project. Although we were disappointed the decision did not address the issue of patent claims over the protocols, it was a great achievement for the European Commission and for enforcement of antitrust laws in Europe. The agreement allows us to keep Samba up to date with recent changes in Microsoft Windows, and also helps other Free Software projects that need to interoperate with Windows".
Jeremy Allison, co-creator of Samba said, "Andrew did a superb job in negotiating the agreement with Microsoft. We will be able to use the information obtained to continue to develop Samba and create more Free Software. We are hoping to get back to the productive relationship we had with Microsoft during the early 1990's when we shared information about these protocols. The agreement also clarifies the exact patent numbers concerned so there is no possibility of misunderstandings around this issue."
Volker Lendecke, head of the Samba Team in Europe said, "I am very pleased to see that the European Commission acknowledged Free Software as a valid competitor in the IT industry and that the License conditions on the protocol information offered to the Free Software world are indeed compatible with the GPL. This is much better than what we have seen in similar cases in other countries and the Commission has done a great job to push the case to this point."
For more, see the complete announcement, including links to additional articles and information.
Selon une dépêche de l'agence , le géant du logiciel Microsoft vient de signer avec la PFIF un accord d'interopérabilité. Cette fondation a acquis une licence auprès de la firme de Redmond pour un montant de  euros. Cette acquisition n'a pu se faire qu'à la condition sine qua non que la PFIF ne dévoile pas les protocoles utilisés par Microsoft.
En revanche, les programmes resteront en 
Selon la dépêche de l'agence en question, ceci ''''.

Cet accord est consécutif à la condamnation du géant américain par les instances européenne pour pratiques anticoncurrentielles. Celui-ci, en refusant de communiquer les différents protocoles à ses concurrents, s'était  imposé dans le secteur des serveurs pour se retrouver en position quasi-monopolistique. Seul Samba avait pu réussir à se maintenir en raison du but non lucratif de son projet. Ce n'est qu'après la confirmation de sa condamnation devant le tribunal de première instance de l'Union européenne, que l'entreprise avait décidé de se plier à la décision de justice.

;Satisfaction chez Samba

Le créateur de Samba, Andrew Tridgell, a déclaré : ''''