Microsoft has contributed code to the Samba project which is GPLv3 licensed and inherently imbued with a strong free software ethos.

On Wednesday, Christopher Hertel of the open source Samba project — an effort that was instrumental in the rise of Linux inside the everyday business — revealed that Microsoft recently contributed some improvements to the project. For him, it was a milestone moment that shouldn’t pass without the software world giving Redmond its due.

“A few years back, a patch submission from coders at Microsoft would have been amazing to the point of unthinkable, but the battles are mostly over and times have changed,” Hertel and his fellow Samba contributors wrote of Redmond’s recent contribution to Samba. “We still disagree on some things such as the role of software patents in preventing the creation of innovative software; but Microsoft is now at the forefront of efforts to build a stronger community and improve interoperability in the SMB world.

This does not come as a surprise to me as much as it might to others. Ever since I’ve had a long interview with Chris at SambaXP for Linux Outlaws, I’ve been aware that the Samba hackers basically know SMB better than many of Microsoft’s own engineers and, ironically, the project has been working together closer with Microsoft people than most if not all free software projects (without ever compromising its strong free software attitude, I might add). Nonetheless, it’s nice to see that Microsoft has finally contributed code to a GPLv3 codebase. Let us hope this is one of many steps in that direction.

There are also words of caution coming from the Samba hackers, though:

But Hertel warns that we shouldn’t go too far. “There is a lot of cool stuff going on here,” he tells us. “But you can’t be completely sure. Microsoft is big company. A lot of the people who were making policy decisions years ago are still there, and there are many situations where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”

It’s also worth remembering that Samba isn’t nearly as influential as it once was. “These days, with most applications being on the web or moving to the web, we’re much less important,” Jeremy Allison, one of the leader’s of the Samba project, tells Wired. “We’re just a commodity.”

Jeremy Allison now works for Google, as part of the company’s Open Source Programs Office, and like Hertel, he supplies a few caveats when discussing Microsoft’s Samba contribution. “This shows that Microsoft has changed the way they compete with open source code. They’ve realized that open source isn’t going to go away, that it can’t be driven out of the marketplace, that they have to accept it,” Allison says. “But you can also say that, basically, Microsoft has moved on to fighting open source projects with patents.”

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Microsoft has contributed code to the Samba project which is GPLv3 licensed and inherently imbued with a strong free software ethos. On Wednesday, Christopher Hertel of the open source Samba project — an effort that was instrumental in the rise of Linux inside the everyday business — revealed that Microsoft recently contributed some improvements to the project. ...