Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on December 24, 2004 03:38 AM
As Lee Corso might say, not so fast, my friend:
all Microsoft must do to stop the distribution of samba is to find an operation that they have patented, or introduce a necessary one in a future version of their file sharing
However, Microsoft operates under a unique restriction, one of their own creation: the must be backwards compatible with previous versions of their file sharing system. Often that's jokingly refered to as being bug compatible. Introducing such an addition to their file sharing will be incompatible with previous versions, which is untenable because it will piss off a number of clients. And issuing software updates for their no-longer supported OSs will be politically untenable.
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Re:That's a uniquely GPL issue...
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 24, 2004 03:38 AMHowever, Microsoft operates under a unique restriction, one of their own creation: the must be backwards compatible with previous versions of their file sharing system. Often that's jokingly refered to as being bug compatible. Introducing such an addition to their file sharing will be incompatible with previous versions, which is untenable because it will piss off a number of clients. And issuing software updates for their no-longer supported OSs will be politically untenable.
Hoist on their own petard is the term.
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