Forget software politics for a minute -- what does the new Samba licensing mean for the version you're actually running, and for the distribution that packages it for you? Samba maintainer Jeremy Allison explains.

Jeremy Allison, Samba coder and Google Linux evangelist, looks at past and present efforts to bring standards to computing. Specifically, he looks at Microsoft's attempt to fast-track its Office Open XML file format through the ISO standardisation process. Read on for Jeremy's musings...

Right after the Court of First Instance announced its verdict Monday upholding the EU Commission's finding that Microsoft abused its monopoly, our own Sean Daly did an interview with the following: Georg Greve of FSFE, Jeremy Allison and Volker Lendecke of Samba, and Carlo Piana, their lawyer of record in the case.

What innovations are we stifling right now with patents that lock out the scientists, amateur and professional, from research? What new software can't be created due to these restrictions?

Linus Torvalds used to talk about "world domination" as his goal for Linux. These days, though, while we seem to be making progress toward this end, we also appear to be increasingly complacent.

How are GNU/Linux users preparing for Linus Torvalds' plan of world domination? By playing free software computer games based on the classic world conquest board game Risk. You can perfect your strategy by playing the games XFrisk, TEG, or Ksirk.

"Google has made a donation to assist FSFE's Freedom Task Force with delivering training courses, attending conferences and localising documents [...] «Free Software Foundation Europe has been working to promote and protect Free Software in Europe for many years and the Freedom Task Force is a good example of their long-term approach to supporting the community,» says Jeremy Allison, Member of the Technical Staff - Software Engineer, Google. «I believe that they are doing useful work and I'm proud to see Google supporting their activities.» ..."

The world of free software is full of amazing and even heroic stories (the gcc toolkit for its quality and flexibility, Linux and free desktops for their size and sheer ambition, Samba and Mono for their tenacity at keeping up with confusing quasi-standards) but one of my favorite recent stories is the opening of the iPhone.

"The Samba team will soon get the fruits of the EU antitrust suit against Microsoft. Samba is software which allows an operating system to communicate with Microsoft Windows shared folders and printers over a network. The network protocols Microsoft uses are secret and had to be determined by Samba programmers by listening on the wire to see what Microsoft’s proprietary software would do given a particular input. Microsoft had to be forced to produce the documentation for various network protocols they use..."