<< All they really did is release the docs to implement CIFS (i.e. SMB) under a license that specifically prohibits GPL or LGPL'd products from using them.
Samba so far was written with little or no docs (because MS docs of it sucked) anyway so not much has changed. To be able to use those docs all the Samba developers would have to do is relicense future Samba releases under the BSD license, and really I think that would hurt MS as it would be then possible to have many 3rd party SMB servers all closed source but based off of Samba. Theoretically Samba could be the de-facto standard SMB after a while if enough people incorported it instead of Windows. >>
very interesting speculation.
i think this is just going to further polarize the market. the more stuff like this MS does, the more disgruntled users abandon ship, and the ones who dont, will be probably using 100% MS so it doesnt matter to them. I just got my firewall up and running (hooray), running debian/2.4.18/iptables/ssh, with apache and ftp of some sort to come, perhaps nfs too. i personally could care less about samba. its a neat idea, but similar to wine, it just gives users an excuse to still stay attached to windows in one way or another.