Developers of open-source Samba software will find their work a little easier thanks to an agreement with Microsoft, signed last week, that will give them access to previously secret data on how the Windows operating system works.

Microsoft was compelled to make this information available following a March 24, 2004, European Commission antitrust ruling against the company. In July 2006, the EU fined Microsoft €280.5 million (US$338.6 million at that time) for failing to provide documentation on Windows protocols to its rivals. Microsoft lost an appeal of that decision in September, setting the stage for the deal.

The deal was signed with a nonprofit group called the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation, (PFIF) which negotiated on behalf of the Samba team because Samba is not represented by a corporate entity. PFIF will pay a one-time fee of €10,000 and, in return, will be able to allow open-source developers, including the Samba team, to access the documents.

Developers will have to sign nondisclosure agreements and will not be

allowed to redistribute Microsoft's documentation, but they will be able to write open-source software that implements the Windows protocols. The deal will also clarify which patents Microsoft believes are related to this technology, making it easier for open-source developers to avoid patent violations.

Antitrust rulings forced Microsoft to set up protocol-licensing programs in the past, including the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) and the Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP), but these efforts were not compatible with open-source software licenses.

To reach an agreement with the Samba team, Microsoft created a new type of WSPP licensing agreement, which gives developers access to the Windows protocols as well as a clear list of the patents that Microsoft has declared relative to its technology.

"They're giving us all the documentation to make everything work," said Jeremy Allison, co-author of Samba. "We will have no more excuses to suck... if we don't have something, we won't be able to say it's not our fault we don't know how to do it."

Samba and Microsoft executives had been meeting since March in hopes of hammering out a deal, said Sam Ramji, director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, in a blog post entitled "If you're surprised, you're not paying attention."

"I expect that this will significantly improve the process of Samba development, and produce better quality interoperation between Windows and Linux/UNIX environments," he wrote.

Samba is an open-source version of the file-and-print software used by Windows. It is a standard component of the Linux and Unix operating systems, allowing these systems to share data and work alongside Windows clients.

But development of Samba has traditionally been back-breaking work. Developers would analyze network traffic to try and glean how Windows was working and then build their software based on that knowledge-- a process called reverse-engineering.

With the new agreement, developers will have access to Microsoft's own protocol specifications and will be able to build their software based on those documents, Allison said. That, in turn, will accelerate the team's development of its next generation of software, which will implement the new Sever Message Block (SMB) 2.0 protocol, used by Windows Vista.

Though the deal was reached on Thursday, developers were still waiting for the final technical aspects of the document hand-over to be settled, Allison said. He expects to get his hands on the technical specifications fairly soon. "I'm guessing that for my Christmas vacation I'll have some enjoyable things to read," he said.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says Red Hat Linux uses intellectual property owned by Microsoft and that Red Hat's customers should pay Microsoft for it.

Ballmer made the claim, an echo of earlier remarks aimed at the open source community, during a presentation at a Microsoft event Oct. 4 in London.

"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation eventually to compensate us," Ballmer stated, according to news reports, and a video of his remarks posted online.

Asked for comment, Red Hat reiterated its position that its customers are protected from liability by its Open Source Assurance Program, which includes "indemnification against claims raised by any holder of software patents," according to information on Red Hat's Web site.

Red Hat is also a founder of the Open Invention Network, which provides "a patent safe harbor for the Linux environment," Red Hat states.

Ballmer's remarks are "unfortunate," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. If Microsoft really believes Linux violates its patents, it should sue, but that by doing so, it'd be suing its own customers because many use both Microsoft and Linux in their IT systems.

"They have yet to actually make a specific allegation that an identified patent is infringed in a specific product. Until they do it, they'll just create more ill will in the development community and among their own customers, since by their own admission, most of them have both Microsoft and Linux running in their data centers," Zemlin says.

He urged Microsoft to help to reform the software patent system if it supports interoperability with open source. Microsoft entered into an agreement with open source Linux vendor Novell in November 2006 to improve interoperability with Windows and Novell SUSE Linux and protect Novell customers from intellectual property liability claims.

A Gartner research report says Microsoft's strategy is not to file suit but use the infringement claims as leverage to win other agreements like the one with Novell.

"We think the company will attempt to pressure technology providers to come to the table and negotiate an equitable licensing or royalty arrangement in instances where Microsoft can prove its claims of infringement," Gartner stated in response to a May 14 Fortune magazine article in which Microsoft claimed open source software violated 235 of its patents.

Microsoft has signed another deal with a Linux outfit promising to make its software work better and not to sue them.

Ironically this deal is with the outfit that Vole unsuccessfully tried to sue into oblivion called Linspire.

Linspire was called Lindows and aimed to make its Linux operating system as Windows like as possible. In the end Lindows took $20 million from Vole to change its name.

Kevin Carmony, Linspire's chief executive officer, told Associated Press Linspire will license Microsoft code related to Voice over Internet Protocol, Windows Media files and TrueType fonts.

With the addition of the Microsoft code to Linspire's operating system, users will be able to voice-chat with Windows Live Messenger buddies, watch Windows Media video and audio files on open-source media players, and view and create documents using familiar typefaces.

Linspire will use Microsoft's Web search engine as the default on PCs that run its operating system.

The deal protects Linspire users against legal action by Microsoft, which claims open-source software violates more than 200 of its patents. It will be interesting to see where this puts Linspire now that GPL 3 is out. The new Open Sauce licence expressly prohibits this sort of deal.

Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos said his company's technical and marketing agreement with Microsoft will help increase Linux adoption rates because users will have access to improved technology and won't have to fear lawsuits from Redmond.

"What's good for adoption rates is good for Linux," Typaldos said in an interview.

Responding to criticism that tie-ups between Linux distributors and Microsoft amount to a sellout of the open source community, Typaldos said Linux users can actually benefit from such arrangements.

"We're working toward interoperability" between Microsoft systems and Xandros' Linux-based server products, said Typaldos. "This agreement goes well beyond the desktop."

Under a deal announced Monday, Xandros and Microsoft agreed to a broad set of joint technology and marketing initiatives. Among other things, the companies plan to develop software that will link Xandros' System Management tools with Microsoft's System Center -- with an eye to giving IT departments an easier way to manage heterogeneous environments.

Xandros also plans to license a set of Microsoft server communication protocols in order to make its Linux offerings more Windows friendly.

Under the most controversial aspect of the deal, Microsoft will extend "patent covenants" to Xandros' Linux customers, waving its right to sue them for using what the company claims is Microsoft technology embedded in Linux. "For users, it's a way of saying that if sparks fly between Linux and Microsoft, they have insurance," said Typaldos.

Microsoft struck a similar agreement with Linux distributor Novell in November.

The Linux community disputes the claim that the operating system, or other open source software, violates Microsoft patents. In response to the Novell pact, the group that governs open source licensing is in the process of adding provisions to a widely used license that would prohibit Linux distributors from striking patent-protection deals with commercial developers.

Under the third version of the General Public License, expected to be published in final form this month by the Free Software Foundation, all such deals that were not inked by March 28 are forbidden. As a result, it would appear that Xandros will not be allowed to distribute open source code licensed under GPLv3 because of its relationship with Microsoft. Typaldos said he's not concerned. "If you are a businessperson, you can't worry about every eventuality."