'Samba' Networking Protocol Project Gets Big Funding from the German Sovereign Tech Fund

Samba is 'a free software re-implementation of the SMB networking protocol,' according to Wikipedia. And now the Samba project 'has secured significant funding (€688,800.00) from the German Sovereign Tech Fund to advance the project,' writes Jeremy Allison — Sam (who is Slashdot reader #8,157 — and also a long standing member of Samba's core team):

The investment was successfully applied for by [information security service provider] SerNet. Over the next 18 months, Samba developers from SerNet will tackle 17 key development subprojects aimed at enhancing Samba's security, scalability, and functionality.

The Sovereign Tech Fund is a German federal government funding program that supports the development, improvement, and maintenance of open digital infrastructure. Their goal is to sustainably strengthen the open source ecosystem.

The project's focus is on areas like SMB3 Transparent Failover, SMB3 UNIX extensions, SMB-Direct, Performance and modern security protocols such as SMB over QUIC. These improvements are designed to ensure that Samba remains a robust and secure solution for organizations that rely on a sovereign IT infrastructure. Development work began as early as September the 1st and is expected to be completed by the end of February 2026 for all sub-projects.

All development will be done in the open following the existing Samba development process. First gitlab CI pipelines have already been running and gitlab MRs will appear soon!


Back in 2000, Jeremy Allison answered questions from Slashdot readers about Samba.
Allison is now a board member at both the GNOME Foundation and the Software Freedom Conservancy, a distinguished engineer at Rocky Linux creator CIQ, and a long-time free software advocate.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.