Samba — once considered essential for desktop Linux users and which is still an essential part of enterprise operations — is getting a big security makeover.
On Friday, FOSS Force learned that Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund will be spending more than $766,000 (or more precisely, €688,800) to make some improvement to Samba, the FOSS platform that enables seamless interoperability between systems running Windows, Linux, and Unix. Samba is an essential free and open-source implementation of the SMB protocol, enabling seamless interoperability between systems running Windows, Linux, and Unix.
The Sovereign Tech Fund is a newish agency of the German government that’s tasked with supplying funds to essential open-source projects, to be used to make the project’s software more resilient to external attacks in order to strengthen cyber security and resilience across the German economy. When we first told you about STF in early August, the fund was already investing in cURL, Drupal, Gnome, openSSH, systemd, and other projects. By late August, STF was also funding FreeBSD to the tune of about $750,000.
Last week’s announcement that funds are now going to Samba should remove any doubts that the German government is now a major financial maintainer of essential open-source projects — which is something that open-source communities should be openly grateful about. Here at FOSS Force, we’re also hoping that other governments are paying attention and realize what Germany already knows: that keeping open-source software safe and secure is in every country’s national interest.
STF’s investment in Samba will take place over a three year period and will be managed by SerNet, a company that not only employs several Samba core developers, but also has skin in the game as it’s major product is an enterprise- and AIX-ready version of Samba called Samba+. It also has close ties to Germany. Although the company is currently headquartered in the U.S., it was started in Goettingen, Germany, moved to Berlin in 2005, then moved its headquarters to San Francisco in 2021.
“This project aligns perfectly with the mission of the Sovereign Tech Fund,” SerNet said in a blog post announcing its involvement. “By funding work on Samba the fund is bolstering one of the most critical technologies that underpin global IT infrastructures, particularly in sectors where cross-platform compatibility is vital.”
According to SerNet, the project’s focus will be on areas like transparent failover, SMB3 UNIX extensions, 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 that is as independent as possible of proprietary software regimes, but including optimal interoperability,” the company said.
SerNet said that work on the project began sometime around September 1 and that its expected to be completed by the end of February 2026. After the “first milestone” is reached in November 2024, a detailed report will be published, which will be continuously updated thereafter.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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