<p>Antitrust settlements are not just meant to punish corporations that abuse their dominant market position; they are also meant to remedy the abuse and restore competition to the affected market. In the real world, this rarely happens. But Samba version 4, released yesterday, could become one of the first open source projects to deliver an effective remedy.</p><p>When Microsoft was charged with antitrust violations by a European court in 2004, they agreed to make all the information for network authentication with Active Directory available on fair terms. With substantial effort, the open source Samba project was able to negotiate terms that resulted in documentation becoming available to the project.</p><p>[ Moving files between Unix and Windows systems | Track the latest trends in open source with InfoWorld's Open Sources blog and Technology: Open Source newsletter. ]</p><p>In its efforts to demonstrate compliance, Microsoft went beyond mere licensing to actively support interoperability testing for the new code. Jeremy Allison, one of the core Samba developers, told me:</p><p><a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/samba-4-threatens-microsofts-enterprise-lock-in-209024">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/11/samba4_active_directory_support/">Samba 4 arrives with full Active Directory support</a> (Register)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dG0aSovXXpbHZAMRF994kaHJkRZ_M&ned=us">9 additional articles.</a></p>