€688.8K Funding for Samba Project from Germany’s National Technology Fund
German firm SerNet GmbH, specialized in providing services and backing for open-source software with a strong emphasis on Samba, has received a sizable sum of €688,800 from the German Sovereign Tech Fund (STF). This funding aims to propel the Samba project forward, fortifying its position in the open-source software realm.
The STF, a significant advocate and benefactor of open-source initiatives, previously allocated €1 million to the GNOME Project, invested €203K in GStreamer and €157K in FFmpeg earlier this year, and recently granted €686K to FreeBSD. Now, it has extended its support to the Samba Project.
For those not acquainted with Samba, it stands as critical open-source software with a prestigious track record spanning over three decades. Focused on enabling identity and access management as well as seamless file-sharing interoperability between Windows, Linux, and Unix systems, Samba’s latest stable version, 4.21, was recently released.
Under the service agreement, Samba’s core developers will be working on 17 pivotal milestones across six target areas over the next 18 months. The primary goals include bolstering Samba’s security, scalability, and functionality with a special emphasis on transparent failover, SMB3 UNIX extensions, and modern security protocols like SMB over QUIC.
These enhancements are geared towards upholding Samba’s position as a reliable and secure solution for organizations seeking independence from proprietary software while ensuring seamless interoperability in their IT infrastructures.
Development work commenced promptly on September 1 and is slated for completion by the end of February 2026 for all outlined milestones. Progress and outcomes will be promptly shared on public Samba software repositories following each milestone’s completion and testing.
The partnership between SerNet and Samba holds significant weight due to various key factors:
- Skilled Developers: SerNet houses developers from the official Samba Team who actively contribute to the software’s development, maintenance, and improvement.
- Code Contributions: The company plays an active role in providing code contributions, patches, and new features to boost Samba’s functionality and reliability.
- Professional Support: SerNet extends professional support services to organizations leveraging Samba, offering assistance with installation, configuration, troubleshooting, and optimization tailored to enterprise needs.
- SAMBA+ Packages: SerNet offers precompiled SAMBA+ packages and optimized versions of Samba for various Enterprise Linux distributions such as RHEL, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Oracle Linux, Debian, and Ubuntu.
For further details, refer to SerNet’s official announcement. Additional information regarding the investment from the STF is expected to be available on their website shortly.
