Longtime Linux CIFS/SMB3 Maintainer Passes Away

There is a changing of the guard with Linux 7.3 as the maintainer of the Common Internet File System (CIFS) / SMB3 code within the Linux kernel. Longtime maintainer, principal Linux CIFS author, and current Microsoft employee Steve French has stepped down due to health reasons.

Longtime Linux CIFS/SMB2/SMB3 developer and Samba team member is sadly stepping away from his kernel maintainer role due to unspecified health reasons. Steve French was a longtime IBM engineer while since 2018 is employed by Microsoft working on Azure Storage and continued there as the upstream maintainer of the CIFS kernel code as well as KSMBD more recently as that newer in-kernel SMB server implementation. French has been contributing to the Linux kernel since 2002 when upstreaming began on the CIFS VFS client.

With the now merged patch, Steve French has stepped down as maintainer with Paulo Alcantara and Namjae Jeon stepping in as the new co-maintainers for CIFS/SMB3.

Update: As an unfortunate update to the original story, it's now been noted this afternoon by Samba developer Jeremy Allison of CIQ in a LinkedIn post that Steve French has passed away. Condolences to his family and an unfortunate loss to the Linux community.