French Steps Down as Linux CIFS Maintainer Due to Health Reasons

Steve French, a longtime Linux CIFS/SMB3 maintainer and principal author of the Common Internet File System (CIFS) code within the Linux kernel, has stepped down due to health reasons. He had been employed by Microsoft since 2018, working on Azure Storage and continuing as the upstream maintainer of the CIFS kernel code. French's contribution to the Linux kernel dates back to 2002 when he began upstreaming the CIFS VFS client.

With his departure, Paulo Alcantara and Namjae Jeon have taken over as co-maintainers for CIFS/SMB3. Steve French had been a key figure in the development of the Linux kernel's SMB implementation, having maintained it since 2002. His contributions will be missed.