Samba TNG (The Next Generation) was forked in 1999 after Luke Leighton's ambitious plan for full NT domain controller functionality was rejected by the Samba team as too radical. The fork died due to lack of developers.
Samba TNG proposed a multi-layered, modular architecture for implementing DCE/RPC over SMB, with separate daemons for each NT domain service. This contrasted with Samba's monolithic smbd approach. Leighton documented the design in his book 'DCE/RPC over SMB: Samba and Windows NT Domain Internals' (1999).
In the late 1990s, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton had been developing an ambitious research version of Samba known as Samba-NTDOM, which aimed to provide complete Windows NT domain controller functionality using a significantly different architecture from mainstream Samba. The Samba team leaders concluded that the proposed architecture was too radical for the conservative approach needed in core Samba development, and the two sides failed to agree on a transition path.
The team members advocating the TNG approach were encouraged to do their own releases, and in late 1999 the Samba TNG fork was announced. Andrew Tridgell, Samba's original author, was reportedly supportive of the split, noting that Samba's existing design was showing its age but that the main project needed stability.
Despite the ambitious vision, Samba TNG suffered from a chronic lack of developers. The team frequently directed potential users toward mainline Samba due to its better support and wider platform coverage. The project effectively died, though it found a minor afterlife when ReactOS adopted Samba TNG's modular network services code for its SMB implementation.
Samba TNG forked from Samba over architectural disagreements
Fork publicly announced on Slashdot
ReactOS begins using Samba TNG code for SMB support
Development effectively ceases
Samba TNG is a cautionary example of a technically ambitious fork that failed due to lack of community support. However, its modular DCE/RPC architecture influenced later Samba development, and some concepts from TNG were eventually adopted in Samba 3 and 4. The ReactOS project benefited from TNG's modular design.