[OpenAFS-devel] [PATCH 1/2] linux < 2.4 cleanup

[Troy Benjegerdes]

> > If the goal is to get the openafs driver accepted into the linux kernel
> > (which is something I think should happen), then it's something that
> > should be done.  Plenty of people don't even view openafs as a
> > distributed filesystem option, since it's not in the kernel; it would be
> > nice to get it in there.
> 
> I highly doubt that the OpenAFS kernel module will ever make it into the Linux
> kernel, given that OpenAFS is governed under the IBM Public License v1.0, and
> that is to my knowledge not compatible with the GPL.  Also, I do not think that
> there really is any interest to try to get the OpenAFS kernel module into the
> Linux kernel, given that it is part of the entire OpenAFS software distribution
> and taking out the kernel module and merging it into the Linux source tree
> seems rather pointless.
> 
> If OpenAFS not being part of the kernel is seen as a reason for not viewing
> OpenAFS as a distributed filesystem option, people with that view may actually
> count themselves lucky.  I don't think they're ready for something like AFS
> (or probably any kind of software that operates on a sufficiently low level
> without actually being part of the kernel).

There is an AFS implementation in the kernel..
However, Openafs is going to be around for awhile on linux.

y@talia:/scratch/troy$ head -n 20 linux-2.6.11.8/Documentation/filesystems/afs.txt
                             kAFS: AFS FILESYSTEM
                             ====================

ABOUT
=====

This filesystem provides a fairly simple AFS filesystem driver. It is under
development and only provides very basic facilities. It does not yet support
the following AFS features:

        (*) Write support.
        (*) Communications security.
        (*) Local caching.
        (*) pioctl() system call.
        (*) Automatic mounting of embedded mountpoints.