[OpenAFS-devel] Moving Forwards

[Troy Benjegerdes]

On Sun, Sep 09, 2012 at 10:29:20PM -0400, Jeffrey Altman wrote:
> On 9/9/2012 9:15 AM, Simon Wilkinson wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > Following on from last weeks plethora of resignations and negativity, I want to propose some ways that we can move forwards, and hopefully reduce the inertia that has built up in our development process. One of my key aims here is to reduce the workload on the remaining Gatekeepers, and to remove any potential for them becoming road blocks in the process. I should add that I'm proposing all of this in an individual capacity - my employer has had no input into what follows!
> 
> While I appreciate your desire to remove the gatekeepers from being
> roadblocks, in some respect that is exactly what the gatekeepers are
> supposed to be.  The gatekeepers have a responsibility to ensure that
> the distribution that is "OpenAFS" maintains interoperability with IBM
> AFS and does not introduce code changes that destabilize existing
> deployments or result in data loss

Two examples where it does appear the current gatekeepers are roadblocks
because some or all of the gatekeepers have a vested financial incentive
to ensure all development goes through their respective organizations:

1) specification of a wire protocol and incremental implementation, so 
we can see that IPv6 support is progressing.

2) rxgk (and the rxk5 implementation, which, to my understanding *worked*
but was dropped)

Is there any public documentation of past code changes that resulted in
data loss and/or destabilization so I can write test suites?

So if I get a working rxk5 on the latest codebase, does anyone have any
ideas for a name/trademark better than 'TFS' (troy's file system) so that
there is no confusion between that fork and OpenAFS? If there are going 
to be stupid legal arguments that IBM owns the .xg files and I can't 
actually distribute a modification that moves forward from OpenAFS, 
then I'd also like to know now so I can start looking at other more 
open protocols to migrate my files to.

If the gatekeepers wish to remain relevant, than I would please request
they come up with a workable IPv6 wire protocol that can be incrementally
developed and deployed to get working isolated cells running v6 within
6 months.