[OpenAFS] IBM withdrawing AFS

[Paul Blackburn]

Ken Hornstein wrote:

>>IMHO, this is sad and I do not understand why it's happened.
>>
>
>I can't speak for anyone else, but as a long-time AFS customer IBM
>refused to honor our contract with Transarc (which was questionable to us
>from a legal sense) and was not willing to work with us on the issue.
>So we never ended up purchasing AFS from them, even though we would have
>preferred to have commercial support _and_ we had the dollars to do it.
>I heard similar things from a number of other sites that I exchanged email
>with privately.
>
>I also never saw IBM at any of the AFS Workshops I went to (but I
>didn't go to all of them).  So it didn't seem to me like IBM really
>wanted to be in the AFS business if they a) couldn't figure out how to
>make it reasonable for us to purchase AFS, and b) didn't seem interested
>in hearing from their user community.  So it doesn't surprise me that
>it happened; how long can you reasonably expect to sell a product that
>you don't want to sell and that no one buys?
>
>--Ken
>_______________________________________________
>OpenAFS-info mailing list
>OpenAFS-info@openafs.org
>https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info
>
Ken,

Attending any type of workshop requires business justification
and management support.

I did manage to attend (what I believe was the last) AFS UG meeting
in Pittsburgh in 1993 but you would not believe the hoops I had
to jump through to make that happen.

We have experienced many restrictions on travel and attending conferences.

IMHO, It really does seem like IBM missed a golden opportunity
to foster and develop AFS (and DFS). It also make me wonder
why paying customers apparently did not get the attention they deserve.

I have not seen another product which provides similar capabilities.

It seems to me that there is now a great opportunity for OpenAFS
and others to carry the AFS torch.

Think of the commercial possibilites for providing support and education.

I really hope OpenAFS will flourish as well as Linux has
but it is up to us to make it happen.
--
cheers
paul                                     http://acm.org/~mpb

"Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity
 can usually be traced to an organization."
                               --Jon Bentley from "More Programming Pearls"


disclaimer:
Views expressed here are personal and not endorsed by IBM in any way