[OpenAFS] Re: Proposal: OpenAFS foundation to develop AFS server appliance

[Russ Allbery]

Troy Benjegerdes <hozer@hozed.org> writes:

> I believe the proactive case here would be to create an OpenAFS
> foundation with the charter to work with storage hardware vendors to
> offer and market storage hardware with the AFS server software
> pre-installed, in the same way that NFS and CIFS servers are already
> embedded in the storage product hardware offering.

Sure, that would be great.  We haven't gotten anywhere to date with this,
but if you (or someone else) could make this happen, that would be
wonderful.

> I think we all get so tied up in the technical aspects sometimes we
> forget that it is *sales and marketing* that keeps people buying crap
> like NFS and CIFS.

Sales and marketing would be something people generally only do when
they're paid to do it.  :)

Personally, after having followed various efforts in this direction for
years now, I don't think it's possible to put together sufficient funding
for an OpenAFS Foundation to do what it would need to do.  I don't think
you can find enough people to contribute, even assuming the various issues
with trademarks and so forth were resolved.  You really want sustainable
income on the order of a few hundred thousand a year to hire the people
that you'd need to hire.  But I know others disagree, and I certainly
wouldn't stand in the way of anyone trying it!

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>