[OpenAFS] Funding the formation of an OpenAFS Foundation

[Troy Benjegerdes]

> You of course don't have any obligation to care about how that comes
> across to others, but presumably you think that being part of a community
> is more useful than just striking out on your own or you wouldn't continue
> to participate here.  So I assume that you don't *actually* hold most of
> the people currently working on the project in contempt and instead are
> having a failure of communication.  But that's really how it's coming
> across right now, and no one feels particularly motivated by contempt.

What we have here, is a failure to communicate.

Part of my criteria for a filesystem that I can pull data out of in 30 
years is a viable community, and the fact that I'm bothering responding 
to any of this is evidence (at least in my mind) that anything that's 
coming across as contempt is not at all what I had intended.

I've gone and struck out on my own and tried the latest random filesystem
of the day. I'm good at breaking stuff and exposing jagged edges and broken
design inside black boxes. Everything else I've tried has melted down as 
soon as I really tried to use it.

AFS still melts down and hangs KDE for multiple seconds to minutes at a 
time occasionally when I use it as my home directory. But because (as
Derrick said) this community tries to go for high quality, I've got all
my volumes.

The problem is the infrastructure is crumbling and needs a major overhaul.
IPv4 addresses have effectively run out, which is no big deal to all the 
large AFS installations because they generally have large /16's or /8's 
allocations because they were there when the internet started. What used
to be start-of-the art for encryption and data protection is now laughable.
I could probably build a man-in-the middle real-time AFS encryption cracker
for under a $50,000 USD because we're still stuck with 3des for some reason.

Every time I have raised these sort of issues for the past couple years
I've heard "Oh we're working on that" or "Oh it's expensive"

I got tired of waiting, and I came to the conclusion the community social,
legal, and organizational structure needs some of whatever it is that makes
me good at breaking stuff, and it's either expose you all to it, with the
risk that it might be misinterpreted as contempt, or just walk away.

So yes, I'm purposefully being somewhat abrasive, inflamatory, obnoxious,
provacative, and not particularly tactful.

So here's a general question for the list: Would you rather see OpenAFS
end with a bang because the community imploded, or with a whimper when
all the AFS admins that have been carrying the torch retire and the new
CIO moves everyone to iCloud or google drive?

I'd rather see a bit of a flamewar that shakes out the unexamined
assumptions and brings some new ideas and energy on how to move forward.

So far we've got YFS (or whatever company acquires the IP) and TFS (if
I care enough to hold a torch for it). Is OpenAFS going to join us, or
wait for retirement?