[OpenAFS] Funding the formation of an OpenAFS Foundation

[Brian Sebby]

I'm actually leaving out every single other part of this thread because I
think it's been hashed over enough, but I wanted to put in my two cents.

Troy: if you believe that your fork of AFS is the future, then please, go
off, develop it, and come back and show us what you've got.  If it does all
the things you want, great!  But continuing to insult everyone involved with
OpenAFS is doing you absolutely no favors, and you're not burning bridges -
you're nuking them.

I got involved with AFS in 2000 when I was hired by Argonne, fell in
love with it, and continue to maintain it here and advocate for it today.
I'll be honest - over the past few years, some of its limitations have made
it a harder sell, but it still provides unique functionality that we need and 
use, and as I've told people at LISA and other places - AFS will not solve all
your problems, but it solves a certain class of problems *very well*.

I first met Derrick and many of the core AFS folks back at my first OpenAFS 
LISA workshop back in 2001, and over the years, I've been very glad to add
to that list Jeff, Simon, Alf, Moose, Love, and many others.  As problems 
have come up for me over the years, it's been great to be able to talk to 
everyone on the list, chat, etc. to get help, and to see fixes for problems 
be made available in a matter of days instead of weeks or months.  This is
a great community that has always been very good about helping each other.

To Jeff, especially, I have to say this - you are one of the most talented
programmers I have ever known, and I cannot thank you enough for the work
that you've put into OpenAFS.  I think it's no exaggeration that if you
hadn't come in and turned the Windows client from the unusable shape that
IBM had left it in to the IFS-based solid client that it is today, I
would have had to either migrated off or greatly reduced what we use AFS for
years ago.

These times are tough, but this is a great community that has always been 
very good about helping each other, and I'm looking forward to seing what
new things are released in the future.  For instance, I've got some AFS file 
servers that could use to be upgraded, and one thing I'd really like to be 
able to consider would be a YFS appliance.

I'm into AFS for the long haul, regardless of what form it may take.


Brian

-- 
Brian Sebby  (sebby@anl.gov)  |  Infrastructure and Operation Services
Phone: +1 630.252.9935        |  Computing and Information Systems
Fax:   +1 630.252.4601        |  Argonne National Laboratory