[OpenAFS] OpenAFS still in development?

[Harald Barth]

> I do not believe that the OpenAFS mailing lists are an appropriate forum
> to discuss AuriStor.  My response to Michael provided details on
> AuriStor because I felt it was necessary in order to properly answer the
> implied questions.

What I've learned so far from AuriStor it looks like it could be a
replacement for OpenAFS on the platforms it's available. And it can
more as Jeff tells us. If that strategy is good advertising depends
on "cultural background".

> The question of "supported platforms" is an interesting one because it
> is very unclear what it means for OpenAFS to "support" a platform.  What
> are the criteria?  Is it sufficient to say that if you can build OpenAFS
> on the OS and hardware architecture that it is "supported"?

Sorry, "supported" was probably a bad choice of word. But I don't know
if "availabe" or "runable" or "it builds it ships" would be better.

> I am quite sure there are other criteria that could be added to the mix.

I know that you take "supported" very seriously. I would be happy if
other software vendors (which are not into file systems) would do that
as well.

>  * Linux
>    . Red Hat Enterprise Linux
>      (YFSI is a Red Hat Technology Partner)
>    . Fedora
>    . Debian
>    . Ubuntu
>  * Microsoft Windows
>  * Apple OSX and iOS
>  * Oracle Solaris
>  * IBM AIX
>  * Android
> 
> Servers are supported everywhere but on Windows, iOS and Android but the
> performance varies significantly based upon the OS release, processor
> architecture, and underlying hardware so there are combinations that we
> recommend and those we do not.
> 
> The failure to list an OS family or Linux distribution does not imply
> that YFSI will not support AuriStor on that platform.  It only implies
> that there has been insufficient customer interest to this point for
> YFSI to expend the necessary resources on development, testing and
> certification (where applicable.)

Thanks for the list. I guess on "the main HW" which is amd64 for most
of the OSes above. Both at work and privately I run OpenAFS on
platforms that are not on the list and even in the future will not
have much "customer interest".

> In the end software development has to be a partnership between those
> that build and those that deploy.  If those that deploy do not fund
> those that build there will not be sufficient development hours and
> talent to build the solutions those that deploy require.

I see that this partnership has stopped working in many places. It
makes me sad.

> P.S. My apologies for the long reply.

You don't need to apologise.

Harald.