Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Kernel interface changes (was Re: cdrecord problems on | From | Nat Lanza <> | Date | 05 Feb 1999 11:10:26 -0500 |
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David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> writes:
> How come, that if IBM doesn't make a penny from AFS, they don't release > the source, so that we can include it in the kernel?!!?!
You misunderstand. IBM currently does not make a penny from _Linux AFS_. They make rather a lot from AFS in general, which is why I highly doubt they'll ever release the source to it.
They don't make any money from Linux AFS because they didn't write the port; they don't sell it. If you have AFS licensed, as CMU, MIT, and most likely many other places do, you can use it. They won't support it, and it'll tend to lag behind the official AFS on other platforms, but it's better than not being able to get to your files.
This will likely change, though. Transarc is apparently working on an officially-supported client. Maybe they'll have the time to track kernel interface changes. I hope they will; I hate not being able to upgrade to a new kernel because I'd lose my files.
And yes, I understand that having source is better than not having source. I think everyone here does. But what a lot of people seem unable to grasp is that "no support" really isn't better than "binary-only support".
Frankly, I'd rather be able to access my files _now_ with a binary module than have to wait for Arla to mature. I'd rather pay $20 to have my fancy new soundcard work than wait months for someone to write a free driver. I like OSS just fine, but I don't run Linux on my machines to get into a state of free software religious purity. I run it so I can get some work done.
I'm sure someone out there is thinking "well, he should obviously work on porting the features he wants". If I could, I would. But, sadly, I have research work that comes first. If I had enough spare time, maybe I'd help with fixing more of the problems I see, but I don't. And even if I could, I couldn't help with everything -- for example, I'm pretty sure I legally cannot help write Arla due to NDAs my lab holds on the AFS source.
Making life difficult for binary modules is great if what you really want is to have a pure, all-open-source hobbyist environment. Unfortunately, not everyone who uses Linux these days is a hobbyist or even wants to be. Some of us chose it because it's a better system that we can use for our work. If I can contribute something to the community through porting our NASD research code to Linux, that'd be great. But it's not my primary goal. If that makes me a bad citizen in the Linux world, so be it. As the MIT folks have said repeatedly, there are several other high-quality free Unixes out there.
Is driving away users who aren't pure enough really what you want to do?
--nat
-- nat lanza --------------------- research programmer, parallel data lab, cmu scs magus@cs.cmu.edu -------------------------------- http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~magus/ there are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths -- alfred north whitehead
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