Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 19:52:19 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: Chuck Robey <chuckr@mat.net> Cc: Kevin Day <toasty@home.dragondata.com>, hasty@rah.star-gate.com, dm@globalserve.net, dillon@apollo.backplane.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NFS - Will it ever be fixed? Message-ID: <44955.922161139@zippy.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 22 Mar 1999 19:30:31 EST." <Pine.BSF.4.10.9903221915490.423-100000@picnic.mat.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> 1) The NFS problems have been with us a long while now, and while your > methods *have* solved many problems, they haven't been able to tackle > nfs, no matter how important it's been to all of us. I'm sorry, but this is a false premise arising from having too little information (which, in retrospect, you couldn't have had so don't feel bad about it). My "methods", which I have a way of adapting to fit the circumstances more often than not, are not merely restricted to the small material donations which bring in lots of volunteer hours, those are simply one of the bigger bang-for-buck types of activities I felt compelled to call attention to when talking about $100 and $500 donations, as various people were doing. I've also had pledges of $25K and more to "fix NFS", all tossed onto the table at various times by various large corporate interests who shall remain nameless, and I searched rather unsuccessfully for a programmer truly capable of doing the job. A Matt points out, you don't just want to blow $25K, the results have got to work if you want to maintain any credibility at all. Even if you arrange it as a "do it first, pay later" scenario, things get very sticky if the system is not "fixed enough" for the end-client yet the programmer feels they've fixed this and that and the other thing in NFS and that should be enough for $25K since he has another contract coming up, etc. With a very vague and non-specific mandate like "fix NFS", that's exactly what's likely to happen and I never got much in the way of clarification from the end-clients, who weren't all that sure either. I'd point to some number of PRs and say "Those? If those are fixed, that will signify adequate completion?" and they'd say "Well, erm, that and whatever else is broken, yeah." (oy!). Since I never did find anyone both capable and available at the same time, it was somewhat of a moot point anyway so I never really pushed them to define the reqs more thoroughly since I'd have just been wasting their time in the long run. The fact is, neither I nor the clients really know the full extent of the "NFS bugs" right now, it being more the case that somebody needs to go in there and just wrestle with it until it stops thrashing, finding and fixing whatever bugs there are along the way. That's either a very expensive contractor (what the other guy was suggesting has got to be at least $50K worth of billables to this anonymous good-samaritan company), a full-time employee (which is still way outta our league with current donation levels) or some really cool volunteer with lots of time and energy on his hands. I'm not going to hold my breath. :) Oh yeah, and Kirk McKusick was also one of the first people I asked when someone came sniffing around with a check in their hand. He flat-out refused to let his life be invaded by NFS problems, no matter how much $$$ was being waved around. He's clearly even smarter than most people think. :-) - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?44955.922161139>