For this weeks meeting agenda...

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 11:54 +1000, Colin Charles wrote:
> Yes Bryan, if you think the filesystem issue is /that/ important, that
> users of Fedora must know it all, then please by all means, create a
> sub-page on the wiki for this. We'll be happy to review it, and I'm sure
> we can get more technical heads from fedora-devel-list interested

And I said I _would_ do this over the next few days.  I'm working 7 days
a week right now, and will get you it ASAP.  It will be polished and
professional in tone, focus as well as legal-base.

> In the meantime, telling the marketing list about filesystem limitations
> does not help us in our cause in any way.

I was just pointing out the fact that Fedora/Red Hat has continually
hurt itself on the filesystems point because it does _not_ directly
address why ReiserFS and JFS are not included, plays games in general it
does _not_ have to -- but even worse -- goes one step further, acting
like all of us long-time integrators and Ext3 proponents don't exist
when we say "it's time to get serious about XFS."

> If you're unhappy about the XFS file support,

No.  That's not it at all!  Do _not_ belittle my statements as such
because you are belittling a _lot_ of consultants at Fortune 100
companies when you say such.

What I'm unhappy about the "marketing" aspects of why XFS is _not_
supported.  I would much rather Fedora/Red Hat say, "we can't afford the
personnel to develop and support a 2nd filesystem."  That would be
direct, fair and understanding.

But the comments that Ext3 does everything XFS does, Ext3 does not have
limitations that XFS solves, refer to it as "experimental" and other
comments insult the intelligence of those of us who actually deploy
Fedora/Red Hat solutions.

That's the problem.  Again, if Red Hat says it does not want to support
a 2nd filesystem, that's one thing.  But 99% of the comments I see on
XFS, and why Fedora/Red Hat is not looking at it for the future, are
full of FUD.

Sadly enough, it's in Fedora/Red Hat's own, best interest.  Even Sun has
basically all but said it.

> maybe you want to escalate working on it, cleaning it
> up, and submitting patches in Bugzilla (and about now you're going to
> point to eon old bugs open asking for xfs to be updated...) or better
> still, the upstream kernel

You're kidding me, right?
Do you _know_ the effort that would be involved?!

There is already a company, SGI, and their OSS team that is
_more_than_willing_ to work with Red Hat and the Fedora developers.  But
at this point, from what I've seen, it's been a 1-way street.  That's
the problem.

My point has been, and will continue to be, that Red Hat, including
those who work on Fedora Core as their paid job functions, needs to put
people on integration and support of XFS for its _own_ future.  It's not
"XFS v. Ext3" -- it's "XFS to complement Ext3."

99% of the comments I see are "versus" comments.  Hence the continued
problem, hence the actual reversal _away_ from Fedora Core and Red Hat
Enterprise Linux for some applications.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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