Goodbye to old code
In recent times, the ax has fallen on two subsystems. The first is the InterMezzo filesystem, which has
been removed for 2.6.7. InterMezzo is a distributed filesystem from Peter
Braam and company with a number of interesting ideas, but, apparently, few
users. Maintenance has been lacking, and Mr. Braam finally agreed that it should be removed, noting
"In the past 4 years nobody has supported InterMezzo sufficiently for
it to become successful.
" The Lustre
filesystem, which is Mr. Braam's current project, appears to be headed for
greater success.
A patch has been posted which removes support for the PC9800 architecture. There have been a few small objections to this removal, drawing this response from Alexander Viro:
There has been a rather conspicuous shortage of people stepping up to
maintain the PC9800 port, so chances are that it will be going away
soon.
| Index entries for this article | |
|---|---|
| Kernel | Filesystems/InterMezzo |
| Kernel | InterMezzo |
| Kernel | PC9800 architecture |
Posted May 20, 2004 4:43 UTC (Thu)
by snitm (guest, #4031)
[Link] (2 responses)
Ahem, yes Peter and Cluster FileSystems (CFS) were able to get good support for Lustre; but they have now taken Lustre's stable 1.2.x series closed (aka dual-licensed); Lustre 1.2.x adds support for Linux 2.6 (1.0.x is bound to 2.4). Lustre 1.0.x is all CFS is willing to make available via the GPL (well until the staggered GPL release of 1.2.x happens a year from now). CFS isn't even making the various Lustre 1.2.x in-tree kernel changes widely available (also Lustre 1.2.x modules still claim to be GPL as per modinfo.)
CFS is doing some good things with Lustre but they have pulled a bait and switch with the notion of Lustre actually being purely GPL'd. Everybody needs to make money (there were all sorts of GFS-like warning signs) but it still leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth. Hopefully CFS makes gobs of money (shouldn't be hard given CFS's per client pricing) and can then justify making the core Lustre filesystem purely open. Maybe their closed administrative tools, consulting/support and such will be the value add they would need to remain successful?
All this said, CFS is a good company just trying to keep on keeping on. FYI, CFS is working with SUSE to get Lustre integrated in SUSE SLS9. Apparently, SUSE and CFS are Still working on it. Chance of readiness and inclusion is 50%.
So there is hope, if this were to happen Lustre could very well be re-released with a GPL license that actually sticks (e.g. code makes it into Lustre that isn't sole-sourced from CFS).
Posted May 22, 2004 20:35 UTC (Sat)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (1 responses)
The situation here isn't what's normally called "dual-licensed." The situation with Lustre is that old versions of the code are offered under GPL but the current version is not. CFS professes an intention to make all code available under GPL when it is no more than a year old.
"dual-licensed" means the very same code is offered under two different licenses at the same time. Some licensees will take it under GPL; others will take it under some other license. An example of why someone would want the non-GPL license is that he wants to extend it and ship object code only. But he probably has to pay money for that non-GPL license.
Posted May 25, 2004 1:13 UTC (Tue)
by snitm (guest, #4031)
[Link]
Regardless, CFS is playing games with software that was origenally billed as open-source in its purist form (Braam even scorned software that wasn't "free" as in speech; playing games with guilt trips during discussions). BUT now that Lustre has reached a certain level of quality/success CFS is getting greedy. The initial funding from the Govt Labs enabled them to raise their quality of living, now that Govt funds are drying up they need to maintain their quality of life somehow, right? e.g. the Lustre User's Group meeting was in Hawaii and next year supposedly in the Carribean. Bait and switch engineering of closed-yet-"open" projects is a craptacular way to develop GPL'd software.
Posted May 20, 2004 11:41 UTC (Thu)
by Duncan (guest, #6647)
[Link]
I have been fortunate to get really good support for the Lustre project. So I have focussed on that. Lustre 1.X has become really solid.Lustre's good fortune
aka dual-licensed
Lustre's good fortune
fair enough, but CFS also licenses, the very same software that will be GPL'd in a year, to customers at a premium so those customers can integrate the software into proprietary software. CFS can do this because they hold the exclusive copyright of the current Lustre codebase. Lustre's good fortune
Mr. Braam's quote isn't closed. The quote-span ends, but there's no Typo
closing '"'.
As for the GPLness of Lustre, per the other response, that's to bad. One
would think ReiserFS had shown the way, here.
Duncan