Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 08:40:23 +0200 From: Christoph Hellwig <hch@ns.caldera.de> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Dennis Berger <Dennis.Berger@nipsi.de>, freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG, opengfs-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: Porting a new filesystem to FreeBSD Message-ID: <20010917084023.A13990@caldera.de> In-Reply-To: <3BA555D8.D2C53387@mindspring.com>; from tlambert2@mindspring.com on Sun, Sep 16, 2001 at 06:46:00PM -0700 References: <3BA4B507.CC70ECD4@nipsi.de> <20010916140843.A21982@xor.obsecurity.org> <3BA52C79.E1E247F5@mindspring.com> <3BA5419F.BF0C3E70@nipsi.de> <3BA555D8.D2C53387@mindspring.com>
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On Sun, Sep 16, 2001 at 06:46:00PM -0700, Terry Lambert wrote: > My bigest problem with it right now is license, since a GPL > means that FreeBSD could not use it as a boot FS, which makes > the code useless to me. They have indicated that they are > willing to work with the license, but there are still some > problems with regard to contributions by third parties made > under the license under which they distribute the Linux > version: either those contributions will need to be ripped > out and redone, or their authors will need to assign rights > to Sistina. Sistina has changed the License for GFS 4.2 to some own, propriterary one. They chooses to ignore the GPL problematic and thus might get into legal problems very soon. > The kernel space stuff is more complicated; I haven't had > experience with the shared hardware interfaces they use > (I have had experience with similar interfaces in AIX, though), > nor do I have the equipment available to do a driver for > them using the Linux driver as a reference implementation; > I would want the documentation, anyway, since I would be > wary of the end result being GPL encumbered. I estimate > from looking at the Linux driver that this would take no > more than 3 days worth of work (24 man hours) to get done, > for someone with experience. We (the OpenGFS project) have spend about ten times as much time just to fix the horrible implementation bugs in GFS, not to mention# that it also has a lot of design problems. > If someone wants to tackle the drivers for the oddball hardware, > and will do interoperability testing with their Linux version > hitting the same storage at the same time, as long as it can be > put on a floppy or other removable medium, I can do the FS > itself after that (I'm not interested in using GFS on local > hard drives for my own purposes, so unless there is a shared > device, I don't care about it). But realize, I will NOT be > developing in -current, but on the 4.x branch instead, if I do > this, and the issue of license must be addressed first. If you want to develop and freestanding filesystem driver (e.g. not trying to use butter ugly constructs to shared code between operating systems) feel free to join the OpenGFS project. (http://www.opengfs.org). Christoph -- Of course it doesn't work. We've performed a software upgrade. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message
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