Future of RAIDFrame and Vinum (was: Future of RAIDFrame)

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <200401120341.42349.linimon at lonesome.com>, Mark Linimon writes:

>But, in the real world of software engineering, He Who Breaketh It,
>Must Fixeth It.

If we are talking paid jobs, yes, then you can make rules like that
because with the salary you control resource allocation and
prioritization.

My real life experience show that such rules invariably give way to
other factors when push comes to shove, but they're nice as a starting
point until the real real world rears its ugly head.

In a free software project, you can take any rule like that an put
it anywhere you like, in any font, size and color of your choice
and it still wont work.

If there are not enough people willing and able to actively maintain
vinum, and in particular to make it keep pace with the kernel
infrastructure then we are only talking about _when_, not _if_ it
will die.

What about vinum and locking ?  Is anybody working on getting vinun
out from under Giant ?

Any piece of software in FreeBSD needs a minimum critical mass of
developers, and judging from the probelms, both RF and vinum are
below that threshold.

If vinum means a lot to you, you should do something to get it above
that threshold:  start debugging/coding, learn to code if need be,
donate money so somebody else can code if you can't do anything
else.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.