Date:	Sat, 02 Sep 2000 21:42:35 -0600
From:	"Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@timpanogas.com>
To:	Andre Hedrick <andre@linux-ide.org>
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] Withdrawl of Open Source NDS Project/NTFS/M2FS forLinux


Andre,

One of our best friends we've known for years tried to kill himself when
Novell layed him off.  I will reconsider later, but not now.  Not with
what's going on at Novell.  If we post it, Microsoft will grab it and it
will be in NT within 48 hours of them downloading it from our site. 
Linux, NT, NetWare, NWFS, NDS, cars, houses, money -- these are all
things, and things can be replaced.  Lives cannot.  Linux can wait a few
months until the dust settles at Novell.  

We also spend too much debugging other peoples buggy code in Linux and
our own buggy code with printk() and kdb.  A lot of the types of
problems we see, like SMP memory corruption are impossible to debug with
KDB.  I've given Linus the code for a killer kernel debugger, but he has
not shown any proactive interest in wanting to leverage it.  I am
spending 4X the $$$ paying engineers than I should.  Example:  NWFS on
NT took four months to develop and productize.  I have been working on
NWFS on Linux for 18 months, and still not all the issues are resolved. 
A kernel debugger would make all our lives easier and cost me less money
in salaries to engineers for particular projects. 

Jeff

Andre Hedrick wrote:
> 
> Jeff,
> 
> Have you been in the bottle again?
> If this is not a joke, it is not funny.
> 
> On Sat, 2 Sep 2000, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> 
> >
> > TRG has reprioritized it's long term objectives, and due to resource
> > constraints and short term schedules, the Open Source NDS and Open
> > Source NTFS File System projects are being withdrawn from the Linux
> > Initiative.  These projects will be MANOS only, and any interested party
> > is free to acquire the code and back port them into Linux, though the
> > networking architectures are profoundly different between the two.  The
> > lack of a Kernel Debugger and other basic kernel level facilities on
> > Linux make TRG's job about 20 times harder on Linux and take almost 10
> > times as long as is possible on NT, NetWare, or MANOS to develop
> > software asa result ofthis.  To date, TRG has invested over
> > $1,500,000.00 on Linux development projects enabling NetWare-to-Linux
> > interoperability so we feel like we have contributed erstwhile resources
> > to date.  Downloads of NWFS has exceeded 900,000 copies to date from
> > TRG's website.
> >
> > TRG will continue to support NWFS on Linux as a migration file system
> > for NetWare-to-Linux Migration, however, all new development will be on
> > the MANOS platform only.  M2FS for Linux will be available in binary
> > form only for those interested parties.  A press release will be sent on
> > Monday informing the industry that TRG has withdrawn these projects in
> > Open Source form on Linux and citing the reasons for this decision.
> >
> > As for the reasons behind this decision, TRG has attempted to be an
> > contributing member of Linux for quite some time, however, the
> > architecture of Linux is unnatural to Novell's and Microsoft's
> > technologies and Linux is at present incapable of providing the same
> > level of Networking capability available with Windows 2000 or NetWare to
> > enterprise customers.  NetWare routinely supports upwards of 2000 users
> > per server for file and print.  Linux with it's current level of
> > development has trouble with configurations of more than 100 users via
> > MARS-NWE or SAMBA in our tests.  TRG's MANOS source code and components
> > are freely available to the Linux community, and TRG has no objection to
> > continued participation with the Linux Community and use of any of it's
> > source code in Linux projects.
> >
> > Very Truly Yours,
> >
> > Jeff Merkey
> > CEO, TRG
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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> > Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> >
> 
> Andre Hedrick
> The Linux ATA/IDE guy
-
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