future of xfs, oss.sgi.com after sgi purchased?

[Linda A. Walsh]

Eric Sandeen wrote:
> Linda A. Walsh wrote:
> > If sgi is being bought by another company, is there any idea about the plans
> > for the xfs file system or the source code on 'oss.sgi.com'?
>
> While I doubt that oss.sgi.com would abruptly vanish, there are
> nonetheless already git repos on kernel.org, which are sometimes even
> ahead of what's on oss.sgi.com ... xfs.org has a lot of content as well.
>  Mailing list archives exist at various other sites.
---
    Would hope not -- but have seen companies pull real bonehead maneuvers.

I can understand that for kernel work, but what about the xfs utils? 
(dump/restore et al.)
They have had a pretty static feature set from what little I've noticed, but I 
may just not be
getting updates.  I don't know if it would be of any benefit, but apparently the 
sgi xfsdump used to be multi-threaded?  (Just as a random example).   Thanks for 
allaying some concerns.


Felix Blyakher wrote:
>> I'm _guessing_ that there is some interest in users and developers to 
>> keep xfs alive after the 'sgi' moniker is purchased, but that begs the 
>> question about the new company wanting to support the old 'sgi.com' 
>> websites including oss.sgi.com.
>>
>> Is there a danger of oss.sgi.com suddenly being yanked offline with 
>> little to no warning,
> 
> I doubt it'll happen in any circumstances.
---
    There have been precedents at sgi.  Other systems from sgi pulled on a 
policy change:
Internal news, external employee web-pages (reality being yanked).  All based on
some policy or organizational change that gave very little advance warning.

> I hope that wouldn't happen. Though, while it'll be loss for xfs
> in this unlikely scenario, I think, there is enough critical mass
> outside of sgi to continue support and move forward xfs.
---
    I'd like to think so, but for whatever reason(s), it's seems to be one of 
the larger
(in terms of lines of code) filesystems -- making more difficult to support -- 
not that
those lines aren't there for good use/good features.  Just that XFS was well 
developed
when it was being ported too linux.  Was no easy task.    I'd love to see XFS 
ported to the
Windows environment -- and then give MS some competition for their NT file system.
Since Fat32 has more significantly important limitations, Can't always use a 
FAT32 as a
common files system between OS's. And MS isn't exactly open about NTFS.

> Felix
> xfs maintainer, still at sgi
----
Congrats...on making this far...

-l