lwn reports the Samba team could use coders and documenters

[Jeremy Allison]

Donald Gaffney wrote :

> I read in todays (July 9, 1998) edition of the Linux Weekly News
> that 
> 
> "the Samba team could use coders, documenters and 
> packagers as a result of a temporary dip in the
> volunteer resources available to them
> (caused by an unfortunate set of co-incidences,
> though we haven't heard the details yet)."
> 
> and "This has slowed the Samba effort a bit."
> 
> The full text of this news can be seen at 
> 
> http://lwn.net/
> 
> So, what's up? What needs to be done?
> 

They got a bit carried away with themselves
I'm afraid. I think they started this rumour
after I told someone to 'just hire someone
to code it up for you if you need it *now*' on
comp.protocols.smb when they were wanting
a feature that is planned but not yet implemented.

Here's a copy of the response I sent to them
(doctored to add back in the two people I
missed when I sent it to lwn - I've already
apoligised to them for missing them out).

Cheers,

	Jeremy Allison,
	Samba Team.

-----------------------------------------------------------

"Rumours of trouble greatly exaggerated :-)".

        Well I wouldn't put it that badly, you make it
sound like we're on our last legs :-). Actually we're
more victims of our own popularity. The problem is
Samba is *so* popular that we cannot begin to scratch
the surface of all the requests for help that we
get (although John Terpstra makes a valiant effort).

The actual state of affairs is this : Currently the
Samba Team has one member paid by Whistle Communications
to work full time on improving and developing Samba, that
is, me (Jeremy Allison). I do the official releases
and do lots of debugging when genuine bugs are reported,
but I don't really have time to answer questions about
the use of Samba, just do the development.

As for the other members, Andrew is working mostly on 
his theisis at the moment, Luke is suffering from carpel
tunnel quite badly which is limiting his typing, although
he is as enthusiastic as ever :-). John Terpstra also spends
almost his full time working on Samba issues and answering
user questions, which is wonderful as he also has a business
to run. Richard Sharpe is working away on the smbtar issues,
Paul Ashton is becoming able to devote more time to Samba
(although he also has a business to run). Volker is spending
most of his time earning a living at the moment and has
little time for Samba support. John Blair has started
a new job (Samba related) and is still coming up to
speed at Cobalt Micro. *** <start doctored part> *** 
Chris Hertel is plugging away coding up our scalable 
WINS code (and fixing many design flaws in the Samba 
code whilst he's about it :-) and of course there's
Paul Blackman who maintains all our Web pages.
***** <end doctored part> *****

We are attempting to close out the 1.9.18 release stream
(we are about to release 1.9.18p9) and then concentrate
most of our efforts on the new features and functionality
in the next (1.9.19) release.

The need is really twofold. Firstly, people who understand
the new features (domain client support) in 1.9.19 could help
document these new features. Actual coding is proceeding
quite well, as is the overall design of the new code. One
of the delays for the new alpha releases is that there is
*so much* new functionality - it really is quite amazing
what advances have been made in the HEAD cvs branch over
the 1.9.18 code stream, but all this stuff needs testing
before a release.

Secondly, and most importantly, people who are able to
support Samba for other users could help greatly by
answering other peoples questions on the mailing lists
and newsgroups. I know they do this anyway, but what
has occured is that people email samba-bugs with
usage questions, rather than emailing the general
samba list. The samba-bugs address really should be
for new patches and bug reports only. Imagine if
the linux-kernel development list was linked to
the new linux user lists and you get the idea of
the incoming traffic to samba-bugs :-).

One other interesting item of Samba related news,
Silicon Graphics (SGI) will be adopting Samba soon
and as a result of that I will be joining SGI within
a week or so to help them productize Samba. Watch
for an announcement from SGI when their plans are
finalized.

I'm hoping this will expand the resources significantly
and will greatly increase the rate of Samba development.

So in short - please help each other support Samba !

Regards,

        Jeremy Allison,
        Samba Team.
-- 
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