[TNG] Status (and merging)

[Mike Brodbelt]

> > The pressure for a product like this is getting pretty
> > significent, even I have started to think about products
> > from the Evil Empire ! (Not seriously but Samba must
> > fight to remain relevent).
> 
> Well, I'm going to play the other side here, ok?  I've
> run the Samba PDC code in a production environment, so I
> think I qualify as a voice of reason here.
> 
> If I were to take you statement at face value, then
> Samba would not be relevant today (since it does not
> offer a full PDC implementation).  However, we all know
> based up these mailing lists, that is not the case.

<snip>

I'm another one looking forward to full NT PDC code. I'd like to get rid
of my NT4 PDC. However, it's more important to me that I retain
stability with Samba, than that the developers jump the gun to get the
new features out of the door. I can live with my PDC for as long as it
takes, and as all the box does is authentication, it's even realtively
stable....
 
> Does anyone here realize that we had to rewrite the entire
> locking semantics for 2.2.0?  it is now what we believe to
> be the most robust, and solid locking code available in
> Samba or out. (ask me this again after the release of
> 2.2.0 though :) ).  Andrew has also implemented a small
> database library and we've lookup stores to this in
> order to improve speed and scalability.

I think this is symptomatic of a great many endeavours - much of the
most necessary work is "down in the trenches", and does not attract the
attention that new feature development attracts. Microsoft and other
proprietary software vendors suffer from this - their software is bad
because it's more profitable in the business world to add features than
to make sure the ones you have actually work. It's a great strength of
free software that the authors actually care about code quality, and
don't have marketing departments breathing down their necks.... I
certainly (and I believe I'm speaking for many others) appreciate the
enormous amount of work that is done to make sure Samba "just works".
It's this kind of work that lets me have a server last rebooted in
October, while an NT site I visited last week reboots their machines
several times a week. Without the work put in by all you guys, I, and
others like me, would be spending all our time running around fixing
things, instead of actually getting things done.
> 
> Please, no flames, ok?  I will gladly respond to logical
> questions comments, but not flames.  I'm way too busy
> right now.
> 
> Oh...and thanks for using Samba. :-) :-)

Thank *you* for all the work that makes it possible for us to use it....

Mike.