SNIA CIFS TR

Michael B.Allen mballen at erols.com
Wed Jul 31 01:46:02 GMT 2002


On Tue, 30 Jul 2002 20:24:48 +1000
Andrew Bartlett <abartlet at samba.org> wrote:

> > > > I wish someone
> > > > would do a real analysis and write some practical documentation.
> > >
> > > A volenteer!  Great!  I'll see what help I can be, but you might want to
> > 
> > This is such a crappy argument. I file this one with the "if you don't like
> > it,  submit a patch" argument. If someone writes some code that does X, the
> > chances  of  someone else, possibly much more capable, of also writing code
> > to  do X decreases greatly. So now the SNIA comes up with a crappy document
> > (nice  formatting; too bad it's a MS Word doc) and another group that might
> > have  formed  a  real  working  group  that  would turn out to do some good
> > research,  generate dependency graphs, maintain a bug database, etc has now
> > gone off and done something else instead.
> 
> So?  But this is the document the CIFS community is working with - and
> it really is the best we have - despite its' defficiencies.
> 
> As to 'why SNIA'?  Well, SNIA puts on the annual CIFS conference, and MS
> is a member.  Given the need for MS participation in an forum that
> seriously attempts to document the protocol, and the need for a vender
> neutral body, I can certainly understand SNIA's role

I'm  directing  my  grievances at the working group members and less so the
CIFS  interests  for  being  irresponsible.  I  think  the attitude of SNIA
members  is too optimistic for the quality of work being performed. Nothing
personal  folks  but  this  document  is  a  turd.  What makes anyone think
Microsoft will implement any changes to their servers even if Leach himself
ok's  your  infolevels?  They  won't  unless they're politically motivated.
We're  sitting  on  our  hands  right  now  and  it's  sad.  I  think  MS's
participation wavered because they didn't take the WG seriously. There were
issues  presented to MS that could have been resolved in some Netapp lab by
a  high  school  intern.  They  should  have done some real work and *then*
approched  MS  with *real* brain teasers like what some little mystery byte
of flags does. If you just ask general questions it's too much work for the
arrogant  bastards.  If the WG had asked very specific questions they would
have had much better results and added real content to the document.

There  needs to be a concerted effort to identify the issues and sort out a
definitive  position  on each. The WG could take a tip from the W3C in this
respect.  They  have open forums for dicussion. Anyone can subscribe to the
various  mailing lists and contribute. I didn't see *any* discussion on any
SNIA  mailing  list  or  anywhere else. When I posted a pertinent factoid I
never received a message that it was acknowledged or dismissed and why. The
W3C  keeps  everything  freely  available  on  Web  in  HTML and updates it
frequently. 

I have prepared the following page as an example:

  http://www.eskimo.com/~miallen/cifs/cifs-issues.html

I  hope  the  WG  considers changing their strategy because I for one think
they're making negative progress. 

-- 
A  program should be written to model the concepts of the task it
performs rather than the physical world or a process because this
maximizes  the  potential  for it to be applied to tasks that are
conceptually  similar and more importantly to tasks that have not
yet been conceived. 




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