[Samba] [proposal] Samba Software Foundation

[Patrick Paul]

Having worked with the samba cvs code on and off for seven years now, I 
think of myself as only a user, definitely not as a developer.

Throughout the years, I have found lkcl posts to be entertaining.  His 
occasional rants and raves surely made the list more lively.  I mean, 
among our crowd, we can say things like 'and then LKCL posted that', and 
we'd know who we're talking about.

I mean, he's transgressed beyond single-name-only status, like Cher or 
Bono, or even Prince.  He is now intials only.  I personally can't think 
of anybody else in the open source community whose initials are the 
equivalent of their name.

LT(Linus)?  Nope.  AC(Alan Cox)?  Maybe, but two initials is inferior to 
four.  Plus AC is taken.

'AC?  Linux support for air conditioners?  Cool.'

'Yes, Linux has supported Alternating Current from the very beginning. 
Direct Current support was added late, only in 2.0.21, much to the 
delight of the FreeBSD community, which had support for Direct Current 
years before Linux.  And their implementation is better.  And their 
license.'

Humour aside, I remember working with samba back in '98, and was trying 
to get an nt4 domain in place for nt4 workstations to join.  I found 
problems with the samba 2.0 code at the time(actually, I think it was 
1.9.x code, but it doesn't matter), and I found this version of samba 
called samba-tng.  Had I known at the time that samba-tng has nothing to 
do with samba proper, I would have saved a lot of time attempting to get 
nt4 domain controller functionality up and running had I only used the 
samba proper code.

As a member of the list, but not a member of the samba group, I agree 
that posts asking for the restructure of samba are out of line.  Since 
I've followed samba, lkcl has had an air of 'renegade-ness' associated 
with himself.  Steps should be taken to ensure that confusion about the 
status and direction of samba does not spread, as it did with me during 
those fruitless weeks, long, long ago.

Out of consideration, though, I think it would be best to cease 
discussion of this matter on the list.  lkcl has agreed to respect the 
three month cease-fire, and it wouldn't be fully respectful to talk 
about somebody when their ability to reply has been removed.

Thanks for the work team.  It truly is a great product; one that is 
getting better all the time.

P.S.
I get the list in batch mode, so if the topic has already been 
tombstoned, I have not received it yet, and forgive the resurrection.

-- 
Patrick Paul
Systems Administrator
BioMicro Center, MIT 68-371
patpaul at mit.edu