why more discussion of samba development?

[Andrew Tridgell]

> i explained each piece of the architecture to andrew
> and he got more and more out of his depth.
> 
> he didn't want to admit it or lose control over the code.

Quick translation for those who haven't tried to code with Luke.
When Luke says "X was getting out of his depth" it means "X didn't
agree with Luke". 

> in particular, he didn't want to accept technically "inferior"
> solutions or "inferior" code.

right, I don't.

> his response was to fob me off, requiring removal of pieces
> of functionality that he could not understand, or to have
> me do _anything_ that meant that the code would not meet
> his standards.

oh I understood your code all too well. Your checkins almost
invariably were extremely buggy as hell and you had by far the highest
rate of checkins that don't compile of any team member.

I have spent months of my life fixing the bugs in your code, or
patiently explaining to you how unix memory management works, or how
pipes and sockets work etc etc. Usually you end up coming back to me a
few weeks or months later and start claiming that you were the one who
had some idea for the code, and I go "yes Luke", because taking the
time to point out that your "new idea" is something I explained to you
months before is just not worth it.

When you finally left the team it was such a relief to wake up each
morning and not have to fix the dozens of compilation errors or
portability bugs you had introduced overnight. Of course, your
attitude was that such a brilliant programmer as yourself shouldn't
need to worry about such niceties as the code actually working or not
having gaping security holes. Those details are for lesser mortals
like Jeremy, Tim, JF and myself to fix. Your grand plans should never
be sullied by such details.

> if andrew had not raised the technical bar higher and
> higher and higher in order to, ultimately, block TNG code from
> going mainstream, then i would be in a much more stable financial
> situation than i am now.

Your very first emails to me way way back in 1996 were already
complaining about your terrible financial situation. You were in
terrible shape then and you are in terrible shape now. The only
difference now is that you blame me for it. 

and yes, I did raise the technical bar in Samba. I've been steadily
rasing it ever since I started Samba. It was rising well before you
started work on Samba and it has continued rising after you left. 

As projects get bigger the bar *must* rise. Just look at the state of
the code in the early versions of Samba and you will see why this is
essential. A good project leader will spend a large proportion of
their time reviewing the basic infrastructure of the project and
deciding when that infrastructure needs improving in order to support
new functionality. I've been doing that constantly since Samba
started.

> i am working extremely long hours on a building site, earning
> approximately one quarter to one half of the amount of money
> that i need to pay for everything, and i come home to read
> my email once every three days, and find messages that remind
> me that some extremely good code that i wrote OVER TWO YEARS
> AGO and spent FOUR YEARS WRITING still hasn't made it into
> main-stream samba.

If you are looking for sympathy from me then you won't get it. When
you started writing the code I very clearly told you that it would not
be accepted in the form you were doing it. You went ahead
anyway. Jeremy and I spent a long time explaining in great detail how
you would need to write the code in order for it to be accepted. You
ignored us. We rewote the first couple of versions of your code
(replacing a very large proportion of it) and managed to get it to
actually work. That's whats used in Samba now. 

As for your timelines, they are (as usual) complete crap. You seem to
pluck numbers and dates out of the air like so many flies. 

> you can take a look at the samba-tng source code

oh, don't worry, I do look at the tng code. I'm not so proud that I
don't find the tng code useful and I often find good solutions
there. It has some good code. 

Could I just replace the current Samba code with the tng code? No. It
would set us back by more than a year. We have *greatly* improved upon
many aspects of that code, rewritten large parts of it and extended it
in many areas. Does it have every feature tng has? No, of course
not. Does tng have every feature that the head branch has? No, not by
a long shot.

> if things get too bad for me, i will just unsubscribe from
> tng-technical and all other samba and samba-tng mailing lists.

don't let me stop you

The time when your useful contributions outweighed your inane
commentry has long since past. 

A final note for those of you who don't know some of the history
here. Luke's CVS access on samba.org was finally revoked when he
announced that he intended to implement a "scorched earth" policy with
regard to Samba. He actually announced to the world that he planned on
trying to destroy Samba. For me that was an unforgiveable action. It
meant I could never trust him again.

He also started to blackmail Linux vendors, threatening that he would
destroy Samba. Remember this when Luke goes on about me not being
worthy as an open source project leader.

Why did Luke do this? Because Luke's primary motivation for his
involvement in open source is money. Lots of it. A lot of his design
changes in Samba were aimed to allowing him to sell pieces of the code
without having to abide by the GPL. I don't mind changes that help
someone make money, as long as the changes can be justified
technically rather than just on financial grounds.

I am not anti-profit, and I don't mind companies or individuals making
money off my work, but when I have my "team leader" hat on I draw the
line at making changes which hurt the project in order to profit an
individual contributor, no matter how financially hard up they are or
how much they have contributed.

So, Luke will have to find some other way to make his fortune. Maybe
he can sell his memoirs.

Cheers, Tridge