Hello!

As I can see the situation, Coda is
 - usable as it is now (that is great by itself!)
 - just for a limited class of people (those ready to deal with problems
   and limitations)

It would be very interesting to get an estimation of the resources
(person*month) needed for making Coda usable "in the wild":

1. Make it robust (may be we are already there? :)
2. Relax server file number limitation to say 500Gb of 10k-files
   (even if by a cute configuration utility creating 10 servers at once?)
3. Create a working client solution (client, gateway, samba setup,
   anything) for Win2k & similar
4. Introduce real encryption and make both the server and clients
   basically resistant against spoofing, buffer overflows and other
   evident types of attack
5. Support (and may be -hint-hint- standardize) multiple mount points
   like afs and dfs do, even if it would rely on dns-names only
   (otherwise I see a potential problem with cell-name assignment)

Well, if we would have a list how much it costs, it would be some chance
to find some money. Probably volonteers to take the challenge of hacking,
too.
I am aware of at least one case when a university has offered a bigger
license purchase in advance - to stimulate a commercial entity to port DFS
to Linux.

(Right now there is already at least one university - cmu.edu - that pays
for Coda development, right? :)

If I compare Coda to DFS for Linux (that does not seem to be available
yet), there is a chance of finding interested parties - if it looks
probable that in a few months the thing would be really usable - provided
there are both people capable of working full time on it and resources to
pay their living.

Developers, have you an estimation of how many megadollars are needed for
the above? (or hopefully some orders less? :)
I have virtually no idea about how many persons are actively working
on Coda, how much of your time is invested in it, whether you want to
change the situation...

Just an idea,
--
Ivan