Hi, all.

I hope you do not find any of my comments rude, as they are not
intended to be so. :-)

I have been following the Coda development through the mailing list
(codalist) for a number of months.  I am currently employed as a senior
software developer and I really like the idea behind a real distributed
file system.  I have been involved in the release of multiple enterprise
level applications, including specifications, design, development,
marketing processes.  I have been tempted to crack open the source many
times and play with it a bit.  But like Adam suggested, it looked like
the project had gone somewhat dormant.  With no public "release" since
September 2005, I had almost written the project off as a brilliant
idea.  Personally, I have installed and configured coda, but not in any
production environment.

I'm thrilled to see that it is still being developed.  I would be more
then pleased to put in some cycles from a Windows port perspective and a
web-site perspective.  Like Apple learnt with iTunes, once you port to
Windows there is no going back.  If Coda can deliver a "1-click" install
on the Windows desktop/server, I think you will see a much higher level
of interest.

In order to receive contributions, I would suggest that a more detailed
road map may be something to take a look at.  Maybe even some open
discussions as to future feature enhancements.  I believe Adam is right,
as an outsider, it feels like the barrier to entry for this project is
somewhat high, the project seems to still be at a very "scientific"
study stage.  If you are looking for a hand, identifying goals and where
there is a need would be great way to get some interest building.  I
guess it really depends where you would like to bring the project.





>>> "M. Satyanarayanan" <satya_at_cs.cmu.edu> 30/03/2006 09:33:20 >>>
Hi Adam,
  Rude questions understandable and forgiven :-)
Our goal is to continue to improve and enhance Coda, but the
rate at which we can do it is limited by our modest resources.
One way of accelerating the pace is for more members of the
open source community to contribute effort.   

 Here are some things that have happened in the last 2-3 years:
   - support for realms (move to coda 6.0)
   - support for lookaside caching (e.g. use of USB keychains with
Coda)
   - continuous ongoing improvements in the underlying system (coda 6.1
- 6.14)
   - Windows port of Coda
   - Mac OS X port of Coda

 In the pipeline is support of true encryption and security (ongoing, 
and we hope to have a release for testing in the  next few months).
Also a version of Coda (7.0 probably) that relies exclusively on the
reintegration mechanism even when strongly connected (effectively 
yielding write-back caching even at LAN speeds).

 The Web pages are way out of date.  I take most of the blame for
that,
since I've have very few cycles to spare to do a complete cleanup of
the
whole thing.   But rest assured, like mammals in the age of dinosaurs,
Coda is holding its own and continuing to evolve in a low-profile way.
You can help by raising its profile and contributing to improving it!


      -- Satya


------ Original message --------
From: Adam Megacz <megacz_at_cs.berkeley.edu> 
Date: 2006-03-30 04:10:13

Please forgive me if this question sounds rude...

I'm wondering what the long-term goals of the Coda project are at this
point. The project web pages 
seem to indicate that Coda really isn't ready for any sort of
non-experimental use. At the same 
time, it looks like the research project effort (begun in '89) has
ended and most code changes are 
very small maintainance tweaks being made by former project staff on
their own free time.

Does Coda have any ambitions of ever becoming a mature product? Or has
its only (albeit huge) 
contribution been to prove to the world that weakly-consistent
filesystems can work?

    * a 

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Received on Thu Mar 30 04:22:31 2006