20 years without semantic innovation is enough

Hans Reiser (reiser@ceic.com)
Wed, 30 Jun 1999 14:14:50 +0000 (/etc/localtime)

My point though is that the file system semantics have been static for
20 years. It is time for them to change. When they change NFS will
break, at least it will if the changes are substantive. For this
reason, to argue that NFS cannot be broken is to argue that there should
be no semantic innovation for file systems. That make the argument
invalid in my eyes. NFS must be broken.

Hans

David S. Miller writes:
> From: Hans Reiser <reiser@ceic.com>
> Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 12:42:12 +0000 (/etc/localtime)
>
> It is time for the herd to move, it can follow me if it wants to.
>
> And if nobody does, you have no users, then where are you and what is
> your work worth besides your own personal intellectual pleasure?
> (BTW I have nothing against pure research, it's valuable, but
> reiserfs is claiming to try to be something more than that)
>
> This is where practicality comes into play. Saying things like "oh
> we'll break NFS and NFS must change to suit us" is one good way to
> disappear quickly into being no more than an intellectual curiosity.
>
> I have nothing against your work at all, I'm just suggesting that you
> should start to be practical if you want the largest number of people
> to gain from it and actually use it.
>
> Later,
> David S. Miller
> davem@redhat.com

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