I should think the easiest way to answer this would be to find out what
the policy is with regard to NFS servers. AFS may be new to Sun, but
NFS is something they should have heard of before. :-)
For a more involved theoretical sort of argument:
The problems with AFS might include:
backup volumes
multiple processor access
cache manager
taking each of these in order:
"The right to make backups" is generally considered to be something
that can't be restricted by copyright, and is generally considered
to be a necessary part of computer systems operation. Since there's
no easy way to exclude just part of a UFS filesystem from being backed
up on tape, provided the backups are treated with the same degree
of security as the host system, it should not be improper to make
backup copies of the source for disaster recovery purposes.
AFS backup volumes are a natural extension of this, if it's ok
to make magtape backups of UFS, it should be ok to make
AFS backup volumes. Indeed, since far less copying happens with AFS
than happens with UFS, if anything the Sun lawyers ought to be
happier with this aspect. I'm not sure why you'd want to
replicate source - do you anticipate that many users reading it?
Is reliability of what is almost certainly slightly outdated and
incomplete source that much of a concern for you?
Solaris systems can support up to N CPU's. If it's ok to make
to make a copy of source available on an N processor Solaris system,
then the "single copy limit" doesn't limit the number of
processors that can get to the data. AFS just allows for an
even more distributed notion of processing than Solaris.
When using software on any system, it's practically inevitable
that the data is copied, either in part or in whole. The
original Unix systems, as well as most Macintoshes and DOS
machines today, copy the entire program from a magnetic medium
into NMOS ram before execution begins. Unix systems today
only make "virtual" copies, which means they often only
copy the data as its referenced - but they are also prepared
to page part or all of the program out onto backing store --
aha, another copy is made! Most modern Unix machines have
cache on them - a partial copy of the program is made
in fast ram closer to the CPU. In fact, the most popular memory
in use today, DRAM, has to be copied repeatedly - if it's
not "Refreshed" periodically, the data is lost, typically
in less than a second. In fact, dram is such a lousy memory
device that even the readout process is destructive - the data
has to be copied back into the memory cells at the same time it
is read out, or it is lost forever.
The AFS cache is just another natural part of this "copying" that
goes on as part of the use of software; it's no different in principle
from the fast processor cache, main memory, backing store, disk
caches, or any other other temporary data respository to make slow
memory look sort of like fast memory.
I think a little common sense will go a long ways here.
The whole point of having source is to make use of it, in some
fashion. You, presumably, have a need for the source, and
have somehow convinced Sun that it's worth their while, in
terms of good will, free debugging, cash on the barrelhead--or
something! Presumably, Sun would rather you not gave away the
software they worked so hard to develop. The whole purpose
of storing the software online, instead of on a tape in
a secure tape vault, is to make it readily accessible for
your legitimate purposes, without making it unduly accessible
for illegitimate purposes. Having one copy can help here,
in that it's easiest to audit and control access if it should only
be in one place. Making that one copy unduly difficult to get at,
such as on "only one machine" can sabotage that effort however.
For instance, if many diverse groups on campus need access
to that one machine, administering that machine can get very
painful, and if the machine is not convenient for people's
use, they are likely to snarfle random bits of the source in an
effort to get around those inconveniences, and they may not take
the same care with the parts they snarfle that you did
with the actual machine.
Storing it in AFS should help with all these issues. It's
still logically in "one place" for auditing and access checks; it's
more handy to people, and AFS groups provide a more flexible
and general protection solution than Unix groups.
So, it really should be in Sun's interest to facilitate your
storing such source in AFS. Whether Sun's lawyers will
see it that way is, of course, another question entirely.
[ Disclaimer. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not convinced that the
legal system isn't in need of a thorough code review. ]
-Marcus Watts
UM ITD RS Umich Systems Group
