Hi

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Benjamin Fleischer
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Am 06.05.2011 um 15:23 schrieb Anatol Pomozov:
>
> There a several questions that need to be answered before this happens.
>
> Correct me if I am wrong but from what I can see you started posting to this
>
> mailing list about three weeks ago and now you want to be the new project
>
> head.
>
> No, I do not want. Tomas Carnecky is the owner of the
>
> macfuse.github.com. And I am just a developer in this github
>
> organization. I help him to setup the new home for macfuse and
>
> consolidate patches (specifically macports patches).
>
> I am the most vocal supporter of the "new home" idea - so it makes you
>
> think that I want to be the leader. But I do not want. I want to be
>
> just a macfuse library user.
>
> I do not care about my status at macfuse.github.com. I'll happily
>
> remove myself from the list of the developers if there will be someone
>
> else who want to take care of the new home (and who will be able to
>
> review my patches).
>
> Sorry I got that wrong. Since you have been the most vocal supporter and the
> only member of the new organization/repository at github I thought you were
> in it for the long run and wanted to be a "new Amit".
>
> But where to send my patch? macfuse at googlecode is dead. Should
>
> I send it to macports/tuxera/your repo? Or maybe I should patch
>
> macfuse locally and ship it with my product? None of them is a good
>
> idea.
>
> I absolutely agree. There needs to be an official place to put the code.
>
> The best of all is to setup a new official repo, send my patches there
>
> and make sure that it eventually reach macports.
>
> But there need to be some committed developers and a consensus where the
> project is headed.
>
> - What about the name MacFUSE. I guess having two "official" MacFUSE
>
> projects will lead to problems or at least confusion.
>
> Having a dead official project + an alive official project is *much*
>
> better that having a dead official project and a dozen of incompatible
>
> forks.
>
> I think we all agree on the dozen forks part. Forks are great as long as
> there is an official source tree.
>
> If you just use
>
> MacPorts everything might be fine but if you google it there will always be
>
> two "official" projects. What if Amit decides to pick up development again
>
> or pass it to someone else (I don't think so, but who knows)? Amit seems to
>
> have started a commercial counterpart to MacFUSE called NuFS (Have a look
>
> at http://iohead.com). Using the name MacFUSE won't work unless the original
>
> google code project points to the new project page or "disappears". I don't
>
> see that happening at the moment (conflict of interests). What do you
>
> think?
>
> In addition to that I'm not sure if adopting the name MacFUSE could lead to
>
> legal troubles. I have no legal degree or something like that so correct me
>
> if I'm wrong but MacFUSE belongs to Google. Amit has been an Google
>
> employee.
>
> See http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/source/browse/trunk/COPYING.txt
>
> The sourcecode is BSD - it is ok to fork it. Macfuse is not a
>
> trademark and is not registered neither to Google nor to Amit. So the
>
> name is Public Domain - everyone can use it. (But of course it is
>
> better to have a lawyer opinion here).
>
> It might be a bad idea because the community could scatter even further but
> if the new MacFUSE successor project had a different name there would be no
> legal problems but most importantly there would not be two official projects
> titled MacFUSE.

I do not care that much about the name. What I really care is working
code without bugs.

Although your point is valid.

> The preferable solution would definitely be to add a link to
> the googlecode page pointing to the new project home and continue using the
> name MacFUSE.
>
> - What Mac OS X versions should be supported? I would suggest dropping
>
> support for 10.4 and 10.5. The existing MacFUSE versions 2.0.3 and beta
>
> 2.1.5 run just fine on 10.4 and 10.5. That will make development a lot
>
> smoother in the end. Supporting 10.6 (Intel) and later 10.7 should be
>
> sufficient for new releases.
>
> I haven't thought about it. I am in favor of removing the old releases
>
> support - this reduces the development and testing efforts. From other
>
> side ~25% of all macosx users still use version 10.5 and lower.
>
> http://update.omnigroup.com/
>
> Everyone on 10.4 and 10.5 could keep using the old MacFUSE versions. There
> is no need for 64 bit or Snow Leopard support. But I see the point Alex made
> that it is easier to compile a filesystem (that supports 10.5 or even 10.4)
> only once against one library instead of distributing different versions
> depending on the version of Mac OS X somebody is using. This by the way is
> exactly what MacFUSE does, distributing different versions depending on the
> version of Mac OS X bundled together in one huge installer package.
>
> - Who decides which code makes it into the "official" tree? In other words
>
> who will have write access to the repository and who will be in charge?
>
> I would prefer that Erik be the tech lead of the new repo. And taking
>
> into account the situation with the old macfuse project I would love
>
> to see at least several developers with write permissions in the
>
> macfuse organization.
>
> I don't remember anyone asking Erik directly so: Erik would you be willing
> to take this job? Be the project lead of a new MacFUSE project?

I am joining you here. Erik, would you like?

And sorry for the my tone at the beginning of the thread. I am not as
bad as you might think.

>
> In the end just collecting patches won't do the job.
>
> I started where you are now (code-wise) and am happy that I got the whole
>
> thing (macfuse_buildtool.sh -t dist) working after investing many hours and
>
> now you ask me to fork your code base . Depending on the versions of Mac OS
>
> you plan to support this will be a lot of work (since I dropped everything
>
> but 10.6 and use the 10.6 SDK instead of 10.5 as Erik's/your code does).
>
> From where I stand, it would be far easier if you just forked my repository
>
> :-) I'm not willing to put that much effort into patching up everything
>
> again just to use your code base as a starting point if  the future of your
>
> project fork is this vague.
>
> Do you see the problem here? The problem is that personal ambitions
>
> are bigger than the project needs.
>
> That's exactly why I posted some open questions, I feel we need to discuss
> first.
>
> Everyone thinks that his fork is
>
> the only-true-macfuse and it should be the starting point of the
>
> official repo. You cannot satisfy everyone here.
>
> I absolutely do not feel that my fork is the "only-true-macfuse" fork to put
> it with your words. I just said that I don't want to invest much time in
> porting that stuff over to Tomas' (or now ExpanDrive's, I guess) macfuse
> repository at github if its future is this vague. BTW I find it kind of
> disturbing that the ownership of the organization seems to change without
> even being discussed in this group.

Yeah, I am worried as well, especially taking into account that they
owned macfuse.github.com for a half of year and did not do anything
("git svn clone && git push" takes just a few minutes).

> And for what it's worth I have not seen any other MacFUSE fork that uses
> Erik's great locking code, builds from bottom to top (target dist) and gives
> you a working PrefPane/update mechanism. Erik did a great job, but he
> focused solely on the fusefs kext (to implement support for 64 bit kernels).
> The result is a "core" package that works really well, but for the end user
> there is no easy way to update it or to get rid of it if he/she decides to
> (if you are not using MacPorts). If you don't know you way around Terminal
> or the depth of your Library directory you would not even know it is there.
> If you install a different application also relying on MacFUSE it will most
> likely "update" it. Most users will never know what hit them and why some of
> their applications are no longer working as expected. At least in my opinion
> a working update mechanism is vital.

All parts of the project are important (such as Obj-C/sshfs/...)

Macfuse needs more contributors who is responsible in its own area,
plans features, reviews patches. This is a standard practice for large
opensource projects.

> I would suspect there are more questions that need to be answered if working
>
> together as a community on a new project fork should have a change of
>
> success. And of course we would need at least some dedicated developer for
>
> this to work.
>
> I would love to see you and all other developers working on
>
> macfuse.github.com. I can ask Tomas to transfer commit permissions to
>
> you or Erik if you think it is blocking you.
>
> That will now be ExpanDrive's call, I guess.

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