Tridge Speaks Out 86
Robert McMillan from Linux Magazine posted an interview with Tridge, of Samba and Tivo fame. He's one of the most important folks in all of Linux, and this interview is worth a read. He covers a lot of good material like crap code, bonobo, and what stuff in the kernel is innovative. He also talks a bit about what he might do after Microsoft drops SMB from future versions of windows.
Have I seen this before? (Score:1)
Well, the interview is cool anyway. I really like the attitudes of most people who develop free software.
career problems (Score:2, Funny)
from the article:
" . . . (who recently jumped ship from Linuxcare to work at VA Linux Systems) . . ."
this guy has made some stunningly bad career choices. I hope, for his sakes, Australia has a decent welfare system. Sheesh!
Great quote (Score:5, Funny)
You end up exchanging dozens of e-mails, where you say, "That's bad because of this and this," and they say, "Oh no, this programming style is great." Then you have got to teach them a couple of years of computer science so they can understand why it's crap.
Re:Great quote (Score:2, Funny)
Actually, the 120 character limitation of
You end up exchanging dozens of e-mails, where you say, "That's bad because of this and this," and they say, "Oh no, thi
Doesn't have quite the same impact does it?
Re:Great quote (Score:2, Interesting)
clc (Score:5, Informative)
Also, you'll get some pretty heavy heat on the style issue. Casting malloc(), using redundant parantheses on sizeof (i.e. treating it as a function or macro), performing micro-operations (which the compiler/interpreter does a much better job of) are all grounds for assault.
comp.lang.c will set you straight within a couple of weeks (given you're willingness to be humiliated on a regular basis), and you'll be still be learning things after years of regular reading. Again: comp.lang.c is very strict: if comp.lang.c++ is Woodstock, comp.lang.c is a Nazi concentration camp. Okay maybe I'm overselling it a bit
As for automatic code checkers, use lclint liberally. There's also the mythical Stanford patch for gcc (at least I think it's from Stanford; one of those pretentious schools anyway) that was used to find many Linux bugs.
Seriously, just start posting random tiny (no longer than 3 or 4 small functions, or else people will get bored of reading) snippets of code to comp.lang.c. 95% of posters can't even get a satisfactory Hello World! on their first try.
Re:clc (Score:3, Interesting)
Bravo. This is true. Once I posted a very simple stack.c as an example in the quest for a "perfect" code example. They went back and fourth picking it apart. I would re-write it and post again. Regardless of how trivial the code is the end result was a great example of c code that I can reference as such. Stongly recommend a simlar exercise.
BTW that code is here [auditorymodels.org].
Yet Another Unemployed Programmer (TM)? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yet Another Unemployed Programmer (TM)? (Score:1)
Re:Yet Another Unemployed Programmer (TM)? (Score:5, Informative)
Until recently I was a senior engineer in VA Linux Systems. [valinux.com] Due to the recent layoffs at VA I am now actively looking for a job.
Obviously not just another "unemployed programmer" (Score:1)
pay attention to the date (Score:2)
No TiVo questions (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No TiVo questions (Score:2)
Printer friendly one page version... (Score:4, Informative)
Hmm, you'd think a "printer friendly" version would remove JPGs of Unix-nerds. No one wants to print those out. Actually, I'd be happy if that were the only thing it did.
Re:Printer friendly one page version... (Score:1)
BTW, FWIW, some people might call you a karma-whore for posting a printer-friendly page link, but i would have done the same thing, since people complained about it being
All the interesting positions in Linux are taken? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the kernel, perhaps, and low-level network services. The barrier to entry is high there, and for the best possible reasons. The OS has become a phenomenon - and very very bright people continue to contribute. Lesser lights need not apply until they're more seasoned.
But that doesn't mean that there are applications out there. Many beautiful tools exist - but truly widespread adoption of Linux will require not just killer applications, but also many, many mundane little applications to fill all the niches where little Windows apps fit.
We all know about StarOffice/OpenOffice. But. . .
A really nice accounting package? A little one, like QuickBooks? Contact managers like GoldMine? Bigger CRM applications with all the bells and whistles?
These are projects that are begging to worked on, and completed. (And yes, I know that good work is being done on all these fronts already).
And these are just the sorts of projects that would convince people (at my company at least) to ditch Windows on the desktop once and for all. Even management is becoming painfully aware of Microsoft's hardball tactics, with this latest round of forced upgrades.
There are plenty of crucial positions left in Linux development. Only the shift is now moving away from the kernel and services, and toward real business applications.
Truly an exciting time. And we're only in the 2nd inning of the revolution.
Re:All the interesting positions in Linux are take (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is being held back not only by its lack of quality offerings in a few software genres (Such as the aforementioned QuickBooks), but also by the utter *glut* of offerings in some of the other areas. It's really daunting for some people that most Linux distributions come on five or six CDs and Windows only comes on one. I thought distributions were supposed to be like customized toolsets for different people and different situations. If this is the case, then why do all the distributions have almost all the same software?
Hear hear, man. Mod parent UP.
Re:All the interesting positions in Linux are take (Score:2)
(Someone showed me a non-Free, relatively cheap CAD package for Linux, but I'm suggesting a GPL equivalent).
Re:All the interesting positions in Linux are take (Score:1)
Jaysyn
Re:All the interesting positions in Linux are take (Score:1)
Re:All the interesting positions in Linux are take (Score:2)
If any project deserves developers, it's this one.
Re:All the interesting positions in Linux are take (Score:3, Insightful)
Those are not fun. Amateurs/hackers work on fun things. If you want non-fun things, you have to pay someone to do it.
Re:All the interesting positions in Linux are take (Score:2)
As i'm sure others do too.
If enough people make enough noise about wating package X, someone will go write it. I promise.
Re:All the interesting positions in Linux are take (Score:2, Informative)
Me? My team and I built and maintain a homegrown oracle-based solution that stitches together contact management, accounting, and production management for a little manufacturing firm here in Chicago.
I find these things... fun.
The problem is - it takes a lot of expertise and insight (garnered only through painful experience) to build applications heavy in accounting and business-logic functions . . . expertise that goes beyond what is normally taught in a CS program in school.
And recruiting people with expertise outside the computer science realm into open source development (without paying them - your point is well taken here) can be really difficult.
There just aren't that many people with cross-disciplinary expertise who aren't buried in paying-job-type work and who are willing to donate to the cause.
Re:All the interesting positions in Linux are take (Score:1)
I think you're confusing your definition of "Linux" with "Unix".
The farther away from the kernel you get, the less Linux-specific your program is. That's why you mentioned the kernel and low-level networking programs.
Say I write one of your suggested projects, which you say is to fill the gap in the Linux application field and which you say will make me a Linux developer. What happens when somebody takes my source code, compiles it on a FreeBSD workstation and runs my little application? Oops! Does that mean I'm a FreeBSD developer now?
Development on top of free operating systems shouldn't be done from such a narrow viewpoint. When it comes to computing professionals who like to be able to run a computer without running to the Micros~1 Store for an operating system first, you could say that "we're all in the same boat".
Now I understand (Score:5, Funny)
Now I understand why all those Linux companies went bankrupt. They were competing against each other!
Pizza Payments (Score:5, Funny)
Don't know if it still says it, but in the old docs for Samba, they used to have an address where you could FedEx pizza donations to the Samba team.
Now *that's* my idea of compensation. Free as in beer? Well, what goes better with free beer than free pizza!
Re:Yeahhh !! Slashdotted... (Score:1)
Since when does a "Slashdotted site" get -1 Offtopic ?
When I moderate I lut 1 and write "Informative..."
Well, different standards.
Very intriguing individual (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Very intriguing individual (Score:3, Interesting)
It's pretty much a given that they have to do this, someday. Andrew says it's for cleanliness/performance reasons. But another reason is that the more widely adopted a standard is, the more dangerous it is for Microsoft to conform. A paranoid person [google.com] might even say Samba's success is the reason SMB must die.
Re:Very intriguing individual (Score:1)
Lose backwards compatibility? (Score:2)
I don't think they CAN make it completely unusable with previous versions of SMB or else no previous Windows products could work with it either, unless you're forced to download a new networking patch for EVERY Windows PC on your network. Course, if it was installed via the next IE update, then it might work...
If previous Windows clients can't talk to the new stuff, people will think VERY long about upgrading and having to throw away all the current investment.
dropping SMB entirely (Score:2, Insightful)
What will no doubt continue to happen is new versions of SMB that are negotiated between machines if both support them. That DOS 3.3 client winds up talking a much simpler version of SMB than a Windows 2000 client would negotiate with a Windows 2000 server. So eventually you discover that your old clients don't support some fancy new feature or performance enhancement. But they should continue to work as they have.
When I worked at Microsoft there were stories that SMB would be dropped in favor of something else. One of these was the famous "HTTP redirector", which would be a client that connected to a web server to replace SMB. One big advantage of HTTP is that it allows a file to be read with one single network roundtrip. SMB separates out the operations of open, read, and close a file (those take up 3 separate SMBs). Now the protocol also allows SMBs to be combined in a single request, but various cruftiness that have built up in the protocol prevents you from actually packaging an open, read, and close in one packet and getting a response back with all the data in one roundtrip. This "small file read" test is a favorite of labs doing performance tests, so although HTTP is slightly larger and slower to parse, that all winds up being noise compared to doing the whole small file read in one roundtrip.
Unfortunately HTTP has some *disadvantages*, in particular a lot of the other semantics supported in SMB, like printing and locks and various security protocols, are not supported, so those would have to be invented. The push for an HTTP redirector seemed to be coming from the Internet Explorer and IIS teams (I worked on NT). In fact one IIS person confidently told me about 4 years ago that SMB was doomed. But it continues to live on and the various HTTP redirector projects seem to have stalled. But for all I know it is still bubbling around somewhere (or several places) at Microsoft.
- adam
Clue Stick beating needed. (Score:1, Insightful)
Someone needs a sound beating with a clue stick. Samba has NOTHING to do with Linux. Samba is an open sourced SMB fileserver. It can run on most any UNIX box, so it runs on things like AIX, BSD, Solaris, SCO, etc la. It also happens to run on any of the 180+ linux distros.
Unless Linux is now a blanket term for any code that might run on some random Linux distro.
Umm, this is an old interview... (Score:1)
A question about SMB? (Score:1)
Re:A question about SMB? (Score:2)
I don't think the're going to get that monkey off their back for a while. There's a lot of stuff funneled through CIFS (aka SMB). You've got NamedPipes, RAP calls, transactions, DCE/RPC,
would this sort of thing still happen today? (Score:1)
business model (Score:1)
especially for the scripted languages
By producing an ever increasingly complex domain for us to work in benefits the whole human race. It's a very political position to be in.
It doesn't depress the job market, it creates niche and opportunity within businesses.
The future is rosy for IT save for no electricity!
don't close the source and hold me to ransom, that isn't nice.
I heard someone say that you should expect government ministers lie because "that's the way the world works". bleh, it doesn't have to.
Best question by a linux reporter award goes to.. (Score:4, Funny)
AT: It depends how related it is. If Microsoft does a completely new protocol, it would make far more sense to have a second package. Whether I do that package or not depends on how stupid I feel at the time.
LM: How stupid do you feel right now?
BWAHAHAHA!!
" . . . (who recently jumped ship from Linuxcare to work at VA Linux Systems) . .
I wanted his answer to be, " really stupid considering the companies I have worked for lately."
Nah, can't get that lucky.
Re:smb-less windows file sharing is already a real (Score:3, Informative)
ms introduced port 445, 'microsoft-ds', with win2k. one can completely disable netbios on a system and still transfer files, but network neighborhood won't work anymore - it's going to be a short amount of time before there's something to replace that.
Not quite. The 445 stuff is actually SMB. It's just not over NetBIOS. That little 4 byte header is left blank (or maybe it encodes a length, I don't remember exactly). And Network Neighborhood (aka Browsing) is replaced with similar functionality using Active Directory I beleive. Later versions of Samba support the CIFS on port 445 I beleive.
He does know about crap code (Score:2, Funny)
How I supposed to know you shouldn't use 'float' in the kernel. The code worked, that was good enough for me. Still not 100% sure I know why this is the case.