[ Thanks to Samy for this link.
]
“A new era in AFS development and user capability has
dawned. Long held as a mainstay of shared file systems, AFS (an
enterprise file system with a data management model) is a prime
open source candidate because so many AFS clients depend heavily on
source code access and manipulation. Until recently, source
licenses for AFS remained under lock and key and bound those
clients who bought source licenses to strict confidentiality. But
on August 15, 2000, IBM announced the open sourcing of AFS under
the IBM Public License (IPL). The source code will be made
available this month (September 2000) in the developerWorks Open
source zone.”
“AFS has been commercially available from IBM’s Transarc Lab for
over 10 years. Files stored in AFS are accessed through user
installations, which include commercial, government, and university
clients, many of whom are active members of the open source
community. Opening the code should facilitate faster and more
efficient development of AFS files through increased cooperation
between users. The open sourcing applies only to AFS; DFS is not
being open sourced.”
“IBM hopes that opening AFS will speed the pace of innovation
and make it easier for users to collaborate in the area of
enterprise file sharing. Once the code is opened, clients will be
able to jointly work on current projects, many of which stand to
benefit immensely from such cooperation. Ports previously
unsupported by Transarc and AFS may also begin to see development
and significant growth. The University of Michigan, for example,
did disconnected work (in which files not connected to the network,
user profiles, etc. can be accessed) years ago that can now be
publicly added to AFS. Other major contributors and clients who
have been excited about the move include Carnegie Mellon, Intel,
Morgan Stanley, and United Airlines.”