“MW: How did the Heartbeat project get started?
“The project was started in kind of a funny way. I was working
for Bell Labs at the time (1998) and we were looking at new
technologies for our development environment. It had become obvious
that Linux ought to be considered, and I brought this up to my
second line manager, Ken Switzer. Ken asked me what did Linux have
for high-availability. I said I didn’t know–while not telling him
that I didn’t know what high-availability really was! So I went to
research it, and found that there was this mailing list–the
linux-ha list, and a document describing HA techniques, but no
software. I had an interest in someday participating in an free
software project to see how this free software stuff worked, but
there were typical legal complications related to who would own the
intellectual property. So, I saw this as an opportunity. Ken was a
forward looking guy who really loved high-availability. So, when I
met with him later, I proposed that I should write some initial
software as a sort of seed crystal to help jump start the project,
if he would help me get corporate permission to own the copyrights
on what I wrote. He agreed, as I knew he would, and I wrote the
first ‘heartbeat’ code over a spring break holiday spent with my
in-laws…”
Related Story:
UnderLinux:
Interview with Harald Welte (netfilter/iptables Developer)(Feb
18, 2002)