richard@locus.com (Richard M. Mathews) (12/01/90)
dls@dlsrt.austin.ibm.com (David Skeen) writes: >richard@locus.com (Richard M. Mathews) writes: >> I'd be really curious to find out what it is about TCF that some people >> find "outdated and laughable." >When OSF didn't accept the TCF parts of the DEcorum proposal, the future >of TCF became somewhat clouded. I would expect TCF functionality to be >added to OSF/DCE in the future, but when and how aren't understood. AFS >is an integral part of OSF/DCE; there is some degree of interoperability >between DCE and NFS. For the near term, that leaves TCF as odd man out. First, while OSF didn't accept TCF as part of DCE, TCF was not rejected either. It was deemed to be beyond the scope of the DCE Request For Technology. OSF may include part or all of it in the future. My personal, biased opinion is that this is quite likely. You are right that when and how are not known. Even if TCF is never accepted by OSF, I would still not call it outdated. Different, but not outdated. Perhaps even before its time. The success of AFS does not preclude the success of TCF. The fact that HP and IBM were interested in TCF to living side-by-side with AFS in the DEcorum proposal indicates that the extensions TCF provides have some real value. Even if OSF does not ever accept TCF, I personally expect TCF to be available for some systems -- perhaps even OSF systems. Finally, TCF is still part of AIX on the PS/2 and 370 platforms. I have no reason to believe that IBM will turn its back on the customers who have started to depend on this functionality. By the way, to make sure my prejudices are clear, I was a manager on the DEcorum project at Locus. I have also spent the last 6 years working on TCF (mostly as a kernel hacker). Disclaimer: Opinions are purely my own. I have no special knowledge of the possible future of TCF which has biased my opinions. My opinions were already sufficiently biased by my TCF chauvinism;-) Richard M. Mathews Freedom for Lithuania Locus Computing Corporation Laisve! richard@locus.com lcc!richard@seas.ucla.edu ...!{uunet|ucla-se|turnkey}!lcc!richard