BaySUG '05 – Samba and Google's Summer of Code
Monday 14 November 2005 - Filed under Default
Had an awesome time yesterday at the First Bay Area Super User Group Meeting (BaySUG ’05) in Mountain View. With about a hundered or so attendants, there were two talks given. First up was Jeremy Allison where he layed out the genesis and evolution of Samba. He related a lot of great history from Andrew Tridgell’s early “frank and honest” conversations with Microsoft about the quality of their SMB code to today’s race to complete Microsoft’s new SMB2 protocol before Vista ‘s release.
I’ve never worked on any large free software project but I got the feeling that it really is a small world and great programmers and documenters can definitely make an impact. In terms of the race to finish SMB2, it seems to me that while it’s important to keep an eye on Microsoft’s latest tricks, it is perhaps more important that they continue innovating in the best interest of their users. Maybe Vista won’t be so relevant in a world of Samba servers and strong Linux desktop clients with superior networking. Most interesting was probably Allison’s revelation that Microsoft saw helping Samba early on as a way to get Windows clients into UNIX shops!
The second talk was by Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google. He ran Google’s Summer of Code and told us some great specs on the project. They recieved ~9000 applications, accepted 419, and had a success rate of 84%.
With so many applicants, I get the feeling that there is a definite need for more good project leaders like Fyodor of Nmap and Jeremy Allison of Samba. Maybe Google can recruit some past winners as project leaders the next time around. Here‘s an interview where Fyodor discusses his involvement in the project.
It was cool seeing this picture of 8 or so SUN and BSD boxes that were the genesis of Google at Stanford.
I got a couple free t-shirts, a free diet coke, some coupons, a little network patch cable. I love free marketing junk so it’s definitely a great time going to these things. I hope they have BaySUG every year!
2005-11-14 » David Sterry