Thanks to Bob Copeland for taking the time to submit this for mainline.
Please don't mistake the resulting debate as a sign we don't appreciate the
effort of making it available and getting it reviewed.
This zero maintenance burden idea is a little suprising to me. The kernel
interfaces do change and we either end up changing every filesystem to
support the new interface or we need to carry around the old ones for the old
filesystems.
Even though OMFS seems to be using the generic interfaces well, there is still
a testing burden for every change. Someone needs to try it, report any
problems and get them fixed. Since none of the people making the changes is
likely to have an OMFS test bed, all of that burden will fall on Bob, his
users, and anyone who tries to compile the module (Andrew).
Unlike all the device drivers we don't want floating around out of the tree,
filesystem authors do have a choice between FUSE and being in-kernel. Since
OMFS has been maintained out of tree since 2.6.12 or so, Bob probably has a
very good idea of how much time he has needed to spend updating things for
each release.
So, there are two big questions I'd ask:
* Which setup (kernel or fuse) would Bob find easier to maintain things?
* Is this a first step toward more development and an increased user base?
Tossing it in -mm isn't a bad step toward getting attention to see if more
people want to use it.
-chris
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