[TUHS] Re: NFS 40th anniversary event

[Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 05:59:24PM -0700, Tom Lyon wrote:
> Part of https://www.msstconference.org/
> 
> Love it or hate it, should be something for everyone

I think Sun people love it, because the Sun implementation just worked, the
rest of the world mostly hates it.  I learned this when I left Sun and got
to use other NFS implementations, they sucked.

We supported BitKeeper on NFS which meant we had to do lock files on
NFS on all platforms.  Believe me when I say I know that other NFS
implementations were a mess.  Read all the drama here:

https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/src/port/sccs_lockfile.c

I really didn't get the NFS hate until I left Sun.  Sun ran their entire 
company on NFS (and the automounter).  The whole experience was super
pleasant and it just worked.  Other companies didn't work as hard on their
implementation, I got the feeling it was "well, we have to support this
but don't really want to".  And it showed.

I believe later versions of Linux approached SunOS level of NFS.
-- 
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Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat