[maemo-developers] Samba support dropped (was Re: N810 WE)

[From: Denis Dimick]

John,

>From the number of replies, it looks like a large number of people are using
SMB to transport and manage files. I think your comments about the need for
SMB/CIFS support are correct; unless MS comes out with a "better" standard
and has the will to force a move to it.

I'm not sure Nokia can afford to try and support SMB, just how big is the
market and what's Nokia's share? Is it worth the investment, or did the
n810WIFI cost to much, and now it's time to scale back?

I also agree that a .conf file, is the best way to go, it could be wrapped
with a GUI, but the bottomline is the ability to hand modify your Linux
system is what makes it so much easier to manage then being forced into a
GUI.

Thanks,

Denis
--------------------------------------
sik vis paw kem, para bellum
--------------------------------------
oderint dum metuant
--------------------------------------
"Our Country won't go on forever, if we stay soft as we are now. There won't
be any AMERICA because some foreign soldiery will invade us and take our
women and breed a hardier race!" -LT. GEN. LEWIS "CHESTY" PULLER, USMC



On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 11:06 AM, John Holmblad <
jholmblad at acadiasecurenets.com> wrote:

>  Denis,
>
> I see SMB/CIFS support as fundamental for a product like this if it wants
> to be taken seriously in the business user market. Also, we should remember
> that SMB/CIFS is not just about Windows compatibility.  There is a plethora
> of products, especially SMB/CIFS based file servers many of which are built
> on opensource software.
>
> Not surprisingly, even the IPhone has the opensource community working on
> providing CIFS support for that platform. See for example, the project at
> the www page whose url is:
>
>     http://code.google.com/p/iphonefs/wiki/Overview
>
> In fact, that app is exactly what I would like to see on the N800/N810.
> This app provides a way to browse files on the iphone from systems running
> Windows XP, Vista, Windows Home Server, etc.
>
> I did some quick checking and it seems that the Andriod community is also
> at work on apps that suport SMB/CIFS.
>
> What I don't understand here is that the SAMBA server side, at least, does
> not require a rich GUI to be useful for the N800/N810 user. I have found it
> to be one of those Linux programs/apps that can be relatively easily
> managed by editing the.*.conf file. So where is the complication for Nokia
> to continue to support it? Is it the memory space taken up by the app?
>
> I think the Nokia team is making a mistake in attempting to push the R&D
> "undo" button and  "lighten" its workload by pushing this  off the Nokia
> deck with the hope that the community will rescue it.
>
> Despite its relatively advanced age in the pantheon of network protocols,
> SMB/CIFS is not going away anytime soon if ever.
>
>
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
>
>
> John Holmblad
>
>
>
> Acadia Secure Networks, LLC
>
> * *
>
>
>
> Denis Dimick wrote:
>
> I wonder if it's possible to put up an interest poll, and see what users
> are looking for? I myself use SMB at home to support the two windows systems
> the kids use, and allow for an easy mounting on the remaining 3 Mac's,
> however, currently I'm not using SMB to mount to my n810; it would be like
> using SMB to have two Unix systems share files.
>
> I don't think we can consider ourselves "Normal Users" since we belong to
> this mailing list, however, I'm very pleased at the tone of support for SMB
> expressed here; normally on other mailing lists there is a considerable
> smaller amount of support for windows users and the trials they have to
> endure.
>
> Just my 2 cents,
>
> Denis
>
> --------------------------------------
> sik vis paw kem, para bellum
> --------------------------------------
> oderint dum metuant
> --------------------------------------
> "Our Country won't go on forever, if we stay soft as we are now. There
> won't be any AMERICA because some foreign soldiery will invade us and take
> our women and breed a hardier race!" -LT. GEN. LEWIS "CHESTY" PULLER, USMC
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 6:19 AM, Graham Cobb <g+770 at cobb.uk.net<g%2B770 at cobb.uk.net>
> > wrote:
>
>> On Monday 19 January 2009 11:53:45 Aniello Del Sorbo wrote:
>> > What SMB would be useful for is sharing data with a network drive.
>> > They usually share the disk via SMB, NFS or AFP and, as far I know,
>> > Maemo, starting from Fremantle, does not deploy any of those clients.
>>
>>  Samba would be an ideal opportunity for Nokia to consider helping" a
>> community
>> add-on (I would have said "support" but that implies bug fixing, which is
>> not
>> what I mean).  Given that the community exists, with a single place to go
>> looking for stuff, there is an ideal way for Nokia to provide useful
>> features
>> without having to commit the resources to test and support them
>> indefinitely.
>>
>> Nokia "help" for a community package for Samba (or NFS or AFS or...),
>> fully
>> integrated into the Maemo environment, could be expressed in several ways.
>> For example, some Nokia employees could be paid to spend some of their
>> time
>> on the project (wouldn't it be great if the Maemo team were allowed a
>> Google-style 20% time to spend on community projects), or Nokia could help
>> with testing or contribute resources to the upstream project or something.
>>
>> I know Nokia marketing has been looking for innovative and sexy projects,
>> which can show off the features and lifestyle of the new tablet, to help.
>> But this can also be a useful tool for those more mundane features which
>> aren't necessarily hard to implement but which consume an unreasonable
>> proportion of testing and support (like remote filesystems).  In exchange,
>> Nokia would get a useful feature, with no support commitment and would
>> also
>> be able to measure just how important users think the feature is by
>> measuring
>> downloads.
>>
>> At a minimum, I hope Nokia is providing any code, test scripts, etc. they
>> developed while they were supporting Samba to the community so that they
>> can
>> be used if someone else picks up support for it.
>>
>> Graham
>>  _______________________________________________
>> maemo-developers mailing list
>> maemo-developers at maemo.org
>> https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
>>
>
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