Microsoft Addresses Pressure From Developer Community, Promises To Rename GVFS 158
DuroSoft writes: Earlier this week an article ran about how Microsoft's multi-year refusal to rename its terabyte-scale Git extension "GVFS" (Git Virtual File System) had drawn the ire and dismay of the GNOME GVfs project (Gnome Virtual File System) which predates the Microsoft project by years. Thanks to Slashdot coverage and community pressure, Microsoft has now officially promised to rename GVFS to something else, and is asking the community for suggestions for a new name. Is this an official sign that MIcrosoft is finally listening to developers (albeit with a Slashdot-level of negative attention), or are they simply trying to appease the crowd while they are still in the news due to their acquisition of GitHub?
Gitty McGitFS (Score:5, Funny)
Subject line says it all.
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Damn it, I was coming in here to say this. Bravo, anon, bravo.
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Here's something the people in power need to realize, in my opinion...
Why do people vote for such inane names like, "Boaty McBoatFace" or the man of the year, "Hank, the Angry Drunken Dwarf"?
The collective people really don't generally want to be "stuck" with those names that they voted for, but rather, it's a test - is the voting system fair? Can the organization be trusted to honor the votes of the people? Overwhelmingly, the answer is No. These names get voted in because there is no trust that the re
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Reminds me a bit when I once worked for a power company in a scrum team. When the team got to big and was split the people demanded to have names for the teams. So we ended up with team names like "People's Front of Judea" and "Judean People's Front" (not to be confused with the People's Front of Judea).
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I actually never knew in which team I belonged ...
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If I invite you to a party and tell you to get some ice from the freezer, I probably don't expect you to put twenty pounds of ice into a plastic bag and take it home with you. But what I said doesn't literally rule it out.
Proper social skills require understanding implication and context, not just understanding people's literal words. If they say "you can name it anything" and you pick a name like "Boaty McBoatFace" you've literally followed their words (they did say anything), but you've ignored the soci
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The fact that we do have "Boaty McBoatface" contradicts the claim that the results are not honored. But perhaps it's just an exception that proves the rule.
I wonder whether SpaceX drone ships names are a result of a vote (even if perhaps not a public vote)
Fun fact: There is a bridge in capital of Slovakia for which there was a popular vote. The winning name was "Chuck Norris Bridge". The vote was rejected, but Google Maps c
FS4DDD (Score:3)
I would have FS4DDD File System For Developers, Developers, Developers...
Or perhaps BFS Blamer File System.
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Taking suggestions? (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm sure plenty of more respectable names were suggested as well. In fact I seem to remember one of the others being used the first time it came up. Asking for suggestions is good. Just, by all that's holy, don't hold a binding public vote.
Re:Taking suggestions? (Score:5, Funny)
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But is is being tried, if I recall correctly.
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They could use ReiserFS - that's not being used.
Oh, for fuck's sake, just let that joke die.
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Fuck off fanboy. ReiserFS jokes are still funny. You were probably one of the stupid fucking morons who defended him right up until the end.
Whoosh.
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They could use ReiserFS - that's not being used.
I have a couple disks on an unraid server that use ReiserFS. They were installed back when Unraid only supported ReiserFS. When they are replaced I will kill off my use of it.
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I know what it'll be (Score:5, Funny)
Extended - Cross-platform Terabyte-enabled Filesystem, version 4.
Or Ext4-FS, for short.
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If users are abandoning GitHub for Sourceforge, management is probably getting overconfident about Slashdot.
Re:"Thanks to Slashdot coverage"? (Score:5, Funny)
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Lo, how the mighty have fallen. :-(
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Nope traffic to Slashdot has plummeted and is not a factor. Anyway all coverage here is negative so why would anyone bother to read this garbage.
And absolutely no one comments here any more. At all.
Slashdot outrage... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot outrage... (Score:5, Funny)
Just a few days ago I have posted bunch of copy-pasted GNOME's GVFS issues into the issue tracker of Microsoft's GVFS just to troll them. Looks like I've somewhat influenced this decision - at least in my mind :)
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Way to go you bad bug-filing terrorist. You should be sent off to...wait for it...GITmo!
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Kudos for that idea!
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or are they simply trying to appease the crowd (Score:2)
Sorry, this is Microsoft we're talking about, amiright?
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Yes it is Microsoft, I'm wondering why they need Git to manage their BASIC interpreter?
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Because they need thousands of programmers to get one interpreter right ...
Someone should rename Git (Score:2)
In British english its pejorative term similar to bastard. Linus obviously didn't do his homework before christening it.
Linus quote (Score:2, Informative)
"I'm an egotistical bastard, so I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git."
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Heh, didn't know that. :)
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Because it's all in good fun?
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I'm sure Bill Gates regrets not calling the original MS-DOS file system, FAT Bastard!
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. :P
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In proper (Hillbilly) English, it's a verb meaning "acquire", "fetch", "receive".
Or.... (Score:2)
They could adopt the file system and publish any improvements publicly for free use.
But no. This is the same old Microsoft.
Re:Or.... (Score:5, Informative)
What are you blathering on about? It's under the MIT license.
https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS
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Or more free, as in freedom.
Less free as in free for commercial outfits to pilfer.
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You can go from MIT to GPL if you like.
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This, exactly.
You can go from MIT to GPL if you like, but you CANNOT go from GPL to MIT. So which one has more freedom? MIT.
GPL is more restrictive to developers.
Next announcement from Microsoft (Score:2)
We have decided to call it I can't believe it's not GVFS!
They expect that the angry hordes outside the Redmond walls to be carrying torches and pitchforks. The fact that it seemed to be a mixed bag is normally typical for the area. That they were all sporting aprons threw the riot squad off for an instant, until the crowd control tanks rolled in with their sonic cannons.
Thoughts (Score:2)
.VFS4G but that assumes this will only ever be used for GIT, which is probably a bad way to name something. .GIFTS (GIT/FS) .VITFS (Virtual IT File System) .GIT, .VIT .GIVFS (GIt Virtual File System)
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Git Version Control File System
Make it less git-specific. VCFS - Version Control File System.
Imagine a file-system-centric-way to talk to git, Subversion, Mercurial, pretty much any VCS without caring (much*) what the semantics of the underlying VCS are.
* there are system-specific limitations, e.g. you can easily mount deeply into svn but not so much into git without a complex emulation.
Thanks to Slashdot coverage? (Score:3)
Thanks to Slashdot coverage and community pressure, Microsoft has now officially promised to rename GVFS to something else,
Really? Isn't this a little...arrogant to take the credit about MS change of mind?
Well it's Rather Obvious (Score:2, Funny)
M$VFS
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M$VFS
Ha, my first thought was, just call it GitVFS, and then I saw they had some guidelines in TFA for suggestions, the first of which was they weren't going to put 'Git' in it, the second of which
Short and welcoming - It has to be a nice welcoming word in most languages (sorry – while PoopVFS might elicit a giggle, it won't make the cut when I go to meetings with the Windows team with that in my slide deck. Also it needs to not contain special characters so M$FT is a no go as well
Definitely the latter (Score:2)
.
Definitely the latter.
Microsoft said they should be judged by developers based upon how they acted "in recent years." Well in recent years, Microsoft behaved exactly like the old "embrace, extend, extinguish" Microsoft of olde by (1) naming a product wi
WMD-FS (Score:4, Funny)
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Or Weapon of Massive Destruction-File System!
Or DWMD-FS = Dude, Where's My Data File-System?
Too little, too late (Score:1)
What a truly shitty company MS still remain.
For years they poison the namespace for a piece of free software (I wonder why?) and then only relent when they decide they need the developers & users of said software onside....after pissing away $7.5 billion in an effort to coral them.
Their complete lack of clue knows no bounds. Let me have a guess, I'm not the only one to have dumped Github in the past few days & they're getting a bit nervous?
The funniest thing about it is that before git came a
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Uh, no... Microsoft used an internal version of Perforce called Source Depot for version control prior to the switch to git.
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Their complete lack of clue is making them being worth more than Alphabet (Google) now. Truly an example of incompetence.
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VGFS (Score:2)
Virtual Git File System
A quick Google search didn't reveal anything in tech with that acronym.
LOL sure we'll rename it (Score:2)
Just add two letters (Score:2)
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GitVFS. Why make it difficult?
Well, it looks like that's what I get for not reading TFA
No Git - As discussed, we don’t want it to be GitName or things like that – we don’t want to mess with Git’s name and the fact that it is vendor agnostic.
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This is directed at MS, not you chispito: and yet the "G" in the current acronym is "Git". How vendor agnostic is it, really?
Not pressure, but worry ... (Score:1)
Thanks to Slashdot coverage and community pressure, Microsoft has now officially promised to rename GVFS to something else,
I am pretty sure ;) the change is not due to pressure, but due to this proposal:
https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
Git Block Enumerated New Treasury (Score:2)
GitBENT
Community Name Suggestion?? (Score:1)
\_()_/ (Score:1)
Consistent naming (Score:4, Funny)
To keep consistent with Microsofts other product names, they should call it "File server." Like how they have "Sql server" as the name for their sql server, and "office" as the name of their office suite, and "Disk Operating System" is the name of their first disk operating system.
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Others they just bought (Score:2)
This is no small thing, as small things go. Microsoft loves to name their products after the class of the product itself, e.g. Windows, Word.
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Sure,MS claimed a large amount of the space (although I disagree that Word was the class of the product, but there are a ton of other examples). But the worst example was Amazon's Lambda service.
Simple - MGVFS or MSGVFS (Score:1)
Simple and letting them off gently:
MGVFS for Microsoft Git VFS
or
MSGVFS for MicroSoft Git VFS
Microsoft is just protecting itself (Score:2)
No, it's a sign that the GNOME brand is toxic. So toxic that even Microsoft doesn't want their products to be associated with it in any way. Even by mistake.
GNOME developers (Score:2)
A dubious idea anyway... (Score:2)
Basically this makes git into a centralized version control scheme rather than distributed.
There are limitations of a fully distributed scheme (not well suited for large binary files, for example), but the limitations did at least induce a healthy set of sensibilities in developers using git. Keep large binary blobs out of your build tree, keep things so that each device is a full backup of the critical stuff, etc.
This will mainly cause people who use it on their github repository to have a harder time lea
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It makes a sparse checkout, ensuring that each 'clone' is inadequate to be a new master.
Contrast with git, where the 'origin' could be utterly nuked and any developer who had been working on it could provide a restoration.
Basically, GVFS is turning git into something more svn like, albeit with more local data mirrored.
How about GVxFS (Score:2)
GVxFS - Git Virtual Filesystem or... Git Virtual eXtensible Filesystem
GHVFS (Score:2)
GitHub Virtual File System
Why did they bother? (Score:2)
MS is being nicer here than there is any good reason to be. Slashdots and other webshits will not thank them, any more than they have thanked MS for giving away their solution to this problem for free and developing it in the open, with community engagement.
Slashdot level attention (Score:2)
Yeah, nah. Slashdot level attention is not what it used to be. I mean it's nice to feel like a self important regular member of a large powerful community, but the reality is most companies couldn't give two shits about what goes on here on slashdot, and given the "attention" we give to stupid and mundane things they aren't wrong either.
GFYS (Score:1)
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WTFS (Score:2)
Call it What The F*** You Want Filesystem.
The name should be obvious (Score:1)
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Stop doing this, it gets you a lot more goodwill than rolling it back.
Does it though? At this point, there is enough bad will toward Microsoft that essentially doing nothing is not going to improve their reputation by much, anything they do that contributes to open source is automatically assumed to be the start of embrace, extend, extinguish or just assumed to be a small gesture to keep people off their back. By rolling back, they get positive reporting that they contributed to the open source, then additional positive reporting when they roll back the conflict. At this poin