freebsd stable - Oct 2013 - [heads up] axing AppleTalk and IPX/SPX

Hello!

  [Cc to stable@, for wider audience]

  The plan is two axe two old networking protocols from FreeBSD head/,
meaning that FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE, available in couple of years would
be shipped without them.

1) AppleTalk

   Last time claimed to be supported by vendor in 2007[1]. In practice
   had very little use since 90th.
   Discontinued by major routing equipment vendors since 2009[2].

2) IPX

   Last time claimed to be supported by vendor in 2007[3]. In practice
   had very little use since 90th.
   Discontinued by major routing equipment vendors since 2011[4].

Current status of these protocols in FreeBSD is "compilable". For the
next couple of years, we plan a lot of changes in networking stack,
many of which will require changing the protocols, as well. Keeping
them in compilable state would require additional manpower, but it
is very probable, that after all the changes they will be utterly
broken, albeit compilable.

P.S. I account any objector as taker of maintainership :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.5
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.6
[2]
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/iosswrel/ps8802/ps5460/product_bulletin_c25-520459.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Enterprise_Server#OES-NetWare
[4]
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/novipx/configuration/guide/Novell_IPX_Discontinuation.html

-- 
Totus tuus, Glebius.
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On Mon, 28 Oct 2013 11:28:07 EDT Julian Elischer wrote:
> 
> On 10/28/13 8:42 PM, Gleb Smirnoff wrote:
> >
> >    The plan is two axe two old networking protocols from FreeBSD
head/,
> > meaning that FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE (available in couple of years) would
> > be shipped without them.
> >
> > 1) AppleTalk
> >
> >     Last time claimed to be supported by vendor in 2007[1].  In
> >     practice had very little use since 90th.
> >     Discontinued by major routing equipment vendors since 2009[2].
> 
> I did a lot of work on this to get it going in the 90s but
> really it''s only current value is as an example of a non-IP
protocol.
> 
> (and the same for IPX, which was what Novell used to use I believe.)
> I''d be pretty amazed to discover anyone still used either.
FWIW, we still use Appletalk for a lot of printing at RPI, although
we''re
not using the system-level Appletalk in FreeBSD.  I''ve got my own
heavily
customized version of the old CAP (Columbia Appletalk Package).  We use it
only for printing, not for file-sharing.

I can certainly confirm that very few printers support Appletalk, so
obviously we (at RPI) are in for a world of hurt at some point in the
future.  But we''ve also cut back so much on systems-programmers and
sysadmin''s that we haven''t had the manpower to work on
alternatives.
I suspect this will end badly.

I notice that CAP was removed from the ports collection some time ago,
and that there didn''t seem to be any objections to that.  So
that''s
some more indication that appletalk isn''t seeing much use.

As far as the kernel-level support, I assume you''re just removing all
the code tied to the kernel options NETATALK and NETATALKDEBUG?  Or does
it entail some other changes, which might wreck my custom compile of CAP?

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn                =    drosehn@rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer               or   gad@FreeBSD.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;             Troy, NY;  USA


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