Who wants SACK? (Re: was My planned work on networking stack)

[Mike Wade]

On Mon, 8 Mar 2004, Mark Allman wrote:

> >   > I hope it is clear to everyone that an investment in the 50K$
> >   > range would provide a professional-grade implementation of SACK
> >   > for FreeBSD, and this money is in the noise for any organization
> >   > that uses trans-oceanic gigabit links.
> >
> > What Luigi says is absolutely correct.  It doesn't take a lot to get
> > this done.  I've talked to a number of companies about implementing
> > SACK for them and while there was interest, no one wanted to fund it
> > all themselves, potentially for the benefit of their competitors.  I
> > know of two that went and did it themselves for FreeBSD --- one of
> > which did it wrong and saw zero benefit from SACK and another that did
> > it right, but are keeping it proprietary as an edge.  Given that Linux
> > and Windows already have it, these and the multiple past efforts
> > collectively seem like an unnecessary duplication of work.  Perhaps if
> > we could pool enough interest, we can raise enough to put this issue
> > to rest once and for all.
>
> On the freebsd web page, there is a note about monetary contributions.
> I wonder if it would be worth it to make this a bit more verbose and
> list specific things that are in need of funding.  So, companies can tag
> a small donation for "SACK development" and when there is enough in the
> pool it can just get done.  Would that spurn folks on a bit?  Or, would
> it be useful to setup some sort of committment system whereby a company
> can say "we'll throw 5K in if you get committments for the 50K you need
> to make X happen".  It might be worth the modest investment to setup
> something like that and keep it maintained.  That way it's a bit more
> official than some random person running around and trying to put
> together the required coin.
>
> Just a thought ....

Personally I think this would be very beneficial.  On many occasions I've
been willing to donate resources (including cash) for various efforts but
I don't have the time or resources to manage such a system...

---
Mike Wade (mwade at bluehighway.net)
Blue Highway Labs, LLC.