Re: Adding support for SE-Linux security

Robert Haas wrote:
> Sorry. I spent a lot of time for both CommitFest 2008-11 and
> CommitFest 2009-07 in the hopes of getting something committable, and
> I wasn't successful. I'm just at the end of my rope. It seems fairly
> clear that Tom isn't going to commit any piece of SE-PostgreSQL at
> all, ever. So who's going to do it? It doesn't make any sense to
> continue trucking along with this patch into the indefinite future if
> it has no hope of being committed.
>
> Frankly, I think this comes down to money. There are several
> PostgreSQL companies which employ very capable PostgreSQL committers.
> When someone is willing to pony up enough money to get those people
> interested (as, I gather, has happened with block-checksumming) then
> this will happen. Until then, I don't believe anyone is going to
> volunteer to be responsible for a 10,000-line patch in their free
> time. Tom is the only one crazy enough for that, and he said no.

I have offered to review/commit the patch. I don't promise my effort
will be pretty, but I will get the job done. I have not started yet
because I think we are still unclear if the feature is worth the
additional code maintenance.

I frankly think the patch should be thought of as the SE-Linux-specific
directory files, which KaiGai can maintain, and the other parts, which I
think I can handle.

> The next time someone submits a huge, unsolicited patch to do
> ANYTHING, we should do them a favor and tell them this up front,
> rather than a year and a half later. Then they could have the
> appropriate conversations with the appropriate people and determine
> whether to budget for it or give up. What has happened with this
> patch has not served KaiGai well, or improved the image of this
> community.

Yes, this has not been our finest hour. :-(

I think the causes have been explained already:

o early patches did not have community buy-in
o we are unclear about the size of the user community
o we are unclear what the end user will want
o the feature is complex
o the features is in an unfamiliar problem-domain

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +