CIFS will be strategic in some settings, but not included in kernel

[George Hunt]

Two factors tip the balance between bloat and functionality in favor of
including CIFS file system in the kernel.

   1. The decision to double boot some XOs with XP.
   2. The need of IT professionals, in small roll-outs, to use the resources
   at hand (MS configured  machines hooked up to printers, etc.).

A year from now, if and when some deployments have new machines dual booting
with XP, and when 5th grade is learning XP, and sister in 1st grade is still
learning Record, the school or regional IT person will be asking why can't
these machines talk together? Yes you can move data with a usb stick. The
cifs.ko module on a ubuntu distribution is 283K. Future capability and
compatibility is worth the bloat.

I recently responded to a request on the olpcnews blog from a teacher in
Bangladesh. He had 5 laptops, no school server, and was wanting to back up
his student's writings in the journal to something. If he had had a MS
destop, it might have been possible to sync to its hard disk. No CIFS, not a
possibility.

Not including CIFS in the XO limits future and unforseen use unnecessarily.

ghunt
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