The problem I have with the proposal is not quite what other people
have indicated -- that they want to change the time stamp format, or
add ACLs, or whatever.

The problem I have with it is that it's a `Berkeley abstraction'.  You
obviously have a specific problem that you want to solve, and rather
than stating that problem, you've attempted to come up with some
`general' abstraction to encompass it -- one which, in all likelihood,
isn't anywhere near general enough to handle the next task.

Furthermore, if I understand the problem you're actually trying to
solve, I think the `large inode' solution is an exceptionally poor way
to solve it.  If you're stacking something on top of FFS, there's no
reason the stacked layer can't keep its data elsewhere.  This is,
actually, the whole *point* of stacked VFS layers.  This data simply
doesn't belong in FFS at all.