Security updates are a little bit trickier than just pulling in general upstream changes, but I think the ideal scenario would be to form a group of interested people around the "secur...@omnios.org" label which would collaborate on fielding and producing security fixes for the project. Given we also have critical production systems running OmniOS (more than most I suspect), we will need to deal with security and bug fixes regardless, so we're happy to use those efforts to bootstrap things.
Robert Treat On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 3:19 PM, Paul B. Henson <hen...@acm.org> wrote: > As both a home hobbyist user of OmniOS and a paid support user of OmniOS at > my day job, I'd first like to thank you guys for putting together a great > operating system that has served me well over the years and I hope will > continue to do so. > > However, I would like to clarify your stance when you say you are > "suspending active development" and that r151022 will be the "final > release". Per your historical release cycle: > > https://omnios.omniti.com/wiki.php/ReleaseCycle > > r151022 was to be an LTS release with security/bug fix support through H1 > 2020. While there will be no further releases of OmniOS from OmniTI, will > you continue to back port fixes and fix issues in r151022 through that > timeline, or will it be released as is and then be up to the as yet > undeveloped community to do so? We currently have critical production > systems deployed, systems whose deployment was only approved by management > due to the availability of commercial support (the wisdom of such a > perspective we will not discuss), and this sudden development is potentially > going to leave us in quite a pickle. While I certainly can't dictate to you > how to run your business, it would have been much easier on your customers > had you made this announcement with the release of r151022, and coincided > the end of your support offering with the end of life of this last release. > Which also ideally would have provided time for an omnios community to have > developed and started producing their own releases before the last > officially supported omniti version reached sunset. > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: OmniOS-discuss [mailto:omnios-discuss-boun...@lists.omniti.com] >> On Behalf Of Robert Treat >> Sent: Friday, April 21, 2017 7:07 AM >> To: omnios-discuss <omnios-discuss@lists.omniti.com> >> Subject: [OmniOS-discuss] The Future of OmniOS >> >> Five years ago, when we first launched OmniOS, we did it out of a >> direct need to push forward the OpenSolaris ecosystem that we had >> built into the core of several parts of our business. At the time, the >> illumos community was still rather new and taking direct control of >> our path forward was a solid next step; we had already built many of >> the pieces in-house that we needed to produce a complete operating >> system distribution, and our experiences with open sourcing software >> we worked on had been generally very good. >> >> While we didn't know quite what the reaction would be, there were two >> things internally that guided us as long term factors in our decision. >> First, as we have done for other open source software, we thought it >> made sense to offer commercial support for OmniOS, but there was no >> desire to "pivot" OmniTI to be an operating system vendor. We like the >> world of building and running high-scale software and infrastructure >> and that's where we wanted to stay. Hand in hand with that was the >> second idea, that while we felt it was important for us to take the >> first initial steps, in the long term we really would prefer that >> OmniOS become an open source project maintained by its community >> rather than remain as the open source product of a single commercial >> entity (think Debian vs Red Hat, if that helps). >> >> Five years later, we are proud to see that this software has been >> accepted by a wide group of companies and end users, and we think this >> has been a boon for the illumos community, who are the shoulders we >> build upon. When you see companies from all sectors and industry, both >> small and some orders of magnitude larger, using the technology you >> put forward to build even further; well, it's great to have an impact. >> >> However, even with the success we have had, there is one area we have >> failed to make progress on, which is the goal of making OmniOS >> community operated. There are many factors why this hasn't happened, >> but ultimately in five years of both ups and downs within OmniTI, I am >> left to conclude that if we are ever to change the nature of OmniOS, >> we need to take a radical approach. >> >> Therefore, going forward, while some of our staff may continue >> contributing, OmniTI will be suspending active development of OmniOS. >> Our next release, currently in beta, will become the final release >> from OmniTI. We are currently going through steps to remove any build >> dependencies on OmniTI or its infrastructure, and we've made some >> steps towards determining what potential resources we currently >> control which could be turned over to an open source community should >> one emerge; for example, we can continue running OmniOS mailing lists >> from OmniTI, but would eventually like to see those transitioned to >> something operated by the community itself. >> >> To be clear, our goal is not to abandon OmniOS, but to divest OmniTI >> from the open source project in order to spur others to participate >> more. We still run quite a bit of infrastructure on OmniOS and expect >> to continue contributing, but the current model does not work for >> OmniTI nor do we believe it is healthy for the OmniOS community as a >> whole. Could this mean the end of OmniOS? We can't guarantee it won't. >> For that matter, recent user data shows that a majority of the >> community still uses OmniOS primarily as a storage solution, not a >> platform for high-scale web computing (which was our original intent), >> so even if a community does form, it could move the project in a >> direction that doesn't align with our needs. If that happens, we feel >> comfortable knowing there are several other strong illumos based >> options available. In the end, while this rip-the-band-aid-off >> approach is not without risk, it is one we feel is necessary. >> >> We hope that most folks will respond to this not with fear but with >> the understanding that there is now an opportunity to build a broader, >> stronger community, and we look forward to working with others to make >> that a reality. >> >> >> Robert Treat >> CEO >> https://omniti.com >> _______________________________________________ >> OmniOS-discuss mailing list >> OmniOS-discuss@lists.omniti.com >> http://lists.omniti.com/mailman/listinfo/omnios-discuss > _______________________________________________ OmniOS-discuss mailing list OmniOS-discuss@lists.omniti.com http://lists.omniti.com/mailman/listinfo/omnios-discuss
