2008/6/25 Laurent Blume <laurent at opensolaris.org>: > Shawn Walker a ?crit : >> Yes, but the point here was that the components that actually make the >> system "bootstrappable on its own" can be replaced by volunteers. >> >> I wasn't referring to third-party components that are not necessary >> for the system to function. > > Neither the SPARC disassembler nor the ce driver are necessary, so I > hadn't followed you there, sorry. Thanks for the clarification.
No, those really are necessary for a fully functional basic system (IMO). It was my understanding that the disassembler is needed for debugging tools and so on. > I find your proposition a little disingenuous, though. Why should > *volunteers* do that? I mean, it's Sun boasting that their OS is > becoming FOSS. So why reverse the roles, and ask people who say it isn't > completely free yet to do their work? See that's the irony. If Sun does it all, they aren't "working with the community", or they "don't really understand open source." Likewise, if they don't do it, they get the criticism you are bringing up. The other problem is that, legally, certain parts of the system need to be ideally implemented by someone outside of Sun who hasn't been potentially exposed to third-party code. I don't pretend to know or understand all the various reasons, but no matter what Sun does here, someone is going to criticize them. > The dialog is really becoming something like that: > ?Sun: Here, my OS is FOSS, look how good it is! > FOSS programmer: No, it's not, look there, and there, and there. > Sun: Oh, yes, sorry. Huh, since you noticed, can you fix it for me? > For free? Please?? No, it's more like: "Here's almost all the source code to the other item that we spent millions of hours and dollars developing. There's so much here, and we really hope you like what we've done. We regret that a very small portion is not available due to legal agreements or other restrictions. We hope you understand." Sun doesn't need those closed parts -- the community does. It isn't very fair to have taken everything Sun gave and then expect more. Sun has given more than any other company in the open source world. >> I don't think our adoption is going to be dependent on satisfying a >> "vocal minority." > > I do. You might not remember how much it has hurt Sun and Solaris in the > past, such as when they shipped their Linux Driver Porting Kit, or > whatever the exact name was. It shouldn't be taken so lightly. > The vocal minority is heard by a second, much larger and more silent > group around it, and influences it. It'z difficult to judge how big it > is, but in the aforementioned case, I saw the direct effect on many > people around me, longtime Linux and FOSS users. It took a while to subside. > > And that group is the one we need to reach now: skilled enough to > understand the advantages of OpenSolaris, and able to use it in spite of > the many quirks it has that make it still an experimental OS. I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree. Those that actually *care* about what happens will get involved. Just as the GNU/Linux community had to depend on closed components for quite some time, they eventually were able to provide free replacements. I don't see much difference here. Sun has given the community a tremendous gift at an almost unesttimatable cost. Belittling that gift with faint praise or unfair criticism is not constructive. >> Individuals believe that this issue is important should join the >> Emancipation CG. > > We have to reach to them, and not just sit, and hope they'll come by > themselves. There's still a very strong distrust of Sun hovering around, > for reasons not entirely rational. > Telling those people ?Come and write some man pages to make OpenSolaris > free!? isn't very attractive. The irony is that even without the man pages that Sun can't yet redistribute, OpenSolaris probably still has more, better documentation than most GNU/Linux distributions. >> I'd rather spend my time improving packaging, etc. > > Yes, sooo much work there. I can't wait to see a remove option in IPS :-) Remove option? You mean pkg uninstall? It's already there. >> It's not going to solve them, but it may help allay some perhaps >> somewhat misguided concerns. > > Yes. Transparency, the basis of the OpenSolaris Project, will always be > a Good Thing. ...and understanding. There has been so much given if folks are willing to get out there and use it. -- Shawn Walker
