Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> C. Bergstr?m wrote:
>
>> With all due respect.. I think the OSI is more qualified than the OGB to
>> determine which license(s) are suitable for an open source project.
>>
>
> For an open source project, yes. For OpenSolaris, I don't necessarily agree.
> If you read my proposed policy, it basically just extended the acceptable
> licenses from "approved by OSI" to "approved by OSI, or is the OpenSolaris
> Binary License, or, for docs/etc, is a similar type Creative Commons license",
> with the flexibility for the OGB to adjust without needing a constitutional
> amendment.
>
>
>> The real goal here is to build a fully open source distro based on
>> OpenSolaris technology.
>>
>
> That is *your* goal, but I can't say for certain that is the goal of
> everyone involved in the OpenSolaris community. For instance, while
> I wish they'd open source it, I'm not going to say the nvidia driver
> should be blocked and nvidia users not able to use 3D acceleration
> because their driver sources are closed.
Wait a second here.. Solaris has been around for many years as core
*server* OS. Since when did nvidia drivers with 3D acceleration become
part of the core features that the community wants/needs? I have a lot
of respect for you.. At the same time should return the question and ask
is this *your* goal as an xorg dev, Sun's goal, the goal of the new
linux people or a goal from the senior solaris admin. There's at least
four main perspectives here as I can see it.. Also the nouveau project
may not be ready *now*, but there's nothing stopping an effort to help
port drm and that to OpenSolaris.
In your response you compare ubuntu linux with opensolaris.. Is this
really the target market for Sun? I'm curious where these opinions are
coming from.. If there was a community poll to ask these questions
instead of assuming what an individual or even small elected group may
thinks what would the result be.
> This is not a new idea -
> Ubuntu has taken a similar approach, while other projects like
> Debian & OpenBSD are more rigorously opposed to "binary blobs" - like
> the Linux & BSD communities, I think our community can have different
> distros with different policies on openness and not try to enforce a
> one-size-fits-all mandate from the OGB level across all of them. (After
> all, why would different distros exist if we forced them all to be
> exactly the same?)
>
> What the "real goal" of the entire project/community is would be a better
> thing to work out for the mission statement/charter discussion though.
>
>
>> As a compromise any "Open"Solaris technology distro which
>> isn't packaged and building under an entirely OSI approved license must
>> not use "Open" in the name.
>>
>
> As we were all reminded two years ago, Sun alone owns the OpenSolaris
> trademark and decides on appropriate usage, the community does not and
> cannot dictate terms on that usage to the trademark owner. I cannot
> see Sun management changing their distro name to uphold a pure open source
> ideology, when the OpenSolaris project, even before Indiana, has always
> taken a more pragmatic approach to allow closed source when necessary
> (such as the selection of CDDL to allow linking with closed sources,
> instead of the all-must-be-open requirement of the GPL).
>
>
It's how many years later and how much progress has happened? Ok. so
Sun can call it whatever they want.. Does it have to be endorsed by the
opensolaris community? How many decisions is the sun engineering team
doing that results in less community interaction on a development
level. Does that even really matter considering that the community
doesn't really need to do anything.. The very small group that
participated in the pilot may have found this to be acceptable given the
circumstances, but has anything changed? I'm not sure what the OGB
can/can't do, but would someone from Sun take the lead on this and
explain the vision for the road ahead.
Dare I ask if someone can toss up a poll/survey on the homepage? (Not
sure if the main site can support polls) Below are a few of the best
generic, but meaningful questions I could come up with.
How much closed source is acceptable for OpenSolaris?
a) Should build entirely from source
b) What's there now is acceptable, but nothing new should be added
c) Can have more binaries without source
What is the most important direction for OpenSolaris?
a) server
b) desktop
c) developer workstation
What best describes your usage of OpenSolaris?
a) Administrator with prior experience using Solaris
b) Administrator
c) Developer
d) Destkop user
Respectfully,
./Christopher
---
Community driven OpenSolaris Technology - http://www.osunix.org
blog: http://www.codestrom.com
