I consider myself an advocate of "Free Software". I am a financial contributor to the FSF. I believe the GPL and the GNU project has done more to break "open" the proprietary development model than any thing proceeding or following. That said, I do not believe that it is in our benefactor's (Sun's) best interest for Solaris to be GPLed at this time. (I am optimistic that as Open(Solaris) takes it's place in the Open Source OS world it will have the community support to make an eventual move to GPL).
I am self employed as the head of a small systems administration consulting group, that specializes in supporting Ruby on Rails startups. The only real conflict between my employment and the needs of this community are demands on my time, which frankly I don't have 100% control over. (I am aiming to work 15 hours per week on OpenSolaris OGB work. I suspect a large chunk of this time will be spent reading email from the lists) My experience covers approximately 11 years of Solaris administration. And approximately 18 years, all told, of various Unix experience, (6+ as a user on various shared systems). My administration experience covers various environments including: Fortune 100, US Military, Medical, and Startup. My interest in OpenSolaris is as an advocate and user of the Solaris legacy. I see two areas that Solaris really needs to stay focused on. 1) We need to make sure those that are tied into our legacy roots are not abandoned. 2) We need a path for new GNU users to feel welcome within our environment, and adoption of the GNU ecosystem without leaving the Solaris world. As an aside, I think that NexentaCP's "OS personality" modes are an interesting approach to this technical problem. http://www.nexenta.org/os/Different_Personalities I recognize that Sun is the largest contributer to our project, and Sun's needs will drive much of our development. I hope "Sun" will communicate more directly with this community, regarding those needs. I also hope that Sun will factor in the requests of this community into the equation. As a point of disclosure, I believe that an independent "OpenSolaris/OpenHelios" foundation would help bring other resources to bear. As it is now, the OpenSolaris project is viewed as a Sun project. I would hope to be able to expand that view, and bring other people and communities into the fold, including other vendors, where it makes sense. As it stands, those that wish to donate to the cause are left in the awkward position of donating to a public company. (Which I'm not even sure is allowed). Whether or not I am elected as a member of the OGB, I will work towards funding and establishing a new community foundation. Sun's involvement is quite important, but I understand that it may take a "build it and they will come" approach to gaining Sun's trust. I hope that by establishing a foundation that contributes to Solaris, Sun will join the effort. I also understand how many people believe what I am trying to do is a "pipe dream". It is important, for as long as we can keep the dream of a self sustaining project alive, we can keep Sun's detractors at bay, and keep our hopes alive. Please send all responses to ogb-discuss, or directly to me. -- - Brian Gupta P.S. - Solaris is a damn fine server OS for running proprietary apps. Let's make it even better for running the open source stack. P.S.S. - There is a faction within Sun that is actively trying to dissolve community "governance" in the believe that we "aren't ready for it". I am running because I disagree. http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nycosug/ http://www.genunix.org/wiki/index.php/OpenSolaris_New_User_FAQ
