William Kucharski wrote:
>
>> I actually abhor the way Linux does this. Its not a good model for
>> robust engineering IMO. I far, far prefer the NetBSD approach to
>> portability and architecture support. (And yes, I've real experience
>> with both approaches.) Anyone who's worked with NetBSD will probably
>> tell you that their portability and cross-platform support is
>> probably the one feature that beats all the other FOSS projects,
>> hands down. I'd far rather aim in that direction, than in the
>> fragmented approach that Linux has used over the years. But that's
>> just *my* opinion.
>
> That may indeed be the way things fall out in the future, but as of
> right now code drops from Sun made to ON are tested on supported SPARC
> and x86 platforms only, and nothing about the proposed Community will
> change that.
Okay, but lets not design our community structure around the way code
drops for Sun occur. The current situation is a consequence of Sun
"owning" the CTeam. I think the very nature of this is subject to
change, if we ever get the OpenSolaris and CTeam bits "outside" of Sun.
>
> Or, to the best of my knowledge Sun will not as a company be testing
> each new ON release on ODW workstations, PowerPC Macs, Z series
> mainframes, whichever ARM platforms may be eventually supported, etc.
> to insure that the latest code drop from Solaris has not inadvertently
> broken something; it is intended that that be the responsibility of
> the Community developers for each project (whether those Community
> developers are actually employed by Sun or not.)
Well, these details are yet to be hammered out. I wouldn't make to many
plans around them. Certainly until a port becomes mainstream, its hard
to ask anyone to do much in the way of testing. But as we have more
ports in the future, we may need to revisit what the testing and
acceptance criteria are *for everyone*.
And, some kind of PIT type testing for other ports might become
necessary as well.
>
>> Maybe that's the model *you* intend, but I'm not convinced everyone
>> shares your opinion here. Hmm... were you the original proposer for
>> the community? If so I guess you have more say in it... but I'd ask
>> you politely to consider that other models may be superior, or may be
>> desired by the community. A community straw-poll might be worthwhile
>> here.
>
> Yes, I was the person who originally proposed the Community and as
> such, these are what my intentions were and are regarding support.
>
> You and others are certainly free to propose other models, but I feel
> it's important to get the Community off the ground at this point if
> for no other reason than to serve as a centralized information
> clearing house for information common to all ongoing OpenSolaris ports.
So drop the notion of "Community Supported", and just allow for treating
Sun like any other community member.
As indicated earlier, the main take away here is that we need resources
useful to folks using, or creating, a port that is still in incubation.
The source of support, Community or otherwise, shouldn't matter.
So, +1 on needing a CG to serve this need, but -1 on making a
distinction between Sun and everyone else. Change to using "maturity"
or "mainstream" as your point of separation, and you'll get my +1 on
both counts.
-- Garrett
