-------------------- John Plocher said: "Sun *wanted* a community that empowered application developers, but *got* a community aimed squarely at kernel hackers..."
-> You also have people whom were involved in getting FOSS application development and porting support BEFORE OpenSolaris even existed. The community, as seen at the OpenSolaris Developer Summit 2007, was definitely not a bunch of kernel hackers. I saw people from marketing, sales, journalists, basic users, tech writers, hobbyists, developers, analysts, package maintainers, senior executives (Ian), and system administrators. At most, the kernel hackers present were from Sun Engineering - not the community at large!! Sun did empower application developers by giving them access to NetBeans/Sun Studio for 'free' and even supporting academia students by StarOffice 8 inclusion in SXCE/SXDE. Providing SXDE to application developers for free was one of the better moves Sun has made in that empowerment of developers. Grid computing (for those that use it) and opening the Sun test farm was another good move. Another move was heavily discounting technical books, servers, and workstations for developers. I could keep going but I've watched Sun try to make things better for their developers to empower us/them. "1. How can we work with Sun management and Sun engineers to make the infrastructure accessible outside of Sun so that we can start working as a community. " -> Easy. Direct our attention to Sun MANAGEMENT. They hold the main keys and are the guardians to Sun's magic kingdom. Without their support and approval, it would be like beating a stubborn mule uphill. Don't go around them, go through them. That effort will trickle back to Sun engineering as Management will tweak their tasks to better support an open and accessible infrastructure environment for us all. "2. What do we need to do to get the OpenSolaris repository ecosystem bootstrapped, deployed and filled with an initial set of packaged applications? " -> You have ISVs that are working on doing just that (but you need the true human resources moreso than the basic handraising effort). Blastwave.org is one example. You also have people from other distributions (aka MARtux/Genunix/Milak/Schillix/Belenix) working 'round the clock' either building distros to support things like IPS/ DCS/ IMS/ Caiman/ Presto/ Songbird/ OSS. As we get a list of things that need to be done, then it is going to the appropriate people to get those things done (or ask for help). Best way to track the issues at hand - sometimes. You can't build Rome in a day even with today's technologies (ok, maybe a 'holywood-style' virtualized Rome) and it takes awhile to train ISVs, package maintainers, and developers on filling that IPS sandbox. A few Sun engineers are showing their YouTube videos and proving blogs on how to do that. People sometimes have to just empower and educate THEMSELVES as the information is there now - and can be made better with support of users groups and more user awareness of the info through the communication portals. Just my opinion for today and maybe tomorrow, ~ Ken Mays -- This message was posted from opensolaris.org
