Alan Burlison writes: > What is the relationship between a Distribution and a Consolidation? > Which of them gets to make versioning and release train decisions? > > Consolidations make good sense in a world where they all deliver into a > single release vehicle. I'm not clear how they would work in a > situation where we have multiple Distributions. I'm not saying we > shouldn't have them, I'm just saying that I don't fully understand how > they would work in the new world.
Those are excellent questions for which I have no good or simple answers. I don't think that we have been paying anywhere near enough attention to the role that distributors play in the process. Clearly, they cannot just be mere aggregators of bits -- they do much more than that to make a coherent product, or they have no purpose -- but we have no real forums where they can discuss their issues nor any way to bring them together. (Can you imagine the Solaris PAC talking directly with Nexenta to discuss restricted builds or project schedules?) Despite those problems (which I think need to be addressed), one possibility for solving the consolidation direction problem is that the distributors get together (or at least the ones who care to) and agree on the rough consolidation boundaries and the things they'd like to see done in each one in terms of "big rule" support, schedules, and content. Note that even if we don't solve this problem for consolidations, and we choose instead to abolish consolidations, the problem still exists! It just moves down a level and gets more difficult to resolve -- how do distributors get alignment out of a forest of projects delivering independently? It can't possibly be the case that all distributors are equally happy with an answer of "whatever" when the question is something crucial to one player in the market, such as i18n or SPARC support, can it? -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
