Joerg Schilling wrote:
> "Shawn Walker" <swalker at opensolaris.org> wrote:
>
>
>> The only vendor that the overwhelming majority of users, developers,
>> and customers care about is the definition of the binary ABI as
>> published by Sun.
>>
>
> This was true in the pre-OpenSolaris time.
>
> Since we have OpenSolaris, there was the hope that interfaces are no
> longer defined by Sun as dictator but by the community. It seems that
> this is not true.
>
Interfaces are the demesne of the ARCs, and any interface that isn't
properly ARC'd (or covered under some kind of standard like POSIX)
doesn't really count.
PSARC is open, for the most part. (Yes, there are some cases that are
still run as closed. But that has swiftly become the exception rather
than the norm.)
Many many community members participate in these PSARC discussions, and
there is even an open conference number that non-Sun people can dial in
on and participate in conversations if they so choose.
Its even possible to be an ARC intern without being a Sun employee...
I've done it (though to be fair as a contractor I had a login on Sun's
network at the time.) Right now the tools that PSARC uses to run the
ARCs are locked up inside Sun's network. These *could* be moved
outside, and probably without a huge amount of effort, if there was
sufficient demand. To date, I don't think there has been "sufficient
demand", because I'm not aware of anyone outside of Sun who has
requested to be a PSARC intern.
I suggest that folks who want at least this part of the discussion to be
fully open offer to volunteer as PSARC interns. If there was a queue of
a small number of people (say 2-5 volunteers) wanting to participate at
this level, it might help prioritize the process of getting the ARC
tools moved to somewhere where non-Sun employees can participate (such
as a zone on opensolaris.org).
Note that participation on PSARC is a technical role, and folks who want
to help evolve the technical content (and have adequate technical
background) should feel welcome. Many people seeing this message may
not have that background, but there are of course other ways that they
can contribute and participate besides PSARC. (Also, PSARC
participation does require some effort... several hours a week is typical.)
Historically, PSARC has been focused on the underlying platform (kernel,
core libraries and utilities, etc.) and a different ARC, LSARC, has
dealt with "layered" software, including things like X, CDE/Gnome, the
compilers, etc. It isn't clear to me yet whether LSARC has any kind of
facility for open participation yet, but maybe an LSARC member can offer
some help (Alan?) (I know at one point one idea that was somewhat
popular was the idea of merging some of LSARC's activities with PSARC
into some kind of "OpenSolaris ARC". I'm not sure if that ever went
anywhere or not.
-- Garrett
