You have a lot of big thoughts. Right now distros are on my mind. (And the OGB/Sun discussions regarding naming.)
I am directly responding to your comments in bullet three. On Jan 24, 2008 2:19 AM, Ben Rockwood <benr at cuddletech.com> wrote: > I think we all are seeing some serious flaws in the existing > organization based on a variety of examples in the last year. I have > plans to introduce a proposal in the next few weeks, as I've not fully > baked my proposed structure and associated constitutional amendments, > but I'll start throwing out some ideas. > > 1) The current Constitution has within it a major flaw, in that it does > not define Projects. It refers to them, but never defines them. > > 2) Existing terminology is excessively confusing and has, to an arguable > extent, painted us into corners. A "Community Group" sounds like a > loose collation of related "things". A "Project" sounds like a place to > do work, collaborate on details, and work in a targeted way. The > Constitution puts organization in CG's, but not in projects... projects > answer to and are "owned" by CG's. > > This is where things get sticky. Lets take two examples, one that works > in this model and one that doesn't. > > First, lets take the Advocacy CG. This is the model CG thanks to the > hard work of Jim G. You go to the CG main page and you are greeted with > all the information you need to get started. There are several > projects, all well segmented, its a thing of beauty. This works, I > believe, because the core contributors of the Advocacy CG have a handle > and grasp on all of the projects benieth it, even if they aren't > involved directly, and people contributing projects trust and look to > the leadership of the CG Core Contributors. Sara D. or Jim G. or Teresa > G. (on and on) can speak to any of the Projects under the CG with > respect and trust, and then be back on their way. > > On the other side, lets consider the LDOM's CG proposal. This was met > with the suggestion of instead collapsing xVM/Xen and Zones CG's into a > larger Virtualization CG as projects, and then bringing LDOM's along > side. This didn't work (short version) because while LDOM's, Zones, > and xVM are all Virtualization efforts, they really are completely > distinct. Could Core Contribs of a Virtualization CG make judgements > that would be respected, trusted, and useful to the underlying > Projects? Not to mention that these are large efforts which themselves > may require projects. For these reasons and more, it proved that in our > Constitutional model "Virtualization" isn't a Community Group; LDOM's is. > > 3) Now, lets consider the Distribution CG proposal (that will go to vote > regardless of any discussion, btw). Shawn Walker is absolutely correct > that there needs to be some way to bring distributions together in an > organized way within the OpenSolaris community framework. Linux distros > are a great example, they are all over the place and independant, > wouldn't it be nice if all the OpenSolaris distros had a home (if they > choose to participate of course)? This would be acceptable if the definition of this CG wasn't: "Sun is making a distro currently called Indiana. The Belenix derived technologies used to create this distro are now the standard for making any 'OpenSolaris distro'. If you wish to make an alternative distro based on alternative distro-constructors, or alternative packaging systems, you should go buzz off. If however on the other hand, you are going to use IPS and distro-constructor, come join, you are welcome." I disagree with some prominent members of the community who feel that "Linux's biggest weakness is it's lack of standards". Personally I feel that Linux's biggest strength is it's diversity. If you have a technical problem to solve, you can find a Linux distro to solve it. If you are looking to make a cell phone, you have: Open Mocha, Android and JavaFX. If you are looking for an embedded router you have OpenWRT, Linux router project, DD_WRT, Debian, and others. If you are looking for a laptop you have Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, and OpenSuSE. You get the idea, there are a lot of choices. Choice is a beautiful thing. Diversitity is a strength, not a bug. It seems we are trying to eradicate the possibility of diversity. (Apparently supported by Sun executive management, but I could be wrong). I believe that distros like Nexenta, Schillix and MartUX should be *actively* encouraged to join the community, not pushed away. So we are at where we are at. About to abandon out founding principles. What is the solution? I don't know. Apparently something has been worked out behind the scenes. Apparently OpenSolaris will not be an inclusive and diverse community. We are going to set the standards for making a distro. (and it has nothing to do with what we currently believe an OpenSolaris distro is. Nexenta, Schillix, and Martux will no longer be OpenSolaris distros. Only Indiana and it's children will be allowed to call themselves OpenSolaris distros. Keith touched upon it. There are now two communities forming. We are forced to embrace this. We shouldn't have been put in this position, but here we are. Sun has decided to take back OpenSolaris the trademark and make it the name of an OS/distro. There is no point in fighting it, as they are the trademark holders. (I am assuming that the results of the OGB negotiation with Sun, on behalf of the community, yielded a certain result, based on the OGB's public comments.) Although I disagree with some of the technical decisions behind "Indiana/OpenSolaris", I do believe it is Sun's prerogative to create such a thing. On the other hand I do believe that we need a "SolarisBase" home for all distros and technologies. What we are going to call it remains up in the air. I have gotten the message, that it will not be OpenSolaris. Name suggestions are now open. (Seriously, please suggest names.) All this said, I strongly feel that UNIX in the form of Solaris has a stronger core (kernel), than Linux, and we need to figure out a way to work together despite our conflicting goals. Now is the time for bold ideas, and changing assumptions. Please reach out to your brothers and sisters, and begin the dialog. Cheers, Brian P.S. - I suspect, that I will be ignored, because of the, "All the wood behind one arrow." theory. But I have been wrong before. > The problems noted above with the LDOM's effort are almost identical in > the case of distributions. Should Core Contribs of a Distribution CG > make decisions about Belenix, Nexenta, Schilix and Indiana? I don't > think so. Never-the-less, there should be a grouping which I call a > "meta-community" or "Consortium" which can provide a loose social > grouping of CG's to facilitate collaboration and coordination. > > 4) There are two solutions (I'm still working through this, so this > isn't final) that I see... > > a) Push things down a layer. This would make the intuitive definitions > make sense. This requires major modifications to the Constitution, but > more closely mimics what we actually do in practice today. > b) Add an additional layer above CG's, my "meta-communities" or > "Consortiums" idea. Consortiums in this model wouldn't have any real > power at all, but would provide a much needed means to pull together > various functional areas of the project in a much more organized way. > > 5) If we are going to ever do away with the term "Community Group", we > should do it sooner rather than later. Its still very early in > OpenSolaris's life, I think doing so is no out of the question if deemed > appropriate. > > > > Like I said, I'm still baking the idea, but we need to make contribution > much easier than it is today and currently there is too much > bureaucracy, partially because "projects" are somewhat heavy wieght... > if "projects" are much more granular it could facilitate handing out > projects more easily, better facilitating contribution, because projects > come with repositories. > > > This all feeds into the contribution model which needs so much work, but > I honestly have mountains of research to do before I can properly > express a useful stance. > > > benr. > > _______________________________________________ > ogb-discuss mailing list > ogb-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/ogb-discuss > -- - Brian Gupta http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nycosug/
