John Plocher writes:
> But it is, and the template is correct.  The coincidence that ON is 
> usually co-released with other consolidations as part of a product is 
> just that - a coincidence.

The template may possibly be correct, but I think Gary and likely
others were confused by this change.  This section has always
indicated the delivery vehicle, and the canonical example of such a
vehicle was "a Minor release of Solaris."  It seems this changed last
September:

D 1.21 06/09/14 16:14:35 plocher 23 22  00018/00007/00331
MRs:
COMMENTS:
updated comments re: advice, changed sec2 product to consolidation

... but it's possible that some of us may have missed the discussion
on the implications of that change.

> Solaris (as in the DVD or vinyl binder of disks or SDLC download 
> images...) has been effectively staging Major releases for the
> last decade or so - ever since things like try-n-buy, extra-value,
> SFW, JES/iPlanet/Orion, Oracle and the like have been included
> in the definition of the product.

In particular, I reject the idea that Solaris itself has had a Major
release because of those things.  EV and equivalent experimental bits
are clearly labeled as such, and thus are Volatile or worse.  It
doesn't take or imply a Major release of the product to change them.

So, if as you're asserting that only the consolidations may have
releases, then exactly what do we tell customers and how do they know
what they're getting when they download bits?  Do we list each
consolidation's release binding or number on a web site somewhere?
How does the customer know which consolidations' products he's using?

I think what you're saying is that not only are numbers like "Solaris
10" purely marketing (and thus PAC) constructs, but that we no longer
guarantee anything other than the contents of ON based on the output
of "uname -r."  Given that /usr/bin isn't special in Solaris and that
any consolidation can deliver there, some now (apparently) with
radically different release levels, how does any customer determine
what he's getting in the box?

Does this new scheme apply only for [Open]Solaris, or is it for all
products under review in the ARC?  When we see a hardware product,
should we assume different release bindings for the hardware itself
and the firmware?

Do customers ever update just ON on their systems?  I suspect that
excising or redefining the role of "Product" in our system will have
effects that we haven't anticipated.  For one, it seems to make this
document unusable:

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/policies/release-taxonomy/

(And since when do we ship Oracle?!)

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive         71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677

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