Nicolas Williams wrote: > On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 04:04:43PM -0800, Matthew Jacob wrote: > >> It isn't just a debug aid. Similar tools and libraries dependent upon >> those tools began shipping from Legato in 1994 because of lack of >> support within Solaris. As far as I know, they still ship, although they >> probably use sgen when available. >> >> This Legato thing isn't just a random user package. This is a major >> backup package that Sun used to OEM. It still generated 500$M/yr revenue >> for EMC. >> >> Repeated discussions with Sun over the years pointing out both Legato's >> discomfort (*and* Sun's discomfort- at one point they were even >> maintaining the tools I believe) over using raw access in this way never >> really went anywhere. >> >> So please don't tell me I'm exaggerating. I know precisely whereof I speak. >> > > I thought you were exagerating about RBAC, or ARC process in general, > not about how long it took to get here for completely unrelated reasons. > I seriously doubt that the ARC had anything to do with why it took years > for a proposal to integrate sg3 to come along. > > The truth is it's taken years for lots of very obvious integrations to > happen, and only now are we getting around to it, but the ARC had > nothing to do with why it took so long for us to get serious about > integrating FOSS into Solaris. The ARC may have been seen as an > impediment, but to be fair the SDF processes were tailored to a > different business model, and the SDF has had to be modified as we've > modified our business model. > Partly true. The continuing discussions on this ARC related alias suggests to me that the laudable concern about architectural issues still isn't quite as informed about the business model realities as it perhaps might be. The ARC process is, I agree, only part of the issue. Don't get me wrong- I strongly approve of the ARC process- it's one of the reasons why Sun is alive (still) and SGI isn't.
But the ARC process is of necessity a somewhat heavyweight process (when it suits it- look at the automatic closed approved for the IOMMU case for the opposite). This means that people have to be fairly strongly motivated to do the right thing and use that process. Obvious changes and integrations that would make Solaris a developer's favorite didn't necessarily find a champion within Sun because it does and takes real work to think these things through. This does now seem to be changing, but there is perhaps more tension between ARC and getting things "into" Solaris (for some measure of "into") than still should be.
