Nicolas Williams wrote:
> [Dropped case number from subject as this is not an arc comment.]
>
> On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 10:54:01PM +0100, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
>
>> Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>>
>>> Will these changes be made to both the chmod & chown utilities
>>> in /usr/bin & /usr/gnu/bin ?
>>>
>>> (PSARC: do we need to add a best practice/policy that says that
>>> new functionality added to /usr/bin tools needs to also be added
>>> to /usr/gnu/bin equivalents if they exist to avoid causing
>>> problems for users with /usr/gnu/bin first in their $PATH,
>>> like the OpenSolaris 2008.05 default user setup?)
>>>
>> That seems to me like a bad idea, as they won't be gnu any more.
>> If it's felt desirable to have the changes in the gnu toolchain,
>> then the team should be persuaded to get them accepted upstream,
>> and then update the gnu tools in /usr/gnu/bin when that's been
>> done.
>>
>
> s/get them accepted/contribute them/
>
> There's no guarantee that an upstream community will accept contributed
> changes, nor should a project here be completely limited by what its
> upstream community will accept. We should do a best effort to avoid
> forks, and to make any forks limited in duration. But we shouldn't have
> a blanket rule against forks.
>
+1.
In the past GNU has occasionally refused to accept patches for software
as a form of "political activism" rather than on technical grounds. I
don't think we (OpenSolaris) want to slave ourselves on another entity,
particularly when that other entity may make decisions based on
political ideals that are not universally shared by our organization.
(E.g. what happens - hypothetically - when GNU decides not to accept any
submissions to improve Solaris support, because they are upset with some
decision Sun makes relating to Java licensing?)
-- Garrett
