Erast Benson wrote:
> Very good point and a right concern (to some degree) IMHO...
> As J.S. mentioned before, in the future we should expect at least 2
> types of OpenSolaris-based distros:
>
> a) GNU-centric, those who trying to re-use GNU/Linux as much as possible
>
> b) Solaris-centric, those who trying to mimic Solaris as much as
> possible
>
> But I'm hoping that both (a) and (b) will be *much more* compatable than
> any two distros in GNU/Linux world. And the reason for my hope is that
> we are using the same "Least Common Denominator"(LCD) - OpenSolaris(tm)
> which is not just a kernel but userland too and developed under the
> single roof. In my sense, LCD will preserve inter-distro compatability.
>
> The amount of OpenSolaris code that big that I really doubt it is
> possible to successfuly fork OpenSolaris. Which is a good thing too.
Yeah, with the rollout of OpenSolaris, Sun provided an open-source
kernel, similar to what kernel.org does. But unlike kernel.org, the
OpenSolaris base comprises lots of other core software too. In other
words OpenSolaris is a really big least common denominator. (The
internal project name for this part of Solaris is the OS/Net
consolidation, commonly known as O/N.) So right off the bat, all
distros are starting with the entire O/N consolidation, hopefully
ensuring, as Erast points out, a relatively high degree of inter-distro
compatability.
FWIW, I wrote a little about this in a blog post a while back:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/eric_boutilier?anchor=solaris_opensolaris_standard_base
And more recently Martin MC Brown wrote an opinion piece on this concept
in a ComputerWorld article here:
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/story/0,10801,105786,00.html
Eric
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