----- Original Message ----- From: James Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Friday, June 2, 2006 4:38 am Subject: Re: What is OpenSolaris?
<snip snip> > > I guess that's where I'm getting confused. The way things have been > > discussed here, OSOL *is* SX. > > Untrue. I missed a word. "The way things have been discussed here, SEEMINGLY OSOL *is* SX." That, my friend, is true in apparently more than just my eyes, as I'm not the only one who was under the impression it was. More on this later. > Solaris Express is one distribution of Open Solaris. It's Sun's > distribution. There are several other distributions of Open Solaris. I understood, I even listed a few of them. > Using the food metaphor, Open Solaris is the grocery store. There are > all sorts of items (technically "foodstuff") there that you might want > to use to create a meal. Your restaurant could be a drive-through > window or a gourmet feast. The grocery store neither knows nor cares > much about how you decide to put your meals together. If the grocery store had a recipe which you typed a command and suddenly the grocery store's contents got "cooked" into a nice big pie, you might as well say that grocery store was a nice big pie, it just changes "state" so to speak. In relation to OSOL, this is going from source (ingrediants) to binary (prepared food.) I don't think this comparison holds up well. The only way this wouldn't be so if Sun intentionally "broke" OSOL so to speak, so the code didn't mimic SX. Maybe this is the plan, that's what I'm unclear on. Again, more in a bit... > > > I thought more and more of the stuff that isn't released as source > > from SX was being opened as time progressed, and eventually all > of SX > > (that was legally possible) would be OSOL. > > Indeed. That's the goal. Ok, so then, OSOL will be all that is SX. I'm not talking about just the pure source, but the build scripts and everything else. Is this correct? > > In other words, OSOL *would* be SX, in other words - would include > > all these goodies. > > No, still not true. Open Solaris is the raw source repository and the > bug tracking and development projects that go with it. Sun uses it to > build Solaris Express. You can use it to do something similar. But > even if you build *exactly* the same sequence of bits from the source > you find on the opensolaris.org web site, your bits will *NOT* be > Solaris Express. Yes they will. I just wouldn't be able to use the name SX. It's like CentOS. It *is* RHEL. Nobody in their right mind would say otherwise. It just doesn't use the same name, and doesn't have the support of RH. Just like if I build an identical version of software to a SX release, from the identical source, it *is* SX. I just can't use the name, and it won't be Sun supported. > They won't be that distribution, because they won't represent one of > our official distribution builds. They don't have our imprimatur. They don't have your name, and they don't have your support. They have everything else, and it will (for all intensive purposes) be SX. I don't see how it's any other way, other than in name/support. > > I didn't realize OSOL meant *only* kernel/very most core parts. > > That's just not accurate, and I never said any such thing. I never said you said such a thing, but that is what it seems is being said. If it's not just the kernel/very most core parts, and it is indeed (or will be) everything, then it is SX. Same logic as above. > Open Solaris is meant (over time) to have it all. > > > I realize other "distributions" (example: ShillyX Be-whatever, etc) > > are built from OSOL, just as other "distributions" are built from > > Debian, for example Nexenta (which is a hybrid, being both based on > > some of OSOL and some of Nexenta), Ubuntu, etc. > > No, that's not a good analogy. A good analogy is between Linux itself > (via kernel.org), and the various distributions including Debian, > Nexenta, Ubuntu, and so on. That there's some interrelations between > those distributions (they share ideas) is of no consequence. Linux is > an open source repository and set of projects. Debian is a > distribution. Linux isn't anything but a kernel. You're telling me OSOL is going to be everything in SX. That's like taking all the source from Debian, along with the linux kernel, and tossing it up in complete source form. If somebody builds that, I'm sorry, but it's Debian. If Debian were sun by some company and were trademarked and disallowed the use of the name, it wouldn't be called Debian, but it *would* be Debian. Everything you've said points to OSOL being far more than just a "kernel" and this makes the kernel.org/linux analogy you drew absolutely unusable. Sorry. > Open Solaris is an open source repository and projects. Solaris is a > distribution. SX is a distribution, OSOL is the source form of that distribution. That makes OSOL SX unless you're telling me Sun is going to somehow *change* OSOL, or leave parts of SX out of source form in OSOL. If OSOL is just bits and parts of SX, with chunks missing, then ok, I understand. That's not what it seems, and that's not how I've understood you though. The only distinction I've gotten from you is that OSOL can't be called SX, because Sun won't allow it. That's fine with me. To elaborate just a tad, because I can sense a bit of disagreement here, I'd like to clarify the "distrubutions" popping up. Even if OSOL were 100% of SX's source code, I mean completely available, in the same form Sun uses to build/package SX, people could make distributions based on it. Nexenta, ShillyX, etc are examples. I believe Nexenta is a good example, they make a fair amount of changes to what is available in OSOL, in the sense they move stuff around, rename things, etc. They could rip everything out but the kernel in fact. That doesn't make OSOL any less of SX. David PS - I'm not attempting to start an argument, please don't misunderstand. I just am completely astonished and taken off-guard by the stance that OSOL isn't a distribution in itself. I'm not a hardcore programmer, I don't contribute patches/code to the OSOL kernel. If all OSOL is, is a code dump, then I have no place here on osol-discuss, because the only discussion would be the direction of code/development of these individual pieces. For as long as I've been on this list, I've been discussing the direction of OSOL as a distribution, as SX, and eventually as Solaris. Not the direction of a kernel, the direction of an X server, etc. I hope this makes it clear to you why there is confusion (at least on my part) as to why I've been under the impression OSOL is SX (will be Solaris), because that's how I've dealt with this discussion list for a long time now, and how I've seen everybody else deal with it. If OSOL is nothing more than a code dump and a bunch of people in discussion about the direction of individual little pieces, I don't think I belong here, at all. I thought that's what the various (zfs/nfs/etc) lists were for, the discussion of little parts. I thought OSOL-Discuss was for the project as a whole, and the project was creating the direction for the entirety of OSOL, in other words the "distribution" so to speak that becomes SX and eventually Solaris. Please let me know if I'm completely mistaken in all of this, I really don't want to expend my time and efforts in directions that don't make any sense. I'm never going to be building a "Distribution" of my own, and I'm not an employee to Sun privy to the internal discussions that apparently control all aspects of SX since OSOL is just a code dump. _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
