On Sat, 2006-06-17 at 07:35, David J. Orman wrote:
> I'm asking about a compromise. Keeping software
reasonably up to  
> date, at the same time not so bleeding edge as to it
coring all the  
> time.

Coring isn't the problem (or shouldn't be - it's not
an issue
I worry much about).

>  Stable software, reasonably up to date, and a  
> *part* of Solaris.

The trouble is that stability and up-to-dateness are
conflicting goals.
Solaris chooses stability. Now personally, I think
they go too far,
with a reluctance to update things because they
*might* break things
(rather than checking to see if they actually do, or
even offering
users the choice, but stability is one of the reasons
current users
are using Solaris inm the first place so shouldn't
casually be thrown
away) but the alternative of simply slapping on the
latest version
and ignoring all the breakage that results is also
unsustainable.

> I want (and lots of other people want) reasonably up
to date software  
> that is stable 

Define stable. My definition is that changes to it
have zero impact on
other applications that use it. Otherwise, I have to
revalidate or
rebuild every piece of software on my system every
time you update
anything.

> and monitored for security issues. Basically, what  
> Blastwave offers

While blastwave does it, I can't use blastwave as a
part of some
other solution. And that's the problem with all the
package
management systems - they're fine, as long as you use
them in
complete isolation.

The underlying problem is dependency hell. And
Ubuntu/Blastwave/
whoever don't solve the problem - they hide it from
the user and
therefore don't encourage the community to solve the
basic problem.
As such, they only guarantee compatibility,
consistency, and
stability amongst in their own self-contained
universe. On home
machines that's probably enough, but it's certainly
not good
enough once you need to do something the repository
can't.

-- 
-Peter Tribble
L.I.S., University of Hertfordshire - 
----------------------------------

Good points. You also have to reflect that Sun Solaris
is a supported and tested product. You are talking on
the OpenSolaris-discuss channel about Sun support on
something Sun does not support through its customer
support department for external customers.

Also, you talked about Sun supporting open source
software issues with security and updates. None of
this is done heavily by Sun - but done by partner ISVs
or collaboraters (i.e. Sunfreeware, Blastwave.org, and
others). I didn't say Sun doesn't do it at all.

OpenSolaris, in itself, is not a product. Also, what
you are asking in support for open source stable
software is one of the concepts of the Blastwave.org
and other ISVs support system.

Sun does enough to provide tools, R&D, and support to
the developers and partners. If the Companion CD is
out-dated, then a partner ISV can fill that void. But,
don't expect Sun to do that anytime soon.

Also on dependency hell, no software company or ISV
will solve that problem both in the commercial space
or open source space. Secure software may be good
today, but defeated by tomorrow. Software quality
management has pros and cons in getting quality
software out to the end-users and developers. Some
things we just have to accept as a way of life until
something better comes along - and hopefully doesn't
eat us. ;o>

~ Ken Mays
{P.S. Sun T2000 servers are the best!}




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