Dale Ghent wrote On 02/01/07 10:12,:
On Jan 31, 2007, at 7:22 PM, Brian McCafferty wrote:
I think if your adopting GPLv3 just to increase participation its a
bad idea. I don't think you need to pander to some group to gain
popularity. Most people here(from the responses i've read) seem
quite happy with the current license.
That's because it's a great license. :) Licensing OpenSolaris was
challenging, and the people who crafted the changes to MPL to create
CDDL deserve a lot of credit.
I agree, the issue with non-SUNW participation is not the license, it's
the org itself. In fact I'm sad to see that the trend is to pin the
participation issues directly to what the license happens to be,
because the CDDL is really a fine license to work under.
I don't think anyone is pinning participation exclusively on any license
choice, per say. It's just one factor among many. People are already
contributing to the project in many ways, and in fact, the community is
starting to grow in ways not directly tied to opensolaris.org. Which is
great. We need that diversity, especially for the non-coding types like
me. The engineering will always be here (on opensolaris.org), but that's
only one layer of the community (albeit a rather important layer :)).
Some want to contribute more, though, and that's great. As we evolve
some of the tools, that will be easier.
From where I see it, the participation issue is due to a process that
comes pretty close to making someone a unpaid Sun employee - of sorts.
To even have a contribution considered, I have to sign the Contributor
Agreement. That agreement is with Sun Microsystems Inc, not
OpenSolairs.ORG. Note the capital ORG, by which I mean "The OpenSolaris
Organization."
Now the CA isn't a bad thing and it, like it has been already pointed
out, is valuable to the community in the long view in terms of code
stewardship. The problem is that the CA is not part of the community,
it's with a corporate entity, and raises a situation where a potential
contributor can be put into a sticky situation.
This raises additional concern to someone new because the relationship
between OpenSolaris.ORG and SUNW seems rather nebulous, and it's hard
to tell what sandbox the ORG's feet are firmly planted in, or where
it's heading. For crying out loud, the photo of the CAB members has a
big honkin' Sun logo in the background.
I shot that image of the CAB in Sun's San Francisco office and the
choice of background was mine exclusively. I simply liked it, that's
all. Don't read anything into it other than I only had a few moments to
get them all with Schwartz for a quick photo before the day's events
were to unfold. Schwartz was with the CAB for lunch, but other than that
the CAB met alone pretty much all day. Remember, that was the first
public announcement of the 5 members, and we had external communication
need to consider. They did a press conference and then met further with
press/analysts at a dinner with executives *and* engineers. In fact, the
opening press conference for OpenSolaris itself on June 14, 2005 was
with execs *and* engineers. I point this out only to suggest that the
engineers are running the engineering but also have participated in many
of the more traditional marketing and communications efforts around the
project.
Regarding the distinction between OpenSolaris.ORG and SUNW -- Sun funds
this development project, and opensolaris.org represents the opening of
the Solaris engineering organization (people, code, tools) and the
creation of the OpenSolaris community where now for the first time
non-Sun community members can contribute to development (either to
OpenSolaris development directly or to new projects for future
integration or to a variety of other things not tied directly to this
particular site). I'm not sure why that has to be a concern. It's no
secret. We designed the project from day one this way and nothing has
changed. We are talking about doing open development where non-Sun
contributors can earn their way long just as new Sun engineers would.
The "community" consists of Sun and non-Sun developers, and the tools to
enable that blending and collaboration are under development. Also, the
CAB (and now OGB) has been in place to help the community run itself via
a Charter and Constitution. Seems to me the community is taking shape
quite nicely.
This is NOT to say that Sun's efforts in both in terms of birthing
OpenSolaris and the manhours spent by its staff contributing to it are
not appreciated... but I think that by the 2 year point, there needs to
be a distinct, tangible separation between the two. The umbilical cord
needs to be cut at some point; and that point, in terms of peoples'
patience, is approaching.
I've always disagreed with this analogy (the umbilical cord bit). When
you say "Sun" what do you mean? Who are you interacting with? Execs or
engineers? What about those 1,000 or so Sun Solaris engineers? Where do
they go when thing so-called cord is cut? Since we are opening Solaris
development -- we now call that OpenSolaris -- there can be no cutting
of any cords because there is no cored involved. Improving tools and
processes so more people can contribute in more ways is the goal. That's
what will help the community grow from an engineering perspective, and
that's what we are doing.
Jim
If there's anything that could instigate a fork, it would be the
failure to craft this separation.
Do we really want "separation" on the project? I'd much prefer openness.
I get the subtext of your point, though, and I think it's valid. I just
express it with openness, not separation.
Jim
So tell me, where do I sign up to be considered for a job such as
opensolaris.org site maintenance? I'm a OpenSolaris community (not
SUNW) member and I want to be involved.
/dale
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