[b] To all - Please fix the forum s/w to allow me to change my email ID and I 
promise I will do it next moment - please STOP complaining about it. I believe 
it should be fixed the right way - which benefits all - by fixing the forum 
software.[/b]

> It's kind of interesting seeing a substantial
> percentage of Sun folks (who 
> know the process inside of Sun BTW;-) that seem to
> feel we've made good 
> progress. 
It depends on how you define progress. I agree that most Sun folks feel they 
have made good progress but like marketing folks they conveniently ignore 
defining and quantifying progress.

>OTOH, I would say most of the community
> folks don't feel it's made 
> very much progress at all. Perspective is relative.

That's true too and Alan I _really_ appreciate that you are the only Sun 
employee to admit that. But I think the reality is that OpenSolaris has made no 
progress whatsoever and when I say that I will not ignore defining and 
quantifying it -

So let us see what was the prime objective of OpenSolaris - Increase use of 
Solaris (Use It), Let the community contribute improvements they need and love 
( Improve It ) and spread it so we further increase use and community 
contributions(Evangelize).

1) Community participation has remained very low. To date greater than 90% 
(very unscientific and conservative estimate) of OpenSolaris changes are driven 
by Sun's business interests and they come from Sun employees. (Look at commits, 
look at general development direction - nothing there for more x86 drivers 
which is what community might benefit from)
2) People do not feel they own a bit or two of OpenSolaris. That feeling 
remains totally with Sun. (People have expressed this elsewhere in GPLv3 and 
Community Participation threads)
3) Contributing changes remains hard (Everyone agrees and does nothing urgently 
about this - I am tired of hearing it is getting fixed) 

I clearly see this as failure in meeting all objectives.

What should Sun do about this? Get out the way. It's really that simple.

a) Open all the bits (no binary blobs for the main OS and libraries. No 
dependencies which cannot be fixed/modified by people other than Sun employees
b) GPL v2 it ! (Ok, we can settle with v3 if it comes to it). Encourage sharing 
of source both ways - it is the most logical thing to do. Like Alan said you 
cannot ignore Linux however you would like.
c) Let people control changes in OpenSolaris. Let some one unrelated to Sun 
setup a SCM and create a fair, inviting and truly open development model where 
people can feel they can have a say and drive things and they can be free to 
drive the development according to their needs
d) Let Sun pull changes they  need from the open, independent tree. And let the 
independent tree pull changes they need from Sun's development. No conflict of 
interest.

The need for independent ecosystem for OpenSolaris stems from very simple to 
understand human nature - No sane person likes to work according to some one 
else's needs, wants, priorities and on someone else's conditions, especially 
when they are working for free. It kills the whole "open" spirit.

So long as Sun asserts control over this (or even Java) project this isn't 
going to get any different - Sun making most changes to Solaris, driven by 
their business needs and very insignificant ( both numbers and change 
magnitude/impact wise) community contributions. 

James C. M. - So if you feel complacent it remains this way, apart from failing 
all objectives of the project (see http://opensolaris.org) what else did this 
project achieve?
 
 
This message posted from opensolaris.org
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]

Reply via email to