On Tuesday 06 March 2007 05:44 pm, Darren Reed wrote: > If I can steal the spotlight for a second, I'd like to point people at a > blog entry I've put up that discusses my take on "what is success in terms > of OpenSolaris", complete with some suggestions for the future and what I > think it will take for it to really succeed - mostly time. > > http://blogs.sun.com/avalon/entry/what_is_opensolaris_success
Darren, I agree with much of what you say. Darren wrote in his blog: > So, at the end of all of that, if I weren't a Sun employee, would I > register with the OpenSolaris community? No and primarily because of > the intellectual rights issue. I would limit myself to being a subscriber > to the mailing lists. There are other issues but they're less tangible > and more to do with the "feeling" of the OpenSolaris community forums > when compared to others, elsewhere. I'm not sure this would prevent me from joining the OpenSolaris community. I was involved in the Solaris x86 community before Sun quite beating on it like a step-child. I didn't let that stop me from joining them, and probably wouldn't let that stop me from joining today. I think the license issues clouded up the landscape for our community, but nothing that is so damaging that we can't fix it, or prevent people from joining. I'm certain that all folks will not want to join this community, and I'm certain we can be better. We are moving forward and making progress, so see us going in the right direction. I also see some of the stipulations and/or chaotic way the Linux community works to be a deterent to them as well. There are bars that get set, and some members of the community will find them acceptable, and others won't. I will go on record as saying this...I've been working to test community NIC drivers, and initially my thought was we needed to get these drivers into OpenSolaris, as quick as possible. However, in testing I have to say that in order to hold the standards which Solaris has set to date, we must insure that we have solid drivers which Solaris has been known for. Sure, if you're not using those drivers in enterprise envirionments, it's not critical...but if you were...all bets off. Maybe we need a way of having more than one standard of driver in OpenSolaris, but reducing the testing and/or standard the drivers need to meet is not the right way, IMO. Has the bar been set too high in this case? Have we set the bar too high and this will discourage folks from writing drivers? I don't think so. While management continues to push and want things faster, I am learning to adopt some of the same standards that have made Solaris/OpenSolaris what it is today. Yes, I want to get drivers into OpenSolaris, but not at the expense of the system. This is a tough double edge sword, but I'm holding the edge I'm on at this time. This is the same for our community in some regards to licensing and/or intellectual property. There is a terrible mis-understanding in the open source world about Sun's licensing, and to date Sun has done a poor job at educating the masses on what has been done, what is in progress, and what Sun hopes to end up with for the community. This is the reason people wouldn't join our community, and Sun could do a better job at educating and promoting OpenSolaris, much more than is done today. -- Alan DuBoff - Solaris x86 Engineering - IHV/OEM Group Advocate of insourcing at Sun - hire people that care about our company! _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
