On 6/3/07, Richard Elling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Brian Gupta wrote: > Joseph, > > I have made an effort to incorporate your comments into a new list. > > Primary Drivers: > ---------------------- > 1) There is a desire for a minimal/core OpenSolaris distro, that other > distro packagers can leverage to create their own distros. Building a > distro from this core *may*, in the future, allow other distros to also > be hosted at OpenSolaris.org. This OS core must, for the sake of > practicality, allow layers to be added on top to get to Nevada. I think this is the wrong model. If you presume that layers can be built upon each other to arrive at a end application, then you risk missing the application's requirements. In truth, application requirements should drive the distro, but the interdependencies are often unknown, and perhaps unknowable. Perhaps this is the problem you are trying to solve? Or are you just confusing modular with layered?
I suppose I do mean modular. In particular I an referring to the ON consolidation. As I understand, the whole of ON is required to build a distro today. This seems odd to an outsider like myself, because Perl is in ON. Although there is talk of moving Perl outside of ON, it seems unlikely as other components within ON that rely on Perl. Saying for a moment that I am a distro builder. What if the driver for my distro doesn't need Perl, how do I go about removing it? (I am probably completely missing something simple, please forgive). Also when you say that application requirements should drive the distro, I think it's pretty clear, that we are talking about multiple drivers, that include, but are not limited to application requirements.
2) Currently their is no Open development platform. The only allowed > development platform is, a closed source, proprietary platform: Sun > Solaris (Express). Ideally guardianship for this development platform > should be moved into the community. (Yes this seems in opposition to > bullet #1, but keep reading) This is a "Free Speech" issue, which not > everyone cares about, but it is an important facet of the open source > movement. (After all it's not FreeSolaris.org). In addition by not > prioritizing this the status quo is likely to continue for some time. > (IE: Why fix "what isn't broken"? We need to put out a slightly impaired > totally open source distro. If the missing closed source functionality > turns out to be important, open source replacements are going to be made. This doesn't make sense to me. I kinda like NVidia (and other) products, which will likely be closed source for a very, very long time. Why would we handicap Solaris by not having NVidia support? OTOH, if the approach is to encourage open source, then that is a different task, and one that seems to be already in progress. At the end of the day, consumers want something that works, and limited resources may be best spent making things work.
Well, for one, Article Two of the OpenSolaris.org constitution expressly forbids this. This is why I had another bullet that talked about developing a standard methodology, that all distros could leverage, for downloading and installing *optional* closed source packages, as part of the install process. As for "only allowed development platform," I've never known those words
to have any affect on a developer, except in Redmond ;-).
Well, I was told that to contribute to NV, I had to be running on SXCE latest minus 2 or better. The barrier is complexity and I don't see how this proposal makes things
simpler. How can we make things simpler?
Complexity? It is more an issue of unfamiliarity, and a lack of bundled ecosystem. Part of designing and building this distro, would include building an ecosystem around the distro. When I install OpenSolaris, why is there not an option to grab "cc"? Why is there no standard OpenSolaris repository of packages? (How can this be "developed" without a real world implementation?)
3) Current HW requirements are a bit on the high end. I can't run this > on an old 386, or for that matter on an old P/PII I have lying around. > And the thought is that Sun wouldn't include such projects in it's > Solaris distribution, for ecconomic and support reasons. Ideally Solaris > should be able to run on a 386 w/ 4MB of RAM (High end I know) > Realistically let's call the target i486DX, 8MB RAM, and 200MB HD. The > community can determine the supported hardware list. Stop global warming! Stop running old, weak, power-hungry computers! :-)
If you are comparing CPUPower/Watt you are correct. From a chassis/watt perspective, many older computers had much lower power profiles. But more seriously, there was an effort, about 18 years ago, to shrink
SunOS down so that you could run it on a 4 MByte workstation. The compromises made took years to undo, even as the technology evolved such that you can't buy machines that small anymore. We've been living with the warts from this effort for a long time. I see this as struggle of moving forward versus backward, along the technology curve. The horse and buggy was eventually replaced by the automobile, but it took a long time to make automobiles not look like buggies. My recommendation is to not look at going backwards as a feature, it has little real market value.
Hmm... I think you are missing something if you think that the primary driver behind the Open Source(Linux) movement was/is "market value". From my perspective, it was intellectual curiosity, needs to fill a functions for oneself or ones group (then giving that code away for others to leverage and enhance), geek factor, altruism, and pride/recognition (etc). All that market value stuff, is build on this as an afterthought. Also, could you link me to a page that might "explain the warts"? Incidentally, I happen to own 30 horses and 3 buggies, it is a fun hobby,
but I don't think we're targeting hobbiests, are we?
Ok then, who exactly are we targeting? In my thought, we need to win back the educational, hobbyist and research hearts and minds. (OpenSolaris, not Solaris).
4) Sun (Ian/Indiana/Others) wants a second Solaris distro that will be > the Fedora to Sun's RHEL (Solaris). They wish to do this and still leave > a clear migration path from one distro to another. (Unlike Fedora). Yes! I think we can all get behind this sort of vision. But making a better Fedora than Fedora may not be the best strategy. We can be more clever than that.
Exactly. I just used Fedora as an analogy. Being more clever is very good. Let's start talking about what this means.
Although this may be considered a commercial driver outside of the > community, let's keep in mind who makes the community possible. I as a > member of the community want to see our host prosper, and continue to be > able to provide support to our community. (If this was a Linux vendor > launching a new community distro, there wouldn't be nearly as much > opposition) I don't think you're seeing opposition to a new distro. I think you're seeing a recognition that yet-another-distro doesn't necessarily solve the long-term problem of building the best platform for innovation.
Can you elaborate what you mean by this? (best platform for innovation). If we accept the vision of a distro that can take OpenSolaris forward to the next level, what would that next level look like? Going forward that is for us to create. In the beginning it would look alot like SXCE. (Plus and minus) -- richard
P.S. - It seems that there will be a list setup for this discussion in SFWNV. (I am not sure why not approachability, but it's probably for the best if the approachability community merges with the sfwnv, ccd, and ports communities. P.S.S. - Please do not include opensolaris-discuss in any future replies.
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