Mike Meyer writes: > On Mon, 9 Jun 2008 14:39:13 -0400 James Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Ah, ok. But the problem is that the "project as a whole" is a giant > > pile o' source. It's not any particular distribution. > > Any software project is a giant (or maybe not so giant) pile of > bits. It's the community that surrounds them that provide their > character. The GNU/Linux project has no single control, and we've > talked about the results. The FreeBSD community has a single control, > so that even though there are multiple distributions, there's a base > that's shared between them all, and you can expect non-base components > that are shared to be built the same way on them all - including the > package system.
We've so far demonstrated that we don't have such a central control, though some seem to want it. The communities control their respective technical areas, but there's no Central Committee that creates our 5-year plans. ;-} The closest we have is the OGB, but it concerns itself mostly with governance issues, and not technical matters. > Ok, *why* is Indiana project team the right group? What makes *their* > distribution special? Or maybe it's what makes that team special, such > that their distribution can become a baseline without buyin from the > rest of the community, which your suggestion implies is the case? Those are darned good questions for which I have no good answer, other than to say that this is what I understand that team intends to do as a service to the community. As those questions could imply governance issues, I would (a) talk with the Indiana project team in order to get the facts straight, (b) take the results up with the communities that sponsor Indiana, and (c) go to the OGB if I didn't get satisfaction in any of the above. > > Hence the reference to Indiana. They're the folks who are charging > > off in the direction of a reference distribution, so why not talk with > > them? > > Because I don't believe they can produce such a distribution without > buyin from the rest of the community, and hence want to talk to the > broadest possible audience in that community. This seems to be headed into a circle, but the problem is that, with the exception perhaps of the regular Solaris Express Community Edition (SXCE) releases, we haven't really had any one thing to call a "reference release." And SXCE was demonstrably less open: the Solaris PAC determined content, and (unlike the Indiana team) didn't take input from the community. I think it's actually a much, much smaller issue than you seem to be making it out to be, as the distributions are generally able to use each other's packaging, and the controls we have on compatibility are far tighter than you'll find in some other communities, so build variances matter much less, but I do find it a bit hard to start a discussion about something that we don't have with the people who aren't doing it. :-/ -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
