On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 12:31 AM, Alan Coopersmith <[email protected]> wrote: > > Enrico Maria Crisostomo wrote: >> On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 7:35 PM, Alan Coopersmith >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Brian Smith wrote: >>>> If a GNU utility is a proper superset of the Solaris version, would patches >>>> to replace the Solaris version with the GNU version be accepted? >>> I would think so, but it would depend on specific cases. >>> >>>> Or, is >>>> there some kind of rule that says that all Solaris functionality must be >>>> present without depending on any GNU-licensed software? >>> Nope, since most of our desktop functionality depends entirely on GNU >>> licensed software. >> >> I understand it is, but it's absolutely natural that a percentage of >> the users would read Solaris documentation and would expect some basic >> functionality (such as ZFS ACLs) be there when invoking commands such >> as ls or chmod. > > Agreed, but that would be a requirement for any replacement for ls or chmod, > no matter what the license. > >> Moreover, in my opinion, "desktop >> functionality" should support even Solaris' specifics. I prefer using >> CLIs, but I would expect a "Security tab" on the file properties to >> support ZFS ACLs and so on. > > Also agreed, as you can find a past thread from me in desktop-discuss > asking what Solaris features should be better supported in the desktop. > I think the ZFS snapshot gui in the Time Slider in Nautilus (the GNOME > file manager) is an excellent first step in this direction, and await > more to come.
Thanks Alan. I agree too, and indeed that was not a criticism. I'm a long time Solaris' fan (even at home) and I'm really pleased at seeing the great work done around OpenSolaris. I'm just worried about backwards compatibility which is something that for me, and I suppose for many other Solaris' users, is (yet another) big strength of this OS. That's why it feels bad to me discovering that the default shell's configuration includes commands which doesn't support Solaris' specifics, even if I know where to find the right ones. A discussion such as this makes me wonder about what Solaris 11 will be: I tried both 2008.05 and 2008.11, I'm using nevada in many workstations and for myself the options still is Solaris 10. I cannot imagine how Solaris 11 will diverge both from Solaris 10 and from OpenSolaris 2008.11 and this is just an example. Widening the audience is a priority, but not paying a compatibility price. Not with Solaris. As far as it concerns the GUI, you're right. The time slider is impressive: IMHO the time slider and ZFS are far a better option than OS X "time machine", to make a comparison with a "competitor" OS. I saw the thread you're talking about, anyway: I just didn't vote because I'm neither somebody to convince (I'm and will be using Solaris for a long time) nor I think I'm the typical desktop user. Let such a statistic run against such users, which probably I am only 10% of the time. By the way, I noticed the lack of support for ACLs and just pointed out. ;) Thanks, Enrico > > -- > -Alan Coopersmith- [email protected] > Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering > > -- Ελευθερία ή θάνατος "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." GPG key: 1024D/FD2229AF fpr: 9E07 D40E 33A5 5993 6FC5 09A8 5BCF B1F2 FD22 29AF _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
