You (Robert Milkowski) wrote:
> I understand that but all I'm saying is that it is simply wrong when
> applied to something like Open Solaris development. There are certainly
> technical people here involved with OSOL 2010.06 and with /dev builds.
> Before Oracle I'm sure they would explain what the issue is, etc.
> Right now they can't and they keep silent. As I understand it it is not
> their fault, it is Oracle's fault as a company. The problem is that it has
> to be escalated to the management to get it right again. Otherwise you are
> just discouraging lots of people, make some of your best allies to go
> somewhere else, and you feed trolls as we've all have seen.
Putting the words "simply wrong" in there above seems a bit harsh. I do get
what you mean (and, at least, partially agree), but "wrong" is an absolute
term, and people's minds and decissions might be binary, their binary logic
still differs from person to person. So, what we all might see or feel as
"wrong", might well be "right" in someone else's reasoning/thinking.
And: It might not yet even be "Oracle's fault as a company", it might still be
"uncertainty" about "what to do" and "what not to do" (like, even speaking
publicly), that could explain silence here. Oracle is way more hierachically
structured than Sun ever was. I could easily write an email to Jonathan (and
in former times to Scott (and, yes, I even did! I even am on a podcast with
Jonathan!)), and even get answers, I wouldn't even dare to try this with Safra
or Charles or Larry. It's been made clear to use, that we need to use our
whole management chain to escalate stuff. At each layer (although that chain
isn't very long!) the escalation gets re-evaluated. It's very precise, very
structured and very quick. And currently is business driven (close to
"only"). Yes, there are people dealing with how to handle communities (mainly
handled inside the thing called OTN!) and how to restructure those according
to new needs induced by the acquisition of Sun. My thinking (and again: I
don't have any insight into that, so it's my pure speculation!) is, that the
main customer and community event is called Oracle Open World (which this year
is combined with JavaOne! The biggest event ever that San Francisco ever
saw!), so my current working assumption is, that we might see/hear something
then... Still it's my speculation and assumption...
So, it's not "us", who are discouraging people, I would call it the
"circumstances", as I did call it right in the beginning. Remember, as Erik
also put it: It's the first time ever, that Oracle (although they (I now need
to learn to say: "we") have bought over 60 companies in the last 6 years!)
bought a company, that did something very different in a very different
market. Oracle never did hardware. Oracle never really did OSes. So, this is
all very new to them. They need to experience it. Give them time. I know, it's
not easy, I know, we all are desperately waiting to see OSOL 2010.?? (whatever
it might be called). The main thing they currently still deal with, is:
Integration. Just yesterday marked the day for a lot of countries (mine,
Germany, also) to go through the so-called LEC (local entity combination),
still, not all countries are really merged or combined... So, although the CiC
(Change in control) already happened months ago, operational there still are
many hurdles to overcome inside. I for example, still don't have an Oracle ID,
nor an Oracle login. That does require the LEC, and only after the LEC the
newly combined local company is legally allowed to access employee data
(country to country, local laws!). Therefore it will still take some time,
before all former Sun employees will have all access and managementchains in
place. Oracle is a big company now, and it manages that fairly smoothly. I'm
really impressed! Still, it takes some time. You simply can not "suck in"
close to 30000 employees over night...
> Getting the balance between a corporate environment and an open source
> product like Open Solaris right is tricky. While Sun not necessarily did
> the best job it worked pretty good. IMHO there was about right balance
> between Sun's developers and community having a dialog and knowing what was
> going on. Cutting all of that for non-Oracle people is not helping at all.
> It only makes people to reconsider their options and possibly walk away
> from Open Solaris. I can't see how it is going to help Oracle.
There's no "cutting"... There's a different policy. Still, you see us talking
and engaging. There still are OpenSolaris User Group Meetings. So, it's not
over, it's still there. Different, yes, but still there. This weekend is
"birth of a nation day" ;-) in the US, many employees are on summer vacation
already...
> We've never had really much code contributions from the non-Sun folks but
> we had some, including a couple from me. The problem is that the current
> situation is so discouraging and I honestly hope it will change really
> soon.
We all hope so, and rest assured, we do what we can internally to help with
that effort.
> Again, I understand that developers are not to blame here but still it
> needs to be changed.
We all here on the alias agree with that, I'm pretty sure of that.
> Perhaps CAB should organize some kind of a petition and open letter signed
> by community (both Sun and non-Sun people) which would state what issues
> there are and it could be presented to senior management? Perhaps if we
> organize a little bit it would make some difference.
Again, I'm not the one to comment on that. I guess, you can understand
that... ;-) I even assume, that I did write way more stuff above than I should
have been doing. Again: Oracle is handling the acquistion very well, very
smooth, and very quick, still, at that size, it takes time. And, from what I
saw with the x86 announcements this week, and the FY numbers, primary goal
currently is: Get the "Sun part" back to profitable ("Sun" even contributed
400M$ in the last quarter, think about that! When was the last time, you saw
an announcement, that "Sun"'s been profitable?). That's in all our
interests. Better having the "Sun part" paying for itself, than having "Sun"
being totally depending of beneficaries from Oracle's other BUs...
Have a great weekend!
Matthias
> --
> Robert Milkowski
> http://milek.blogspot.com
>
>
>
> On 02/07/2010 09:44, Matthias Pfützner wrote:
>> Robert,
>>
>> the reason we're silent is at least twofold, I guess...
>>
>> 1.) We simply don't know
>> 2.) There had been way to much discussion with negative, even offending
>> words
>>
>> Eric and Alan did at least try to describe, why we have to be silent.
>> Procedures at Oracle currently do not differentiate between money-making
>> and non-money making products. They apply to every outbound messaging...
>>
>> We all hope, it might change sooner then later, but those are currently
>> wishes... We employees discussing with you here are way to low in the
>> foodchain, so we don't have any insight into upper management's thinking
>> or their pending decisions or the reasons for decisions being in pending
>> state... We perform the same interpretation based on the same set of
>> information. And we are new inside Oracle, so we don't know very much yet
>> on what's "doable" and what's to be "punishable"
>>
>> The only thing we know for sure, is, that Oracle tends to perform big
>> announcements at Oralce Open World... And then some smaller announcements
>> once a quarter (like the x86 announcement this week)... But we also do not
>> know, what's going to be announced...
>>
>> Matthias
>>
>> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
>>> Von: Robert Milkowski <[email protected]>
>>> An: [email protected]
>>> Gesendet: 2.7.'10, 10:14
>>>
>>> On 01/07/2010 22:03, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>>>> Ken Gunderson wrote:
>>>>> Thank you sincerely for clarifying that effectively everyone outside of
>>>>> Oracle with an interest in this somehow came to same deluded conclusion
>>>>> that there was going to be a 2010.H1 release.
>>>> I didn't say that - clearly there were plans and schedules previously
>>>> discussed
>>>> that were not met (and they were always plans and schedules, not
>>>> contracts or
>>>> guarantees) - I just said that there was no public statement yet about
>>>> what the
>>>> new plans/schedules are.
>>>>
>>>
>>> While I can understand it when it applies to commercial only products it
>>> doesn't make much sense
>>> when applied to open source products being in development.
>>>
>>> I wouldn't except Oracle to publicly commit to Solaris 11 date but I
>>> would definitely expect them to allow their engineers the same amount of
>>> freedom Sun did when it comes to publicly talking about OS development.
>>> Basically what happened recently is that all of you guys went totally
>>> silent here. Then there are no new dev builds in form of a distro and
>>> there is no new stable osol release either. At the same time there is no
>>> clarification on why, etc. It is just plain wrong.
>>>
>>> I hope Oracle will realize it rather sooner than later.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Robert Milkowski
>>> http://milek.blogspot.com
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> opensolaris-discuss mailing list
>>> [email protected]
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
--
Matthias Pfützner | mailto:pfu...@germany | Es ist leichter, einem
@work: +49 6103 752-394 | @home: +49 6151 75717 | Restaurant als einer Frau
SunCS, Ampèrestraße 6 | Lichtenbergstraße 73 | treu zu bleiben.
63225 Langen, FRG | 64289 Darmstadt, FRG | Federico Fellini
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