On 02/07/2010 12:19, Matthias Pfützner wrote:
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.
Sure. But from where I sit, and as you can see here also from the point
of view of many others, the current interaction (or rather almost lack
of it) with non-Oracle community members is being perceived as wrong.
And I believe it is wrong.
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...
I appreciate and understand what you are saying above.
And I believe that you are right - I think many others here (except for
some trolls) see it in a very similar way to what you described. Having
said that it's been dragging for far too long, Oracle didn't deliver
OSOL within the time frame they publicly stated and there is no
explanation or any communication about it whatsoever. There might be
valid technical issues, or maybe even business reasons, or strategic
reason... The problem is the total silence about it and even if for some
reason they can't go into details about why it is delayed a firm
assurance that they working on it and they hope to release it soon would
be greatly appreciated by many here. Not to mention that it would
probably even mitigate bad PR Oracle is getting about Open Solaris.
I accept that there is lots of confusion among Sun developers about what
can and can't be publicly said.
I understand that integration of such a large organization like Sun
takes time.
But all we are asking for is some open discussion and clarification
about the status of OSOL distribution.
Sun's developers were really open and forthcoming in the past and they
got it right most of the time imho. Surely, instead of cutting it of
almost entirely, it wouldn't really harm for the senior management in
Oracle to say to all of you (Sun employees) to continue to engage osol
community as usual until further notice. Instead we have what we have
and everyone is frustrated, including many Sun people I'm sure.
This is really no surprise that we see some bad articles in regards to
Open Solaris, conspiracy theories, trolls, etc.
Also I'm sure that there are businesses turning away from open solaris
because of all these doubts and uncertainties. I know that Oracle did
make some public statements but frankly this is not good enough and
especially lack of any communication about osol 2010.H1 is not helping
either.
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...
Yes, you are right and I was a little bit too harsh.
There is still engagement with osol community, and this is good.
The problem however is that for most folks in the community it is not
about technicalities or developing a code but it is about /dev and
/stable osol releases. And the way the communication about them has been
handled is putting even most osol friendly people off. People here are
not complaining about lack of information about Solaris 11 or next
update of Solaris 10 - they are complaining about not enough information
about what's going on in regards to /dev and OSOL.2010.H1 releases.
Then prolonged lack of new publicly available /dev builds is making it
even harder for people who would like to contribute a code (yes, I know
about Ken's tar archive...).
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.
I know. But it's been going on for too long for many of us and something
needs to be done.
As community all we can do is to write some kind of an open letter and
hand it to Oracle.
Would it help? I doubt... but there is no harm in trying. The OSOL CAB
should organize it imho.
The only problem would be of course to agree on exact content so it
wouldn't be some crazy Oracle bashing but rather a constructive one -
and this may prove to be very tricky to accomplish.
The other option is to wait and hope it will get better soon.
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...
Agree 100%.
Have a great weekend!
Thanks and same for you!
--
Robert Milkowski
http://milek.blogspot.com
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