[...] > They didn't just miss a release date. They ceased to > keep stuff up to > date at all (after 134), and then went radio-silent > on the community. > All we've actually heard after the missed 2010.03 > (that was the one they > missed) is hearsay.
Careful. You're not wrong until now, but that's exaggerating. AFAIK the source code that you can see or fetch (but not the binary repositories) are still being updated. And I've seen (and in one case posted a link) something that sure looked official that had said 2010 1st half (and apparently said that after the Oracle takeover had started). Up to that point, and given that adjusted date, I was ok with it, because I know there have been at least a couple times that updates were delayed, so there have been some problems which added up in terms of schedule slippage. And I'm only bothered by the silence rather than the slippage even now, because I'm reasonably sure there have been some additional problems, about which we've heard very little, and that the takeover itself could only have slowed things down further. However, I would point out some candor, which while it doesn't answer our questions, does indicate that the problem the silence is causing is being kicked upstairs (maybe to eventually reach a level with the authority to do something): http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/message.jspa?messageID=489221#489221 I personally commend the courage to acknowledge that there is at least on the front lines an awareness that this situation can't continue indefinitely, and that at least some of the developers that made a great OS what it is are doing what they're allowed to do to try and change the situation. One doesn't need to give away commercial secrets, or tell schedules that one is afraid might set unreasonable expectations, to be honest with people when previous statements are no longer accurate. > > Are you scared that osol will cease to exist? > That's not possible. > No, I think he, and the rest of the community, is > scared that what's > there now will become stagnant, unmaintained, and > largely irrelevant. > New security issues pop up for ALL systems sooner or > later, and having > an OS that is unmaintained is not recommended for > peaceful sleeping. Again, the source is being maintained, bugs are being fixed, etc. However, people that are using OpenSolaris the distro rather than building their own distro and constantly integrating the bug fixes will no doubt be dealing with unpatched bugs if the binary distro is not being maintained also. So...since I don't personally have the extra systems (both SPARC and x86) with enough RAM to roll my own, I wouldn't say scared, esp. since security has more than one level to it (for example, a separate firewall as well as a reliable and reasonably secure OS). But I would certainly say concerned, and more so as uncertainty is prolonged. Hypothetically, if there's neither update nor information in some period of time, I'd switch to the latest update of Solaris 10, even if that lost me some features I wanted to use, and then (not being able to afford a maintenance contract for home use given what the present terms on those seem to be) simply upgrade to each new Solaris 10 update (and Solaris Next when it becomes available) after they'd each had a month or so of settling time. But since for home use, OpenSolaris (the distro) is stable enough, and much closer to what the developers are running that even if I can't build the whole OS, I can probably tinker with pieces of something where I might want to make contributions if I have the time, I would much rather be running that than even the latest update of Solaris 10. Of course, that gets less true the further out of date what I'm running becomes. > > Are you scared that oracle will cease development > efforts on osol? This is > > the worst case possible scenario. If oracle > suddenly fired every employee > > who ever worked on osol, it would not make today's > osol a bad product > > overnight. If you're using it, you can continue > using it. You will have > > plenty of time in the next year or two, to think > about what OS you're going > > to use next, and gracefully switch to it, before > any significant feature is > > missing from osol. > > They don't need to fire them. Those are brilliant > engineers. They just > need to place them on other projects that won't be > leaked out of the house. > > But really. What worries me, is the absolute radio > silence, not the > noise made by trolls. Be that trolls who talk about > doom, or those > trolls who promise heaven. > > //Svein Agreed, save that rather than "worries", I'd say it's unhelpful, discourteous, disruptive of previously reasonable plans made by others, and contributes to an inhospitable environment for community - the inflexible policy, not those who are put at a disadvantage by having to carry it out to stay out of trouble. While I may differ with you on minor points, I do appreciate anyone that's trying to strike a balance between being reasonable but not ignoring the simple fact that the silence is the big problem right now. That's why I'm trying so hard to maintain that balance myself, and to correct it if I think people are either over-reacting or ignoring the problem. (If I went by my first inclination, well, let's just say nobody would want to hear the way I talk when I'm driving, alone in the car with nobody to offend able to hear, and some other drivers behave the way a few always do...) -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
