Hi Matt,
And this is actually part of the problem for vendors. Many Oracle
engineers, including myself, have tried to get features and fixes pushed
upstream. While that may sound easy, the reality is that it isn't! In
many cases, it takes months for us to get something in or we get shot
down altogether. Here are the big issues we run into:
* If it's in support of Oracle specific technologies such as Solaris,
ZFS, MySQL Cluster, etc. we are often shunned away because it's not
Linux or "mainstream" enough. A great example is how our Nova
drivers for Solaris Zones, Kernel Zones, and LDoms are turned away.
So we have to spend extra cycles maintaining our patches because
they are shunned away from getting into the gate.
* If we release an OpenStack distribution and a year later, a major
CVE security bug comes along.. we will patch it. But is there a way
for us to push those changes back in? No, because the branch for
that release is EOL'd and burned. So we have to maintain our own
copy of the repos so we have something to work against.
* Taking a release and productizing it takes more than just pulling
the git repo and building packages. It requires integrated testing
on a given OS distribution, hardware, and infrastructure. We have to
test it against our own products and handle upgrades from the
previous product release. We have to make sure it works for
customers. Then we have to spin up our distribution, documentation, etc.
Lastly, just throwing resources at this isn't going to solve the
cultural or logistics problems. Everyone has to work together and Oracle
will continue to try and work with the community. If other vendors,
customers, and operators are willing to work together to build an LTS
branch and the governance around it, then Oracle will support that
effort. But to go it alone I think is risky for any single individual or
vendor. It's pretty obvious that over the past year, a lot of vendors
that were ponying up efforts have had to pull the plug on their
investments. A lot of the issues that I've out-lined effect the
bottom-line for OpenStack vendors. This is not about which vendor does
more or less or who has the bigger budget to spend. It's about making it
easier for vendors to support and for customers to consume.
Octave
On 5/5/2017 2:40 PM, Matt Riedemann wrote:
If you're spending exorbitant amounts of time patching in your forks
to keep up with the upstream code, then you're doing the wrong thing.
Upstream your changes, or work against the APIs, or try to get the
APIs you need upstream to build on for your downstream features.
Otherwise this is all just burden you've put on yourself and I can't
justify an LTS support model because it might make someone's
downstream fork strategy easier to manage. As noted earlier, I don't
see Oracle developers leading the way upstream. If you want to see
major changes, then contribute those resources, get involved and make
a lasting effect.
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