james <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Correct and for this reason, Illumos did change too much at some places
> > already.
> >
> > Solaris Old-timers like to have standard compatibility and backwards
> > compatibility.
>
> Well, as an outside observer who has worked on Solaris and Linux
> professionally, I'd have to say:
>
> Some of the behaviour wrt these issues has been bizarrely focussed on de
> jure standardisation and backwards compatibility *for its own sake* and
> one can but hope that some lessons might be learned by recent events.
Solaris has been focussed on backwards compatibility at the same time as POSIX
compliance. Well, this was before Sun created Indiana....
> I'm not joking when I suggest just throw in with FreeBSD. It is at
What do you understand by "just throw in with FreeBSD"?
Are you talking about adding programs from FreeBSD?
> least a neutral venue compared to the two positions we've had with
> solaris-stuck-in-the-muds and lets-be-linux-brigade, and I don't see too
> much moaning about either gratuitous change or stasis one way or the
> other about FreeBSD. It also has active user-space and workstation
> development from PC-BSD and active NAS development too.
I believe the best way is to add FreeBSD programs if the following is true at
the same time:
a) we need a program for some reason (e.g. because it is still
closed source in OpenSolaris ON)
b) FreeeBSD has such a program under the BSD license
c) The program from FreeBSD matches our needs in a sufficient
way.
If a) is true but b) and c) are not true also, we need to write new software.
This is what I did with my "od" that is based on my "hdump" from 1986.
If we on the other side have a problem with missing features, we rather should
extend existing UNIX sources.
In this area, Illumos fails for some reasons:
- People do not deliver quality: A quick "od" hack from Garret Damore that
is not POSIX compliant, that is not compatible with Svr4 and that even
does not work correctly with files > 2 GB does not belong into an
OpenSolaris continuation project.
- I software from FreeBSD is taken, it must be made working correctly
before it can be used as a closed source replacement. The i18n adds
to libc from FreeBSD obviously do not work correctly on Illumos and as
a documented result, "col -x" fails to pass jaopanese characters on
Illumos.
- Replacing other software instead of fixing bugs is a very bad idea.
Replacing troff/man because "col -x" does not work as a result from a
bug in i18n is the beginning of a destuctive hack.
- Illumos does not work on extending the current UNIX userland to become
compatible to newer POSIX versions and Illumos does not import existing
code from people that are not hired by Nexenta or similar companies.
> Being compatible with FreeBSD might not be backwards compatible with
> Solaris, or compatible with the selfish anarchy of Linux, but it is at
> least compatible with something that isn't either already totally
> irrelevant or rapidly becoming so.
Do you believe, we should add a new /usr/bsd tree in addition?
> What the free solaris kernel seems to need most is device drivers and if
> the way to achieve that is in fact to sacrifice all the old de jure
> standardisation for its own sake, then I'd throw my support that way
> anytime: I already gave up on OI derivatives because FreeBSD actually
> works on my hardware and I can have ZFS that way.
FreeBSD is nice, but I like to prevent OpenSolaris from dying.
Jörg
--
EMail:[email protected] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[email protected] (uni)
[email protected] (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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