On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 02:08:50AM -0700, Alan DuBoff wrote:
> I think I'm on the same page with you Eric, and I am interested in trying to
> get the various people to at least lay out their needs and/or to work with
> Sun to figure out how that can be accomplished.
[replying to an email moved from osol-discuss]
Okay, here's what I think is the "needs list":
1. Something that is "supported", for *free*.
Anyone can file bugs on related packages, and anyone can see
bugs on these packages
2. Some kind of standard for keeping versions reasonably up to date with
stable releases of each product/library from the net.
3. In contrast to the above, some kind of QA/release process.
It would not be appropriate to meet #2, by saying, "okay, we'll just
compile and ship em the day new versions are released".
I shouldnt have to say this for a Sun project, but Sun has done some
very unexpected things of late, so thought I'd spell it out :-)
Addendum: Sun employees should have exclusive access to make changes.
"community" folks can always submit patches, whatever, but someone
at Sun, officially on behalf of Sun, has to approve and integrate
suggested changes.
4. Easy to get/update over the net, with no stupid
"sign/click to get access" limitations.
pkg-get is of course a great way to do this ;-) but no reason sun couldnt
support multiple access methods. Disk is cheap.
5. A commitment from sun to keep doing it with at least X number of people,
for at least Y number of years, up front.
[the reason for this verbiage being that sun can (and has) committed to
"supporting" things, while in reality shelving the product and leaving
just an empty, dead shell to poke at]
6. The software should be provided as binary packages that are usable by
every single "currently supported" version of solaris recognized by Sun.
This may mean separate packages, for separate versions of the OS,
if extra-special compile options are desirable
fine by me. But no leaving Solaris 8 out in the cold, until it is
officially EOL'd by Sun.
If blastwave can do it, Sun sure as hell should be able to do it :-P
7. The software packages need to be freely redistributable in and of
themselves. Anyone should be able to take one of the sun packages, and
put it on a website/ftp site/cdrom/dvd/bittorrent/WHATEVER, without
having to go through extra legal hoops.
One thought here, being that it is critical that someone who compiles
software using those sun-provided freeware libraries, should be
able to redistribute both their binaries, and the sun ones, on the
same media, without a legal agreement with sun.
