On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 9:07 AM, Alasdair Lumsden <[email protected]> wrote: > On 23 Nov 2011, at 19:32, Garrett D'Amore wrote: > >> I doubt that's terribly realistic, or even that useful. But yes, a more >> periodic and regular release schedule is definitely something we hope for. >> OI has had 3 releases in the 18 months or so since the project was announced >> … this is too infrequent for an active open source project. Especially one >> as young as ours. > > Unfortunately drumming up interested developers has proven exceedingly > difficult. Without commercial backing, very few people are willing to invest > the time and energy in making the distro. The last release stalled completely > and took a concerted effort by richlowe and myself to get it pushed out. > Neither Andrzej or Trisk were willing to provide any more of their time on it. > > Imagine Illumos with no Delphix, Nexenta or Joyent support. That's where > OpenIndiana is at. It sucks, but there we go. > > I am rather saddened that Nexenta and Joyent have shown so little in helping > OpenIndiana (although I appreciate there is no direct commercial reason for > doing so). But I'm even more saddened that the greater community have shown > little interest either. If OI were to die, it would be a big loss for all of > us. It gets over 5000 downloads a month and has done since launch, which is a > significant number. > > Perhaps this failure is my own; I have failed to drum up developer interest. > I have no prior background in managing an open source project, and I also > have a full time business to run, giving me insufficient time to devote. It > just isn't enough - and sadly nobody else has really shown any interest in > leading the project either. An early attempt to put in place an > administrative structure showed just how disinterested people were in helping > to manage it. > > Illumian on the other hand has the commercial backing of Nexenta, so I have > no doubt that this distribution will see a greater pace of development than > OI. It's unfortunate that things have come to this, and I hope you can > appreciate why I and other OI developers are unhappy (bitter) about it. In > some respects it is an indirect attempt at a coup d'état, whether intentional > or not. You could have chosen OI as your base, and helped strengthen our > community, but you have decided not to. > > When I started OI I wanted to unite the community around one solid community > distribution. I hoped that if everybody pulled together, we could really > build something special. But more importantly, I hoped we could stay relevant > in an increasingly linux-centric world. To send a united message to the world > that here is a solid distribution with serious backing. Instead, everybody > has gone off on their own direction, weakening everything. This is just > another example of yet more fragmentation. > > Illumos will continue to provide a solid kernel for Nexenta and Joyent's > products, but I am no longer hopeful about us competing with Linux. Not as > things stand. StormOS, Belenix, Schillix, have fractional numbers of users > compared to OI, and I have no doubt that Illumian will become another > marginal distribution too. If we'd all rallied around OI instead, we could > have collectively achieved a great deal more, and fought out a bigger place > for ourself on the operating systems stage. > > The last thing I want is for OI to haemorrhage users due to inactivity. You > think they'll switch to Illumian? No. They'll bugger off to Linux. That's > what a significant volume of users did after Oracle canned OpenSolaris. > > What you have done, all of you - anyone who stands to benefit from the > success of Illumos who has ignored OI, IMHO, have shot yourself in the foot.
Keeping developer interest alive, and indeed one's own interest, is one of many challenges. Another is making time for open source work (long a challenge for the Belenix team, who have really exciting day jobs as well). But I think one of the reasons for such breakdowns between OI and the Illumian team (if indeed there is a breakdown), is that future plans are discussion over private email, IRC and offline discussions. This is one of the problems that we've had in the Belenix development too, where our lead developer Moinak often calls me excitedly over the phone and tells me of the cool new idea that he has and then does something about it. I had asked about two weeks ago about how oi-build and the illumos SFE are related. I've even seen some discussions on on the OI mailing lists where there's some cross-messaging about whether a package should be in oi-build or in the sfe kept at illumos.org. That alone made me feel that there may be some inadvertent competition. I see a lot of merit in "The Apache Way", where there are clear guidelines on ensuring that there's clear communication, that there are regular releases, and that everybody is on the same page. Please note: I'm not complaining at all, especially since I've myself found it a challenge to make time to contribute. I'm only stating my observations based on what I've seen. > > ------------------------------------------- > illumos-discuss > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/182180/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/182180/21175777-e7632f0f > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Sriram Belenix: www.belenix.org Twitter: @sriramnrn and @belenix ------------------------------------------- illumos-discuss Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/182180/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/182180/21175430-2e6923be Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21175430&id_secret=21175430-6a77cda4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
