Bryan, On 27 Nov 2011, at 21:43, Bryan Cantrill wrote: > First, Joyent, Delphix, Nexenta and every other member of the illumos > community contributes to illumos -- to the core operating system -- which in > turn benefits everyone (OpenIndiana included). So we have in fact helped > OpenIndiana (most significantly with our KVM port to illumos, which > OpenIndiana included in its oi_151a release) -- and we will continue to do > so. > > That said, I think it's important that we as a community recognize that what > binds us is core OS technologies (ZFS, Zones, Crossbow, DTrace, KVM, etc.), > and not how those technologies are packaged and distributed. A central > aspect of the failing of OpenSolaris (in my opinion) was that we collectively > (and Sun in particular) insisted on there being only One True Path for the > entire system. At its best, this ethos manifested itself as endless > discussions on governance and voting and constitutions -- and at its worse > led to arguments, discord, politicking and fracture.
There are no doubt very few people who have not benefited from the efforts of Joyent, yourself, and indeed everybody that has contributed to Solaris and Illumos. Naturally, OpenIndiana and its users have benefited too. Nobody is calling that into question, and everybody is very grateful for these efforts. I use KVM and DTrace myself and I am personally very thankful. So thank you to you, Joyent, Nexenta, and everybody else who has contributed to Illumos. However Illumos without a distribution is nothing; it's something that cannot be used. Joyent have SmartOS, a cloud computing OS which has very kindly been made freely available. No doubt this will make a name for itself in the areas at which it excells. However it is far from a general purpose desktop/server OS; it fills a niche. Similarly, Nexenta has NCP and soon Illumian, the foundation of their storage platform. NCP is just about usable on servers, but it has not gained a wide developer or user base. StormOS, Belenix, and any others that are still being maintained, despite their individual technical merits and the efforts of their developers have sadly failed to attract the attention that Linux distributions have seen. Whilst the Illumos community is thriving thanks to commercial sponsorship, the distribution community is in crisis. Let me be frank. If OI ceased to exist, it would seriously harm Joyent, Nexenta, every other distribution and anyone who stands to benefit from Illumos. OI brings Solaris/Illumos technologies to the masses - it is our ambassador, our technology showcase, something people can install on their desktops, laptops and servers and try out. Under Sun, it wasn't viable on servers because it didn't receive free security updates. We intend to do so, if we can find sufficient developer numbers. OI is the single biggest distribution out there and it is what remains in most peoples eyes as the only viable Illumos derived distribution. If it were to go away, would people switch to Illumian? Belenix? SmartOS? No. They'd go "screw this", give up, and just use Linux. Linux is what the market commands these days, and anyone going against this faces an uphill battle, despite its obvious technical shortcomings. But it's catching up every day and whilst their development model and core values mean it will perhaps never reach our quality, in most peoples eyes it does the job. So if OI fails or fades into obscurity, Illumos will become a footnote in history; an open core kernel for a few vendors products. Is that what you want? It's not what I want, at all. So you'll have to excuse me if I seem bitter and disappointed at the current situation. The only developers from the OpenSolaris community who have actually helped us directly are Richard Lowe and Albert Lee. 2 people. Two. The few others have come from the community, myself included. I have devoted considerable time and energy into OpenIndiana, as well as considerable financial resources for the hosting from my company - the CDN bill alone comes to over $1000/month, excluding the considerable cost of keeping the servers powered on (and their buy price too). I do this because I believe in OI, and I still do. The prospect of having to walk away from it fills me with anxiety and despair. But I don't see why I should continue to invest so much time and money in it when significant names in the Illumos community such as Garrett show disdain for our efforts and seem to simply wish we'd go away, and would rather create a competing distribution than work with us. Why should we continue with OI when nobody from the Illumos community really seems to want us to exist. It's like we're am embarrassment to you. I am sorry there was bad blood within Sun surrounding OpenSolaris/Indiana. I am sorry many of you pine for the days of Nevada and SVR4, and think IPS is a pain in the ass. But you know what? That's in the past. What matters is the future. We are stronger together, and I'm sorry so few of you get this. All I want is for more acknowledgement of our efforts, more assistance from the big players, for people to come together and unite and help make OI great. Is it really too much to ask? ------------------------------------------- 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
