[Yes, Glynn, I hear the bell ringing :-) But, please read on... ] Ian Collins wrote: > That's where OpenSolaris differs from a number of well known open source > projects where the the project came before the companies and their paid > developers.
I think this touches on one of the key dissatisfiers we have. Various community members expect us to be going in one direction, yet the community doesn't seem to be getting there, and sometimes it even seems to be going somewhere else entirely. Sun started with Solaris, which was (ignoring its BSD roots) "completely closed". It decided that it wanted to start the journey towards "being open", and launched the OpenSolaris community. The people involved (both within Sun and outside) had visions of what the end state would be, what effort it would take, as well as their own time lines and agendas for getting there. Some of those visions were discussed, agreements were forged, and everyone jumped on the wagon. What nobody realized (or maybe everyone realized, but didn't communicate effectively) was that this transition wouldn't happen overnight, wouldn't move instantaneously from "closed" to "open", it would have problems along the way, and when it finally got there, it would have changed and evolved to the point where it was something new and different from all those initial expectations. So, what /is/ the goal for OpenSolaris? Is it to be an Apache type community, with absolutely no ties to any corporation? Or is it to be a MySQL or OpenOffice, with most contributers being employed by Sun? Or maybe something else. Is there only one goal? Can we all agree on what that goal is or should be? The only obvious thing here is that we won't all answer those questions the same way. My own view is that we are engaged in a transition over time, starting with pre-launch where everything was closed, stumbling and bumbling one step forward and two steps back thru a glass house stage (so don't throw rocks!), and as we all gain confidence, we will mature as community and align our views around a common set of goals, and end up somewhere in that initial vision of being fully open. Oh, and if it isn't obvious, we aren't there yet. Will Sun's influence and interest ever go away? No. Will we ever be corporate- agnostic like Apache? No. Do we want to be? Again, my opinion is no, we don't. Will we go thru a glass house stage? Yes - isn't that where we are today? Does that mean it is our ultimate goal? No, because there are uncountable reasons to continue to engage more with the community. Will everyone be happy with the path we take or the place where we arrive? No, and that is OK - as long as we strive for a culture where we can work together, even when we disagree on some things. Will there ever be hundreds of unconstrained non-Sun ON committers? No, because that isn't how ON operates; there aren't even hundreds of unconstrained *Sun* ON committers today! But, do we intend to get to the point where non-Sun-employees can be gatekeepers or CRT team members or initiate integration putbacks? Absolutely Yes! So, we're not there yet, and it is taking longer than we had hoped because we are trying to do so many things that we haven't done before. Yes, we screw up a lot, and the blogosphere is having a field day pointing out the fact that we have TP stuck on our shoe. So what? Is any of this a reason to give up? To write all this off as a failed experiment? To fragment and disrupt the community over a *name*? Hell no! The glass is half full and we have the best damn OS in the world, whatever it is called. I believe we *will* learn how to work together with each other and with Sun, Sun *will* learn how to balance their stockholder driven need for short term results with the long term needs of the community, and some day (hopefully soon) we *will* look back on all this brouhaha and laugh. We are doing it now. And to make sure it /keeps/ happening, I am accepting the nomination for the 2008-2009 OGB. -John
