On Jan 21, 2008 5:54 PM, John Plocher <John.Plocher at sun.com> wrote: > Shawn Walker wrote: > > ARC does not apply to OpenSolaris; see recent postings by Roy Fielding. > > > > No. The primary point of the initial project that was proposed (only > > as a reference point, again) is to create a place for developers to > > innovate and experiment with a very low barrier to entry. Developers > > will be encouraged to integrate into the main ON gate or to relevant > > projects at a later date, but will not be bound by whatever perceived > > restrictions there are today while they experiment. > > You imply that somehow thinking about the architectural scope and > impact of a project can be deferred until well after the coding has > been completed. To me, this shows either a misunderstanding of software > development best practices, a naivet? about the costs of maintaining > a forked source branch or a willful disregard for the core values > of the OpenSolaris meta-community - any one of which is reason enough > for me to weigh in with a "less than zero" vote.
There are a few problems with that John. You're making an incorrect assumption that I am not aware of the value of architectural review, peer review, or other well-defined processes that ensure well-engineered products. I assure you that I am completely aware of the value of such processes and I am involved with them almost every day where I am employed. However, there is currently no constitutional requirement for ARC or any other process for code integration, nor to my knowledge, has the OGB delegated any such power to make such a requirement to any of the current communities. I am a subscriber to the external ARC mailing list and often follow it with great interest. With that said, your implication that my suggestion that such a branch exists is "willful disregard" of core values of OpenSolaris is an unfair mischaracterisation. If your conclusion is true, then Belenix, SchilliX, Nexenta, and Project Indiana are also projects that are showing "willful disregard." Finally, this proposal, as has been clearly delineated in the text, is not about the initial projects, it is about only the items that are listed in the section titled "Proposal." This means that you would be voting on the wrong thing. This proposal is about the creation of a Distribution Community Group to encourage the sustained success and growth of OpenSolaris distributions. If and when the OGB votes on this proposal; they will not, to my knowledge, be voting on the initial projects, only the Community Group. It is the responsibility of the Core Contributors of the Community Group, once formed, to vote on approving or denying the creation or sponsorship the initial projects. > Your assertion that ARC does not apply to OS.o is the key thing that > pushes me to respond with a strong -1; rather than bypassing the ARC, > we should be figuring out how to fix the bug that left out the ARC > from the constitution when it was drafted (and yes, Roy, it is a bug, > not a feature) > > So: -1 on this proposal I don't know why everyone seems to be focused on the trees instead of the forest. The reality is that the initial projects are not the primary focus of the proposal, nor is a vote even applicable to that section. I only included the initial projects section as examples of what sort of things might be done by a Distribution Community Group and as showing my personal interest. Isn't one of Sun's taglines, "Innovation happens everywhere?" My experience in programming primarily started with open source, and therefore, I have a very different view about what the *Open*Solaris community should be doing to encourage developers to join our community. The members of this community can either choose to provide a place and resources for developers to collaborate with low barriers to entry, or they can watch as that innovation will happen elsewhere, not here. Nexenta, Belenix, and SchilliX already happened outside of this community. The license of the OpenSolaris code base which forms the foundation of this community allows someone to create one of those forks you don't want already. How many more distributions and developers will it take before some members of this community admit there is something wrong? How many more developers are we going to chase away because we insist on twenty and thirty-year old processes that were proprietary to Sun, originally, being forced upon them? -- Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ "To err is human -- and to blame it on a computer is even more so." - Robert Orben
