>Removal of those closed source bits (or replacement with open source) >will cripple the distribution on certain types of hardware, in some >cases unacceptably so. (I'm talking about hardware such as LSI >SCSAI/SAS/SATA controllers, Nvidia graphics chips, etc.)
>Don't take this as a belief on my part that this requirement is not >appropriate, nor as a belief that there is not substantial value in what >Indiana offers. I just don't think *what* Indiana offers is precisely >what we want from an OpenSolaris reference. (And, to be quite honest, >because of the above limitations, I think a reference distribution is >likely to be of somewhat limited interest by end-users.) Perhaps a step down from the "full open source" distribution would be "free to redistribute" and perhaps the latter is arguably the minimum requirement as it allows anyone to build on such a distribution and modify it for your own use. >> 2) Decisions about the distro will all be made by an OpenSolaris community >> group in accordance with the constitution (which can be oversimplified >> down to "just do it" for simple/obvious things, "quick e-mail consensus" >> when the answer isn't so clear, "formal vote" for the important things. >> See Article VIII for the full details). >> > >Ok. Such a group needs to be identified and chartered. I don't think >the Desktop group is the right place for that, and (last time I checked) >Indiana isn't a CG. As the coice has community wide repercussions, perhaps no single communty group shold have such influence. >> 3) All components architecturally reviewed in the open by the process and >> groups established by the OpenSolaris Architecture Process and Tools >> community. >> > >Agree. +1 >> 4) Supports the platforms designated as Core Platforms by a community >> process TBD (initially SPARC 4u/4v & x86/x64). >> > >Agree. We may need to identify "reference platform implementations", >though. (Because of the hardware driver problem with open source >already mentioned.) Notably, no platform with an Nvidia or recent ATI >graaphics chip is likely to be acceptable. At the moment, recent >hardware that this *could* be done for looks like only certain SPARC >low- to mid-range SPARC hardware and x86 systems based around Intel >chipsets. Depends greatly on what we decide can be in a disstribution, me thinks. Casper
