> -----Original Message----- > From: James Carlson [mailto:james.d.carlson at sun.com] > Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 10:56 AM > To: Herman, George > Cc: Ostrovsky, Boris; ogb-discuss at opensolaris.org > Subject: RE: [ogb-discuss] Creating a place for AMD-related work > > Herman, George writes: > > After reading the description of community and project, it would seem > > that the option that best meets the project guidelines is number 2. (The > > guidelines seem clearly state that communities should sponsor projects, > > and not projects sponsor/create new projects.) > > I wasn't at all suggesting that you have your project "endorse" some > other project. > > Instead, I was suggesting that *if* your concern is that you have > multiple related subprojects and if those subprojects were all sharing > code and development, then it may well make sense to have a single > project with divided resources for the subprojects. The current > infrastructure supports such an organization, and there's low > overhead. > > You can certainly start a new community if you feel that's necessary. > The process for that is in the consititution, and requires OGB > approval, as described in article VII: > > http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/governance/ > > You'll need to work through the issues described in 7.4, including the > trademark problem, to get this done.
This is interesting, I didn't notice the trademark requirement when I first read it. What about PowerPC, Xen and X Windows communities? These are owned by IBM, XenSource (Citrix?) and I think OpenGroup. -boris > > As for my comment on such a proposal, I think that if it were limited > to AMD platforms alone, then it might well be too narrow, as it would > likely overlap common bits with the Intel work being done. The > existing PPC community is similarly too narrow ... and in fact has > just one project. > > > Using option 3 would seem to create some problems. If we setup related > > projects for each of the platforms and have projects that are related, > > this seems to be requiring engineers to endorse, monitor and work in > > multiple spaces on related projects. > > It means that the folks involved in the project need to cooperate. > > > In addition, this could require > > competitors to work in a competitor's project area. If the platform > > community sponsored a project, and a neutral/common project then gets > > created, multiple vendors would be able to contribute to a common > > project. > > That's in the nature of open development. We're all working on > OpenSolaris here, so the fact that some addresses end in "intel.com" > and others end in "amd.com" isn't actually something I think that the > OGB ought to address. > > A more important issue, I think, is proper system architecture and > design. If, as I think you're asserting, there are common pieces that > should be shared between Intel and AMD platforms, then I would assert > that it's a fundamental _requirement_ that these things are designed > and implemented. At least as a matter of the core software repository > (opensolaris.org), I don't believe it's acceptable to see external > political divisions (of any sort) encoded into the system design. > > > Case in point... we want to start an AMD IOMMU project. I understand > > that there is already a project started in the Intel space. (I can't > > seem to find it... which is another problem.) If this project was > > already in the Intel project space, it would seem that we would have to > > work in the Intel project space, or deal with the issues of merging two > > project spaces. In addition to this being awkward/frustrating for > > competitors, it would seem to be a hassle for the Sun engineer working > > on any common code. > > We've seen the lack of merging before, due to internal political > divisions within Sun, and it's uniformly painful. > > At an architectural level, I would _insist_ that these two projects > work together on common goals. > > I don't actually care how that happens, though. If the high level > issues are hashed out in one of the community groups (device drivers?) > and then a suitable non-partisan joint project is created, that'd be > great. There are probably other ways to divide up the work. > > > Wouldn't it be preferred to have a project (IOMMU) defined in a more > > neutral space that might be sponsored by multiple communities, like > > device drivers, AMD, Intel and Sun/Sparc? > > Yes. That's why I suggested that a platform community would be > useful. > > > (This seems to be the way that > > the PowerPC community and projects were done.) > > No. There's a PPC-only community, and I think that's broken. The > fact that there's a project there is great, but the community is too > narrow to serve that project well. > > -- > James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> > Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 > MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 >
