John, I tend to agree with those who feel that it is probably a bit premature to call Indiana "The OpenSolaris distro", without some sort of transparent decision happening within the community. (Or at the very least an acknowledgment by the governing board that this isn't a decision the community has the power to make).
I feel this is particularly premature because, as far as the OpenSolaris world is concerned, there are at six other OpenSolaris Distros. (At this moment, the Ppensolaris.org downloads page, states "If you want to run a distribution based on OpenSolaris, choose one of these available options:" There are six distros listed. Not one of them is Indiana.) When anyone talks about Nexenta, Belenix, or Martux, they are all viewed as OpenSolaris distros. I don't know how else to describe them. (Any suggestions would be appreciated). Although we would like to base our terminology on logical understanding, it really is Sun's decision, if they want to play the XenSource card, and brand a particular distro with one of Sun's trademarks. (Playing this card might be the best thing for Sun's business needs, and if so, I'm not going to pass judgement here. It just needs to be made clear that this is what is happening.) Preventing others from using OpenSolaris modifiers, or preventing others from describing Nexenta as an OpenSolaris distro could also backfire in other ways. If no one is allowed to refer to a distro like Nexenta as an OpenSolaris distro, I suspect Nexenta will come to be known as Ubuntu Linux with ZFS built in. (Which I'd imagine is defiantly not in Sun's business interests.) I think the best approach at this time would be for Sun to lay out their legal/business position, and work with the community to find an agreeable nomenclature, that can still offer Sun some protection from dilution of their Solaris related marks. On a related note, I sense some hesitance to reach out to the Nexenta folks. I think they really have shown some great initiative, especially with ZFS boot. (And if I understand correctly the Nexenta team members have been providing putbacks.) Do you have any insight? Is Nexenta sponsored by someone other than Stanford University? (IE: A potential competitor to Sun?) Or have the Nexenta folks been hostile in some way? Thanks, Brian On 10/17/07, John Plocher <John.Plocher at sun.com> wrote: > Keith M Wesolowski wrote: > > On Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 03:49:21PM -0400, Dave Miner wrote: > > > >> started...). The OpenSolaris binary distribution (Indiana) will have a > > > > Please do not refer to Indiana as "The OpenSolaris (anything)". > > Since there don't seem to be any other "distros-as-formal-OS.o-Projects" > (just the emancipation and live-cd projects), it is factually correct > to use the term "the" in this context to refer to Indiana, whether or > not you yourself like it. > > The fact is that the Indiana project is the /only/ effort underway /within/ > the OpenSolaris Community that is working on producing a binary distro. > I'm not downplaying the awesome and groundbreaking efforts of BeleniX, > marTux, NexentaOS and SchilliX - we wouldn't be where we are today without > them - but they are not formally part of the governed-by-the-existing- > constitution OpenSolaris Community. > > OpenSolaris is intended to be a meritocracy, with those that are "doing" > having more say than those that are simply talking about doing - or (like > yourself) talking about the future possibility of maybe someone else > actually doing... > > > > Anyone noticing similar misrepresentations is asked to bring them to > > the OGB's attention. > > so that they can debate it endlessly without being able to do anything > about it? > > <blunt> > The OGB only gets to be involved when there is a cross-community problem > that is explicitly brought to them for adjudication. (Constitution, 3.4) > > As to whether or not Project Indiana can claim to be the OpenSolaris > binary distro, the constitution (3.1) says: > > ...OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) to be responsible for overall > day-to-day operations and representation of the organization to > third parties. The OGB, in turn, delegates the organization and > decision-making for specific OpenSolaris activities, such as product > development and marketing tasks, through the creation of Community > Groups. > > This pretty clearly says that the Indiana project is completely within > its charter to create a product out of whatever it wants. Since this > isn't a cross-community governance issue, then, according to the > constitution (3.4 again), you (and the OGB?) are sticking your nose > into Community governance that is none of your business. > </blunt> > > Rather than getting steamed and self-destructive over people actually > *doing* things, how about if you redirect your energies on something > productive that actually helps build the community? > > Yes, there are quite a few unknowns, controversies and the like, but, > hey, that's life in the open source wild. FOSS means being comfortable > with not having ALL the answers up front. As they say in the agile > development world, don't over-design: > > The XP community is fairly blunt about the concept of > overbuilding software with their belief that "You Ain't > Gonna Need It Anyway" (YAGNI). The basic idea is that you > cannot accurately predict the future[1] and therefore > shouldn't attempt to build for future possibilities. > > http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileArchitecture.htm > > Lets deal with the problem of competing distros if/when we ever have any. > But not today. > > -John > > _______________________________________________ > ogb-discuss mailing list > ogb-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/ogb-discuss > -- - Brian Gupta http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nycosug/
