On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 10:32:39AM -0400, James Carlson wrote:

> What's incomplete about my suggestion is that I (somewhat
> intentionally) don't deal with the problem of coordinating "really
> big" projects that touch on both closed and open bits.

Perhaps everyone is already doing this and it's just not apparent to
me, but I think it's helpful to think of someone other than Sun doing
such a thing.  If Nexenta (to name a real company only for realism's
sake) wanted to do a large project that made architectural changes to
both OpenSolaris and some private Nexenta-only consolidation, how
would we want the ARC to approach that review?  Would it be
acceptable, for example, to introduce dependencies on the Nexenta-only
consolidation?

This type of case sounds a lot simple if you start with the assumption
that Sun is special and that Solaris-only consolidations (or codebases
Sun views as parts of OpenSolaris consolidations) are in fact somehow
part of OpenSolaris and entitled to special treatment.  If that
assumption goes away, as when one contemplates the Nexenta example, it
becomes much clearer that these secret codebases have to be treated as
opaque objects irrelevant to and separate from OpenSolaris.  If we're
not able to tolerate the reduction in review quality that this
distinction entails, what is the alternative?

> Indeed.  It's not acceptable as an open process.  However, after
> switching s/MegaloCorp/Sun/g, there are practical problems to consider
> -- Sun can't just sink because OpenSolaris tells it to.  I don't know
> what the balance might be, but that doesn't seem like a viable answer.

I don't see anything here that requires Sun to sink.  Nor, despite
some unfortunate misinterpretation, is that my desire or intent.  But
neither does our current plan of record endorse special privileges for
Sun, including the ability to review its own changes in a closed
fashion and then require everyone else to deal with the consequences.
If we want to change that plan of record, by all means we should have
that conversation.

> So, while we're forcing Sun management into openness, what's a
> "Fishwork?"  :-/

We're forcing Sun management into openness?  Here I thought we were
trying to set policy around OpenSolaris.  What FishWorks is is hardly
an appropriate topic for this list, but I will tell you what it's not:
it's not an OpenSolaris project, any more than Oracle or Mplayer is.
Like other consumers of operating system technology (i.e., everyone),
we've at times found it useful to change that technology; I have
offered those changes up for public and open review.  My comments in
this thread reflect the expectation that others similarly situated do
the same.

-- 
Keith M Wesolowski              "Sir, we're surrounded!" 
FishWorks                       "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!" 

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