On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Ben Rockwood <b...@cuddletech.com> wrote:

> Think about it.  Who at Oracle would answer us?  Some PR person?  A
> marketing person?  John Fowler?  The engineers are members of the
> OpenSolaris community and leaders in our CG's.  We should get answers
> from them, from within.  And, conversely, Oracle should speak to us
> through our own ranks.
>

These questions have been asked many times in public mailing lists and
nothing ever came back.

I don't see what difference it would make if the OGB or someone else from
the community asked these engineers directly. They probably aren't allowed
to speak, haven't been told what the plans are or, out of fear for their
jobs, simply won't risk saying something stupid.

In the end if Oracle cared about the OpenSolaris' community, they wouldn't
be ignoring it for this long. It's not like we are secretly complaining in
private mailing lists. The complaints are very public and Oracle can address
them any time.

In my opinion, the delay in 2010.3 is just the tip of the iceberg. I would
respect Oracle much more if they had the courage to come up with an official
statement that included their vision for OpenSolaris, how exactly they
expect to benefit from it, what will be left to the community, areas that
need improvement, how open source fits their business strategy, etc.

We need things to be made crystal clear. There is no place for hidden
agendas and secret plans in an open source project.

OpenSolaris has already taken its fair share of FUD and there are a lot of
missed expectations (including from Oracle/Sun's side). Oracle's silence
makes it look like they are avoiding telling bad news and just buying time.
If things are to end, at least lets make it a quick funeral.

If Oracle is going to keep developing OpenSolaris as a very controlled open
source project, a fork would be able to benefit from that development the
same way new features migrate from FreeBSD to OpenBSD and vice-versa.

On the other hand, If Oracle is NOT going to keep developing OpenSolaris as
an open source project or have plans to exercise even more rigid control of
the code base in a "see the code but don't touch" fashion, a fork might be
the only solution for people who care. I'm sure we would see many more
contributions from a community who's kept in the loop then one at is kept at
bay.

-- 
Giovanni
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