James Carlson <carlsonj at workingcode.com> wrote: > .. ?Thus "FOSS is special."
I believe FOSS *IS* Special - because doing a good job of integrating general cross-platform FOSS into OpenSolaris is actually HARDER than integrating something invented by the community specifically for the OS itself. The substantial case history for using the taxonomies does a good job of helping the latter projects - but it leaves the former hanging - their architectural requirements include things that core OS projects don't care about: "consistency across multiple different OS and distro platforms", "backwards compatibility is only important for a small number (maybe even one) of previous releases", and, in many cases, "need to be able to have multiple versions installed on the same system" (nee installations in multiple different $HOME directories). > Why does their work need to be reviewed at all? I think you are running the wrong way down the playing field :-) Not only do I believe that ARC review "good" and "important", but I believe that it could be better and easier if there was some well thought out guidance to these FOSS projects that helped them meet their additional requirements. Right now, we are pushing all this FOSS thru the "architecture for things embedded into a single OS instance" grinder, and the sausage that comes out is a bit hard to chew. I'm simply suggesting we should provide another set of guidance (for the ARCs and the Projects) that would improve things for everyone. The people on the ARCs are the ones that have a good idea of the big picture; they need to take the lead (as in become Leaders and Core Contributors in the OpenSolaris Community) and help lead the rest of us (Participants and Contributors) towards a viable set of solutions. They have the case history to start the conversation, they have the use cases such policies and best practices can test themselves against, and they have the ability to revise and shape the review process itself so that it can try out these new things. If they don't take the lead in these things, nobody will, and the end result will be that slippery slope of "external" software doesn't need to be reviewed when it integrates into OpenSolaris, then ... _no_ software needs the sort of review the ARC provides". -John -John
