> On Tue, 11 Apr 2006, Michael Lee wrote:
>
>> I think a better idea might be to create something like Blastwave but for
>> Solaris 10 Sparc and x86, where we can just install software into /opt/sfw
>> using pkg-get or something similar. It'll be far more useful than a
>> co-bundled product, which gets too stale to be useful over time.
>
> I am not trying to be a smart ass here,
You're not Bill.
You are simply pointing out the bluntly blatantly obvious to anyone that has
their eyes open.
Years ago people in the Solaris Community got together and simply demanded
that something, anything, be done. The Linux world was booming forwards and
Solaris 9 for x86 was being yanked off the shelves. Everywhere you looked
there was someone yelling that "Sun is dead" and open source projects like
Debian were racing forwards.
Something was needed and now.
At the time I had the means and the desire as did anyone else in the Solaris
Community. What we did not want was old thinking and old politics in the
way. Sounds like grass roots open source right?
That is the way it should be.
The project is feuled by need and cool people all working together. We have
hardware from Sun and my basement :-)
Software is released every day or every other day unless we are in stable
freeze for the quarterly stable package release :
http://www.blastwave.org/cronlist/index.html
The mirror site list is here :
http://www.blastwave.org/mirrors.php
Some of the organizations that are helping are here :
http://www.blastwave.org/articles/BLS-0042/index.html
Today I am exchangeing emails with some people at Penn State University and
we are working to put a mirror of all the OpenSolaris sources up. The list
of files ( to start with ) is here :
http://www.blastwave.org/dclarke/stuff/OpenSolaris/filelist.txt
However I will also include the Nexenta, SchilliX and BeleniX ISO images.
The Super Unified Distro Documentation DVD ( SUDD ) is sitting here :
http://www.blastwave.org/docs/index.html
Its a work in progress and the distros have
all released new revs!
Then one day a nice guy came to me and said "Hey Dennis, can I put up a Wine
page and files at Blastwave?" Of course my first reaction is to call up my
boss ( unemployed as I am ) and talk about budget and then call legal and
then .. NOT.
The Solaris Wine Cellar by Robert Lunnon
http://www.blastwave.org/wine/
Then another fine day and James Dickens ( http://uadmin.blogspot.com ) said
to me "hey Dennis, can we put up a SMF page for Solaris?"
http://www.blastwave.org/smf/
This page got more and more busy and James had to get a MySQL database
backend. What did we do? We did it! Just like that.
Then one fine day in January I got a call from MIT people that told me they
had an internal mirror and could they send me some money? Gee. Yes please
as we are maxxed out on disk space. They fired in $1000 and then I combined
that with disks and what-not that I had around and built a whole new NFS
server for Blastwave.
It has been a real roller coaster and I am having fun. The software is
being built night and day and generally there are 10 to 20 people logged in
and active at any time. The build servers hum away and the new OpenSolaris
distro servers will be fun. People wanted access and people need access to
cool hardware and new releases. So the Blastwave stack builds that and
OPENs up the doors with NEW and IMPROVED SchilliX and Nexenta and Belenix
servers here too!
Keeping all this running has required continual non-stop work around the
clock and thanks to some recent contract work that I scored I can pay my
bandwidth bills and hosting fees. People toss in bucks as they can and we
all work together. Genesi ( https://www.pegasosppc.com/blastwareodw.php )
has become the non-stop never-give-up sponsor that sticks in there and helps
me to keep things running. To that end we have the Polaris port project and
repository :
http://polaris.blastwave.org/
So after years of work and piles of community people we have a software
build system, a subversion repository, a build stack, a bug tracking system,
a three tier software delivery mechanism to the world and mirror sites
everywhere.
All of it open to community people to join and participate in and the doors
were always open no matter what we had to overcome.
The project gets by from day to day and I am happy. I am not so happy when
I see someone ( inside Sun ) propose that we start over from scratch and
throw everything the community has done .. away.
Dennis Clarke
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