There seems to be a misconception that the project proposal for 'Nevada
Companion Software' is really a 'Die-Blastwave-Die-Die-Die!' project.
This is not true.
I don't understand why there is so much animosity being expressed here.
The companion CD project, SunFreeware, and Blastwave have all
co-existed peacefully prior to this discussion. Keith's proposal is to
bring the companion CD project into the open community. Why is this so
wrong?
The companion CD project can benefit tremendously from having community
input, including the large Blastwave community (which includes many Sun
engineers).
If the open source community has shown us anything, it's that
competition begets innovation. How many distributions of Linux are
there? What about MySQL vs. Postgres? How many apt, RPM, etc.
repositories are out there all peacefully co-existing? If you prefer
one, that's perfectly fine - that's no reason to heap flaming bags of
trash on the efforts of another.
cheers,
steve
James Dickens wrote:
Process done wrong
This current situation started 8 months ago. Sun picked Steven
Christianson to be its gatekeeper totally snubbing the leading
Freeware provider to Solaris/OpenSolaris.
About the same time I submitted the idea of a unified freeware source
repository for Solaris everyone that chimed in thought it was a great
idea, everyone accept for Steven Christianson and Sun employees that
chose to remain silent.
Now about 8 months later they decide they want to unify the freeware
software, there starting point they are rallying around is the
freeware Companion CD (CCD), which most people don't even use once
they learn that Blastwave and sunfreeware exist. Unless they put stock
in the fact that Sun released and blessed the unsupported CCD.
It would seem if they wanted to create a standard for software
distribution they would seek out the major parties involved. But no
they did not do this, they appear bought out one party and snubbed the
largest provider. Now they expect the largest provider to lie down and
surrender to be come part of the official supported freeware standard.
I will not the leave out the CAB in this discussion; apparently they
failed to see the importance of this issue, and wished to play a
numbers game, if this freeware software standards project should
really have been a community, because it affects almost EVERYONE that
uses Solaris other than possibly embedded Solaris users. Yet because
we have too many communities this one can't possibly be made a
community and has to have project status. Either they should have
removed some other dead/stagnant community or added one more.
Of course this project will say that this is all just a conspiracy
theories when none exits, but the facts is most in the OpenSolaris
community wouldn't dare fight Sun, Sun employees are the engineers and
have been gifted with special insight the rest of us are just peons
that look in from the outside and perhaps dream of working for Sun.
Perhaps there are a few that don't believe this way but for the
majority it's the way it is. Even during the latest thread on this
issue, a few disagreed with this process, but all Sun employees are
basically for it and the outsiders were pretty much quiet. Sun gave us
Solaris for free, and the entire software stack free again, providing
machines and bandwidth to run OpenSolaris etc. but does this give them
the right to steam roll an existing community that pre-dated
OpenSolaris? They should be embracing Blastwave but they really want
it to go away. Perhaps this isn't all of Sun, but parts of Sun that
wields considerable power want it.
Has anyone noticed that Blastwave isn't running on the latest
hardware? Blastwave is responsible for millions and millions of
package downloads. New hardware has been promised, a T2000 would make
a perfect server for Blastwave's web site, and other services yet Sun
is giving them away? There have been multiple promises of galaxy
class hardware yet it gets bogged down in bureaucracy and never
materializes. It went as far as an executive at Sun asking Dennis
Clarke the founder of Blastwave to specify a configuration that would
fit Blastwave needs, after that the high up Sun executive said sure no
problem, we will get the hardware out to you, but it always get bound
up in red tape after a few more emails it claims to be fixed and the
server will be on its way shortly but it never arrives
I have decided to remove my self from this process at this point. And
have suggested that Dennis Clarke do the same. Blastwave isn't
perfect, but being part of this process is pointless, Sun employees
will specify they want to do it the right way and Blastwave is doing
it the wrong way, and will eventually win, there are more Sun
employees willing to fight the battle, two lone voices of descent is
not enough to win. My hope is that the project will stagnate and die
as so many other projects and communities. The project being all Sun
employees, will go back to the internal Sun lists and communication
channels and will have inadequate support to release and maintain the
100's of packages needed to be a force in OpenSolaris/Solaris
freeware community.
Good or bad, Blastwave exists, and deserves to be fully included in
any discussion, and not as an after thought, with nearly 1500 packages
and millions of downloads a month, it's the distribution the people
have chosen. The current project seems more like dragging this
argument onto Sun home turf where they hold all the aces. Where they
will say that numbers mean nothing, we have to do this the "right way"
and we will provide bling and systems, bandwidth and we are the
experts we know best, and dozens of Sun employees will agree and begin
the process of replacing all that Blastwave maintainers have created.
Of course Blastwave can be part of the new process, but that starts
with flushing all that Dennis and the Blastwave maintainers have done,
because all the work will be done on Sun's hardware under the CCD
label of course the work could be done on Blastwave's servers but the
Blastwave brand name will be dead and Dennis will get left footing the
bill for this projects dreams.
James Dickens
uadmin.blogspot.com
--
stephen lau // [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 650.786.0845 | http://whacked.net
opensolaris // solaris kernel development
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