David J. Orman writes: > With developers who can make such amazing things as ZFS/Dtrace/etc, > why is it SO hard to pick a package format, setup some guidelines > and routines > , setup a maintenence schedule (updates/new features and > bug/security fixes), and start work. The community could easily > help, look at the amazing job Dennis and cew did with Blastwave, and > the SFW team have done. Sun just needs to pick something, stand > behind it, and give it a bit of support (make sure things are up to > Sun's high stability/etc standards.)
I'm a bit confused about what you want. Achieving those standards means a high degree of attention to detail. It's not just grabbing the latest and greatest source, typing 'make', and tossing it over a wall. There's a _large_ amount of work that goes into making those amazing things, and having an open source base to draw from doesn't somehow cancel out the other issues. (As has been said before, free software isn't free of cost.) That work takes time, people, and effort. It means figuring out how the software may need to change to fit with the rest of Solaris. It means coming up with test cases. Exactly the things it sounds like you don't want us to do. After all, if we were to do that, then you would get something like /usr/sfw -- software that's out of date or otherwise unwanted because it has gone through an intentional and painstaking design and review process. So, which do you want? Personally, I *like* having blastwave and sunfreeware being independent and robust. They give me exactly what I would have if I were to run Linux -- easy access to the newest things, all precompiled and ready to run, but no deeper guarantee that they're going to play well together or not just dump core unceremoniously. In many cases, that's "good enough," and it certainly mirrors the experience you get elsewhere. I think the remaining issue is a contractual one: you seem to want to pay Sun for support of open source software that's actually developed elsewhere. In that case, contact your support folks. I don't know how they draw up agreements or evaluate costs (I'm not involved in that), but perhaps it's a business model that could be made to work. In any event, that doesn't sound like it's really related to this mailing list. This list is for discussing Open Solaris, not the support or marketing of any particular distribution, including Sun's Solaris. I don't think the issue of whether Sun offers support for third-party applications (of any kind) is an Open Solaris topic. -- James Carlson, KISS Network <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
