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>Bureaucracy. That's a word teetering on "understatement". Which projects did you run and which issues with the bureaucracy did you run into? >Disclaimer: I'm not a Sun employee, and have never been one. > >As I see it, there's a few shortcomings with the organization. So get involved in improving it. >1) The CAB. Where /are/ they? Maybe the CAB holds meetings and the >minutes of them are posted on s ome obscure corner of opensolaris.org. >Maybe the CAB provides regular guidance or has a way for non -CAB >members to address the CAB, but I'm overlooking the link to these items >on opensolaris.org's f ront page. Sure, there's a link to what the CAB >/is/, but there's nothing on what it has actually d one in the time >since it was formed... my point here being that the CAB from my vantage >seems non-e xistent. The OpenSolaris Constitution? Hello? I see many of >the CAB members individually post here often, but I never recall seeing >regular (or any) correspondence from the CAB as a group. [Note: I probably change virtual cap every other sentence here; I'm a CAB member, a (Open)Solaris developer, a member of the team which drafted the development process, and a Sun employee] The CAB posts in its own mailing list (cab-discuss) which I've cc'ed. All discussions are there; that's where they belong. There's the genunix.org wiki which contains the constitution-in-progress. But I don't see why all of that is so important. You don't need our guidance to build stuff. If CAB (or OGB) interference is needed then that is something which is limited to exceptional circumstances. Anything else would not scale (considering that CAB/OGB members typically have full time employment) What I see as the biggest obstacle is the fact that you still need a sponsor for putbacks and that we at Sun need to do them for you. >2) Too much Sun is in the way. It seems like you can't do anything >with OpenSolaris in terms of contribution without touching SUNW, >either by being made to interface through a Sun employee or having to >acquiesce to Sun-origined policy or SOP. Take the opensolaris.org site >as a simple example. Is there even just one non-Sun person who has a >tangible role in maintaining it and giving it direction? How about code >comitters? Is there even just one non-SUNW person who can commit code or >vote meaningfully on ARC cases? Not as far as I can tell. The fact that you cannot directly commit is a pain and something of which addressing is long overdue; the governance model explains how all the other things will come into being. You cannot give people a vote in ARC or commit access or anything else if you lack information. So we default to the existing Sun developer community and slowly grows this by inducing people from the outside into the pool of people who can have more important roles. The development processes were developed in an open manner for all to see; they are not cast in stone, mind you, but without discussion they will not change. But without trying to run the process a few times, we can't find out where the issues are. Personally, I feel that the ksh93 discussion went famously, except, perhaps, for the fact that the ksh93 team was suddenly besieged with people who they'd never heard of before once the ARC started its discussions. But once over the initial shock of "who are these people", it seemed to have gone very well. The ARC members technical arguments why certain decisions were wrong in their opinion and they swayed the ksh93 project team to make changes. I think that the majority of us agree that those changes were all for the better. And as I explained in an earlier mail, the /etc/kshrc.ksh discussion also has merit. >Participation means more than just giving Joe Random the ability to >browse and download previously unavailable source code. Participation >means giving a Joe Random the potential to have a say in direction, from >the smallest one-line code patch as a reviewer/comitter to deliberating >as a voting person on a non-trivial ARC case, and many other areas. And so they have; the fact is that "having a say" is not the same as "getting your way". I certainly hope that the ksh93 did not make changes because we /forced/ them to but because they were swayed by the technical and architectural arguments. They took part in the discussion and so did Sun folks; and the Sun folks aren't "Sun"; they don't all see the same viewpoint either. (I'm all for ksh starting in gmacs mode, others are not) >I'm not here to spout FUD or stir up emotions, as I'm a fervent user >and advocate of OpenSolaris ( the code, the concept). Just trying to >give an honest perspective. In all honesty, I can't say tha t I'm >happy with how OpenSolaris (the org) has progressed since April, 2005. >In the past I felt amb ivalent about the org, but lately I find myself >being bugged by the lack of non-SUNW inclusion regarding the >inner-workings of the org. This, I feel, is summed together is peoples' >minds and it promotes the impression (to the non-SUNW person) that >there's a hard-to-penetrate bureaucracy involved, >and even perhaps one that's tilted in favor of whatever interests SUNW >may have. Well, the ksh93 project is still prgressing nicely, as far as I can tell. What is perhaps different in Sun/Solaris culture is that project teams do not have an absolute say in what goes in and where to put it. That the discussion seems to be Sun vs "the project team" is wrong; it's just so that during the start of OpenSolaris Sun employees will weigh more heavily in discussion because they hold to the established traditions and because they are the ones in the ARCs. When OpenSolaris grows, and I do agree that the pace could have been better, this will change. But I think that a future project will find similar arguments from a non-Sun dominated ARC. >I don't want in any way disparage the efforts and (in many, many >cases, above-and-beyond) attentio n individual Sun employees have given >in terms of technical discourse, guidance and direction, but the Org as >an organization entity needs some quick-order work in terms of its >inner open(2)-ness. I don't think there's much wrong with the openess; it's progressing much like we say it is progressing, except perhaps slower. What you observe from Sun is perhaps a tip of the iceberg; and sometimes we conjure up some additional Sun employees who then play roles you haven't heard of before. It's the shock of the new and the unknown; the iceberg revealing itself to the Titanic. Before we start changing the development process, I would like to see more projects go through it; I think ksh93 is functioning as an excellent icebreaker on the unchartered waters of the OpenSolaris development process. We put much of the processes in Solaris development in place for good reasons (though there has been a tendency to put to many in place, it's now a bit simpler than before); our red tape is even worse; you are only confronted with the architectural end, we get to deal with marketing, funding, steering committees and what not. I can see how the ARCs come as a shock to an outsider; as an insider, I was shocked initially too; but when looking back over the larger project I did (Solaris privileges) I strongly believe that the ARC played a significant role in improving the quality of the project. And I see the same force at work in ksh93. (And in those cases where business decisions overruled ARC decisions, the resulting mess wasn't pretty) Casper _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
