That's true too and Alan I _really_ appreciate that you are the only Sun
employee to admit that. But I think the reality is that OpenSolaris has made no
progress whatsoever and when I say that I will not ignore defining and
quantifying it -
So let us see what was the prime objective of OpenSolaris - Increase use of
Solaris (Use It), Let the community contribute improvements they need and love
( Improve It ) and spread it so we further increase use and community
contributions(Evangelize).
1) Community participation has remained very low. To date greater than 90%
(very unscientific and conservative estimate) of OpenSolaris changes are driven
by Sun's business interests and they come from Sun employees. (Look at commits,
look at general development direction - nothing there for more x86 drivers
which is what community might benefit from)
If you are defining "participation" as "putting back code", yes, you are
correct. But really, how many kernel developers are out there in the
world? I'm not expecting a huge number here.
But we define participation as, well, participating. Over 40
universities are using OpenSolaris in their curriculum. Students are
learning on OpenSolaris, using it, experimenting with it, developing on
it. Are they participating? Absolutely.
I will never expect a huge number of people developing OpenSolaris
itself. Where I see the potential volume is with people developing apps
for OpenSolaris, and people using distros based upon OpenSolaris. All
of those people are participating.
2) People do not feel they own a bit or two of OpenSolaris. That feeling
remains totally with Sun. (People have expressed this elsewhere in GPLv3 and
Community Participation threads)
3) Contributing changes remains hard (Everyone agrees and does nothing urgently about this - I am tired of hearing it is getting fixed)
If you want it to go faster, then participate. Stephen Lau posted a
good way to help a couple of days ago. Put your money where your mouth
is. Sorry to be blunt, but really......
--
Stephen Harpster
Director, Open Source Software
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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