Manish Chakravarty wrote:
Hi All,
On Mon, 7 May 2007, Brian Gupta wrote:
What is OpenSolaris?
Reality: (My observation, a bit cynical)
---------
OpenSolaris is Sun's Solaris development team's project site. The
process has been opened up to the public, to expand the Solaris
developer community to include unpaid volunteers. (unpaid by Sun.)
Additionally, the Solaris code is now open sourced. Almost everything
about the project is driven by Sun's needs.
It should be mentioned here though that the extent to which that is
true is
not under Sun's control; rather it's under the control of OpenSolaris
Community governance (IOW, leadership, voting, and other such governance
activities). This became officially true as of "Independence Day":
http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/opensolaris_independence_day
More here: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/
Does this mean that if some developer comes up with a kernel patch
(just an example) or some driver, he can commit it to OpenSolaris?
Yes, but it has to go through reviews, ARC approval process and
testing etc.
These links explain the process and other related questions you are
asking here:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/communities/participation/
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/faq/getting_started_developers/
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/faq/
And if the community (not SUN) finds it good, it will be taken in and
will be put up in the next OpenSolaris build ?
Once commited to OpenSolaris source base, the changes automatically
appear
in the next build.
What about the bundled software that comes with Solaris Express
Community/Developer releases ? Is there any way the community can
influence that ?
SXCR/SXDE is SUN's distro of OpenSolaris, so stuff bundled therein
represent stuff
that SUN will validate, support etc. So it is SUN's decision what
goes in there ... obviously
business needs and community needs etc. are taken into account here.
What if someone has his/her own OpenSolaris based distro ? Can he/she
make modifications to it as he/she pleases ?
Yes. I have made a bunch of mods for BeleniX. Nexenta/SchilliX folks
have made
a bunch of mods as well ... essentially the distro teams decide what
goes into to the
distro and how. Ability use, modify and redistribute modification is
given by the
license:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/faq/getting_started_developers/#rights
What if such modificiations break API or ABI compatibility with
Solaris 10 / OpenSolaris ?
AFAIK it is upto the distro owner to decide. Nexenta has a GNU mode
of operation
which gives a very different GNU userland. It also has a SUN mode
which preserves
Solaris compatibility.
Obviously breaking ABI compatibility too much may not be useful as
applications
targeted for base OpenSolaris/SUN Solaris platforms may not work out
of the box
on that distro.
Regards,
Moinak.
These are some questions the community must ponder on.
If the answer to most of these questions is no, OpenSolaris migh not
be very open.
And if the answer to most of these questions is yes, we need to
discuss it more
Thanks
Manish
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