On Fri, 2010-02-05 at 13:03 -0800, Erik Trimble wrote: > Ken Gunderson wrote: > > On Fri, 2010-02-05 at 11:27 -0800, Erik Trimble wrote: > > > >> What you describe is /EXACTLY/ what happens with Solaris 10. And will > >> happen in good time with Solaris Next (aka Solaris 11 or whatever it > >> gets called). > >> > >> For now (and, likely even post-Solaris Next), OpenSolaris will remain > >> the "playground/sandbox" for development work, and as such, I can't see > >> any change from the current model - a "stable" release every 6-12 > >> > > > > Regardless of whether any formal announcement coming down from on high > > from corporate, I seem to recall that the plan for Indiana was for just > > such 6 month releases. And so do a few others I've asked privately, so > > I don't think I was hallucinating. > > > You weren't. The original goal was 6-month stable releases. Frankly, > the merger slowed things down quite a bit for the latest release, plus > there were some important things (i.e. ZFS dedup) that people indicated > would be Really Nice to have in this latest release (and consequently > pushed back the release). > > 6 months is a goal, not a firm commitment on anyone's part - this is > Development, not Release Engineering. :-)
Thank you for the clarification. I interpreted previous comments from an opensolaris.org address earlier in the thread that such was never the case. > >> months, with critical fixes in between for it, but end-users are > >> expected to upgrade to the latest "stable" when it comes out. I really > >> don't know what Oracle is going to do about possibly providing support > >> for OpenSolaris release versions - they're currently not renewing any > >> support contracts for them, but who knows. That all said, OpenSolaris > >> is by its very nature a development platform, and expecting long-term > >> support for various releases makes no sense. If you need stability, go > >> get Solaris 10. > >> > > > > I have. But I fear free security updates will soon become a thing of > > the past. Am I missing something or has Oracle specifically addressed > > this? > > > No, so far as I can tell, there has been no official statement from > Oracle management about exactly what the plan is for supporting > OpenSolaris as a distribution. It's an unknown. Then again, we're > still not "officially" Oracle at this point: it's still "Sun > Microsystems, Inc. , a whole-owned subsidiary of Oracle America, > Inc.". We don't become Oracle America for another two weeks, give or > take. It's all speculations at this point, and I suspect that there > won't be more firm comments (one way or the other) until later in > February, at the earliest. > > That said, the fixes will always be out in the "dev" repository, so > getting them installed on a "stable" release isn't hard. It's not as > easy as having them directly available in the stable repos, but the > package is still available, even if Oracle decides to forgo updating the > stable repos. > > > [Note: I do NOT speak for Oracle, nor should statements made in this > email indicate commitments on the part of Oracle America or Sun > Microsystems] > Speaking of which, there is an interesting thread discussing some of these issues on theserverside. Link here: <http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=59317> where a couple of Oracle company boys do weigh in. Seems like they're trying to back peddle a bit and say that recent statements were misinterpreted. Public backlash is larger than they'd anticipated and my read is they're at least making some minimal effort to do some damage control. Unfortunately, given Oracle's track record, until Oracle comes out with some official statements, their credibility is highly suspect. -- Ken Gunderson <kgund...@teamcool.net> _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
