Ben wrote:
> While OpenSolaris isn't an open source project, isn't Indiana an open source
> project?
That question seems to be confused about both what OpenSolaris is
and what open source is.
"Indiana" was the code name of the project to build the distro
that was then given the name "OpenSolaris". It's been open to
some amount of community participation, but the core release
management of that distro was always unfortunately done behind
closed doors at Sun - Sun announced the schedule it chose based
on the availability of Sun's resources to produce & test it, and
alignment with Sun's other product releases & events like JavaOne,
we didn't take community votes on release scheduling. Sun was
open about many parts of the process, but not all (I certainly
went to weekly distro engineering/planning meetings that were
not open to the public and which we were not allowed to share
all the information from with the public).
Much of the code for the OpenSolaris distro comes from the open
source project OpenSolaris - in that project (really, that family
of related projects hosted on opensolaris.org) the community has
been able to participate in various ways, though again, the bulk
of the work and some key decision making was always done by Sun
employees.
OpenSolaris, in both forms, is mostly open source - the source for
most of it (with some notable exceptions due to third party code
that never got replaced) is available under an open source license.
That's not the same as community developed or community controlled,
but then many corporate-sponsored open source projects are that
way - final decision making for Ubuntu lies in the hands of its
"Benevolent Dictator for Life" (who just happens to be the one
providing the financing), Fedora similarly has a project leader
who works for Red Hat. And while Linus isn't beholden to one
specific corporation, it is still he, not the community, who
has ultimate decision authority over the Linux kernel. These
projects may all be more open and transparent about their
decisions and schedules than OpenSolaris has been lately, but
that doesn't make the licenses stop complying with OSI's
definition of open source, though it may not be what some people
think of when they hear "open source".
--
-Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersm...@oracle.com
Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System
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