On 15/07/2010 22:47, Alasdair Lumsden wrote:
IMHO, The Oracle/Sun provided OpenSolaris reference distribution (henceforth
referred to as Indiana to avoid confusion) has done the community a disservice,
in the sense that it has prevented a community from producing something itself.
All the other OpenSolaris based distributions such as Schillix, Nexenta etc all
cater for particular niches, but what what's needed is a community produced
version of Indiana. One with the same (or at least, similar) goals with an
identical/similar architecture including aspects such as IPS, Automated
Installer, Zones, etc.
As long as Oracle/Sun continue to release their own distribution, the community
has no real reason to do so. Well, perhaps now is the time for this to happen.
Perhaps what is needed is an agreement with Oracle along the lines of:
1. Oracle agrees to continue to provide the source code for OpenSolaris
(nevada), along with constituent parts (such as IPS/pkg). Oracle continue to
provide bug and security fixed updates to the closed source binaries.
2. OpenSolaris 2010.xx is never released, but becomes Solaris Next.
3. The community steps up and produces it's own version of Indiana, tracking
Solaris Next as best it can in a binary and package compatible way.
4. The community maintains it's own source code repository that developers can
commit to, and Oracle takes community improvements that they want.
This frees Oracle from their obligation to the community, and allows them to
maintain their secrecy and radio silence. But it forges an even stronger
community that can stand on it's own legs.
Obviously the issue the community has is that we've never had the ability to
produce the distribution itself. We don't have the ability to build all the
packages that go into the IPS repo, nor produce the Live CD, nor do we have an
installer. And of course, finding people to do the actual work would present a
significant challenge.
The good news is that there is a community out there. There are the community
members who have been involved with the OpenSolaris derived distributions.
There are ex Sun/Oracle staff who have moved to other companies, such as
Nexenta. There are projects such as OSUnix who are trying to produce their own
OS from the OpenSolaris codebase by replacing the closed binaries/code (such as
the internationalised bits of libc).
Not to mention, there's Blastwave and OpenCSW who are already building large
amounts of software for Solaris/OpenSolaris, and if one/both decided to
contribute, we have a huge source of software packages for the community based
distro.
If the fragmented OpenSolaris community rallied round and came together, I'm quite
confident a community based distribution could thrive. Indeed, if Solaris Next does
become an "Oracle Hardware Only" OS, then an entire company providing support
for the community based distribution would definitely have legs, and this could
potentially afford to pay staff to work on building the distribution full time. Solaris
is run by a very large number of people on Dell/HP/etc kit and these users would no doubt
be eager to jump onto such a distribution.
I'm going to be talking about my thoughts on this at the London OpenSolaris
Users Group later this month, if anyone is in London and wants to come along.
And of course I'd appreciate peoples comments here on this thread.
Alasdair
+1 I've added distribution-discuss to this, where I've already tried to
say much the same thing, although you put it better. I'm sure there are
enough of us out here to get this rolling.
Rob
--
E-Mail: rob.mcma...@warwick.ac.uk PHONE: +44 24 7652 3037
Rob McMahon, IT Services, Warwick University, Coventry, CV4 7AL, England
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
