On 07/17/10 09:07 AM, Ken Mays wrote:
You already have 'community distros' and forums like Nexenta, Korona
(KDE4Solaris), and Belenix as the OpenSolaris-based communities currently
providing recent updates to either the desktop environment or backporting
kernel patches.
Understand that the OpenSolaris project was always a part of the bigger picture
in creating the next Solaris OS major update. Sun provided source code and
kickstarted the OpenSolaris project forum. The 'Indiana distro' was just a
channel to provide binaries of various project consolidation work (i.e. JDS, X,
g18N/i18n, Docs, Caiman, GRUB, etc) in a bootable CD format. Project Indiana
was the start - but not the end. The intent was to have this core distro
kickstart and assist other developers to create distros of their own. At all
times, some other group, like Belenix, could launch and spearhead their own
distro. The intent was not to keep providing a full core distro forever - it
was moreso to get developers into creating their own distros using the
OpenSolaris kernel and core environment.
See: http://www.genunix.org/distributions/ and
http://dlc.sun.com/osol/on/downloads/b144 .
Example: In two options: I can provide you with apples or teach you to raise an
apple tree to provide yourself with apples. Most people will chose the former
option and blame someone if the apples are not fresh or came in a plastic bag
versus a wood basket.
Oracle actually took the source IP it bought and is continuing to work on the
updates to 'Solaris' (i.e. Solaris 10u9/11) and maintain the tested release of
OSOL 2009.06 (SRU10+). Eventually, those tracks will consolidate to the next
new major release of the commercial Solaris product for 'production/data
center' use and major OS migrations - superceding all previous legacy
incarnations of Solaris OS, OpenSolaris 2009.06, and the proposed OpenSolaris
2010.03.
Hence, the fork is inevitable by prior design. Look at Milax, Nexenta, or
Belenix. They have their own community forums and distributions based on the
Opensolaris sources.
So start by helping the existing distro providers that can provide
OpenSoalris-based consolidations on physical media. Many of them have what
people need or can help make it happen or conduct talks of a unified 'community
distro' supported by the former OpenSolaris-based distributors.
But as in any science project, its good to have people 'do their own thing'
while 'also' working in a collaborative fashion to provide a community distro
and forums in a unified effort. Start with existing distros in just updating
them with the newer kernel(s) - don't try to update a bunch of consolidations
and packages just yet.
Sometimes, just getting a chance to stand on home plate to swing a baseball bat
and striking out is better than just sitting only on the benches...
Ken, what you say make a lot of sense. But when I look at those
community distributions I don't see what I'm exactly looking for. So I
guess I going to try to add to this thread what I'd like to see in a
community distro.
1) I know Solaris has always been geared towards enterprise servers, but
I'd like to see one leaning towards the desktop-workstation-laptop
emphasis. This I believe was a silent goal for Opensolaris and it
seems as if this goal isn't present anymore with Oracle.
2) A new community distro hopefully will pick up where Opensolaris left
off, meaning I can just change my publisher and update my current b134
dev distro.
3) I'd like to see the new community distro mirror as closely the
current Opensolaris distro, almost a clone, with the exceptions at start
the closed binaries required.
4) I'd like to see it being easier to contribute new code, as an example
would be "star". This should be part of the community build, and the
final decision to include new contributed code should be the OGB or if
their dissolved what ever their called afterwards.
5) I'd like to see if Oracle can grant a name as "Community Opensolaris"
or "Community Solaris", basically a name that will include the word
"Solaris", as long as it's preceded by an approved word and "Solaris"
has a small "tm" (trademark) or "r" (registered) next to it. I'm not
sure which one is appropriated but I'm sure it's one of them. I don't
think this will go to far, but it would be a good gesture from Oracle.
6) It would be nice for the community to post it's goals. This would
help any volunteer coders to move in a forward direction.
7) It would be nice for the community to post tasks. This would be very
helpful for non-coders to volunteer time.
This is just my start, maybe others can add to it, or disagree with what
I said, after all, this is a discussion.
Paul
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