subject:"\[osol\-discuss\] So who is ready to be let down\?"

> From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris-
> discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Gary
> 
> "little things like FreeBSD"
> 
> You continue to make exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims such as
> "it's free open source so you can't expect it to be supported or
> perfect."  All the while, Apache, Sendmail, Postfix, Squid, Nagios,

Nothing is perfect.  You can't expect anything free or commercial to be
perfect.  But if you have a support contract and something goes wrong, you
can demand that they address your issue.  Unlike a free product ... If
something goes wrong, you have to dig into it yourself, and if you manage to
find the cause of the problem, you can't demand anybody to fix it for you.
You just hope they will, when and if they feel like it.

That's the point of a commercial support contract.

To be supported is the opposite of being free.  They're mutually exclusive.


> Now you go on to yet again disparage FreeBSD.  

I don't disparage FreeBSD.  I love FreeBSD.  I said Netapp would not pursue
lawsuit against "little things like FreeBSD" because they are little
compared to Sun, Oracle, or Apple, as far as lawsuit target is concerned.
Netapp would not bother suing them, because it would not be worth the legal
fees.  

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

> From: Joerg Schilling [mailto:joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de]
> 
> Are you sure that MS solved the problem of finding the most recent
> superblock
> in a COW filesystem and are you sure that MS solved how to make "cheap"
> snapshots? 

I didn't say anything about MS finding the most recent superblock.  I don't
even know if MS has any such concept in NTFS.

I do know they can make "cheap" snapshots via VSS.  It's only available in
Servers, not desktops.  When I build a Windows fileserver, I enable
snapshots, taken regularly, and the behavior and end result is almost
identical to ZFS and Netapp snapshots.  The scheduled "snapshot" command
completes essentially instantly, and then a read-only copy of everything
from that moment of time is available for browsing and restore.

There is a difference in how you access it ... In Netapp and ZFS, you browse
to a special directory.  In windows, you right-click something and go to
"previous versions."  

There is also a difference in how old snapshots are handled.  In netapp and
ZFS, snapshots stay until they're deleted by automated scripts or admin
intervention.  If the disk fills up, the disk fills up.  In MS, the oldest
snapshot is automatically deleted when the disk fills up, so there's never a
need to automatically or manually delete snapshots.  You just leave
snapshots laying around forever.  


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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-05 Thread Alan Coopersmith

joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de wrote:
> "W. Wayne Liauh"  wrote:
>> Actually in the US, you can file a re-examination request with the Patent 
>> Office to invalidate an issued patent.  NetApp's COW patent, USP 5,818,292, 
>> was subsequently rejected as invalid in light of "newly discovered prior 
>> art" by the US Patent and Trademark Office during a re-examination 
>> proceeding initiated by Sun.  NetApp is appealing the decision.
> 
> Do you have a reference on what you claim?

http://blogs.sun.com/dillon/entry/one_more_thing

http://w2.eff.org/patent/wp.php discusses the re-examination process as well.

-- 
-Alan Coopersmith-alan.coopersm...@oracle.com
 Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-05 Thread W. Wayne Liauh

> "W. Wayne Liauh"  wrote:
> 
> > > BTW: The problem with the US law system is that
> you
> > > cannot cancel a patent 
> > > separately. This needs to be done during the main
> > > hearing of the trial.
> > > 
> > > Jörg
> > > 
> >
> >
> > Actually in the US, you can file a re-examination
> request with the Patent Office to invalidate an
> issued patent.  NetApp's COW patent, USP 5,818,292,
> was subsequently rejected as invalid in light of
> "newly discovered prior art" by the US Patent and
> Trademark Office during a re-examination proceeding
> initiated by Sun.  NetApp is appealing the decision.
> 
> I had a long phone call with the Sun lawyer when
> Netapp started the 
> case. This person told me that there is no such way.
> 
> Note that USP 5,818,292 is a patent for a band gap
> reference circuit.
> 
> Do you have a reference on what you claim?
> 
> Jörg
> 

Oops, the number of Netapp's COW patent should be 5,819,292 (just in case I 
messed up again, I am pointing to a copy of this patent in its entirety: 

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT5819292

I don''t have the info at hand, but if anyone can find the control number of 
this re-examination proceeding, we can read the entire file history from 
USPTO's web site:

http://tinyurl.com/usp292

Thanks for pointing out my error.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

"W. Wayne Liauh"  wrote:

> > BTW: The problem with the US law system is that you
> > cannot cancel a patent 
> > separately. This needs to be done during the main
> > hearing of the trial.
> > 
> > Jörg
> > 
>
>
> Actually in the US, you can file a re-examination request with the Patent 
> Office to invalidate an issued patent.  NetApp's COW patent, USP 5,818,292, 
> was subsequently rejected as invalid in light of "newly discovered prior art" 
> by the US Patent and Trademark Office during a re-examination proceeding 
> initiated by Sun.  NetApp is appealing the decision.

I had a long phone call with the Sun lawyer when Netapp started the 
case. This person told me that there is no such way.

Note that USP 5,818,292 is a patent for a band gap reference circuit.

Do you have a reference on what you claim?

Jörg

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-05 Thread W. Wayne Liauh

> BTW: The problem with the US law system is that you
> cannot cancel a patent 
> separately. This needs to be done during the main
> hearing of the trial.
> 
> Jörg
> 


Actually in the US, you can file a re-examination request with the Patent 
Office to invalidate an issued patent.  NetApp's COW patent, USP 5,818,292, was 
subsequently rejected as invalid in light of "newly discovered prior art" by 
the US Patent and Trademark Office during a re-examination proceeding initiated 
by Sun.  NetApp is appealing the decision.

In retrospect--keeping in mind that hindsight is always 20/20--Mike probably 
should have cleared the minefield by preemptively invalidating the '292 patent 
before Sun loaded its propaganda machines with ZFS.  A law suit is always a law 
suit no matter how pathetic it is.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-05 Thread Ken Gunderson

I'll just weigh in here with my $0.02 as well and point out that per recent 
Netcraft survey 3 out of 4 of the top most reliable web hosts are running 
FreeBSD.  As is apache.org.  Not S10 or OpenSolaris.  Wonder why that might be? 
 It's not availability of paid support model that enterprises shell out the 
bucks for - like these hosting firms they've in house sysadmins/engineers for 
that.  What commercial enterprises want/need is indemnity.  Sadly, what Oracle 
seems to be targeting is high priced fees for the former.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-05 Thread Gary

"little things like FreeBSD"

You continue to make exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims such as "it's free 
open source so you can't expect it to be supported or perfect."  All the while, 
Apache, Sendmail, Postfix, Squid, Nagios, Procmail, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, 
Cactus, Dovecot, Roundcube, PostgresSQL, X Window system, gcc, Mozilla, the 
GIMP, EMACS, nginx, Perl, Python, Ruby, MySQL, innoDB, Xen, PHP, Joomla, 
Drupal, Tcl, are all open source projects and I think each of which would 
discredit your words.

Now you go on to yet again disparage FreeBSD.  Unless you live under a rock, 
then I suppose companies like Apple, Juniper, NetApp, Yahoo, netcraft.com, 
nyi.net, datapipe.net, Coyote Point, Blue Coat, are nonexistent entities to 
you, although they use FreeBSD.  This hardly makes FreeBSD a "little thing," 
and those companies, besides using the operating system also contribute to 
FreeBSD.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

Edward Ned Harvey  wrote:

> > From: Joerg Schilling [mailto:joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de]
> > 
> > If netapp has a chance to win this case, then this can only happen in a
> > non-cilized country. The "patents" netapp is claiming are just
> > duplicates of
> > prior art in my Dimploma thesis on a COW filesystem that I published in
> > May 1991.
> > 
> > Netapp definitely does not own new ideas for COW filesystems
> > so why care about this lawsuit?
>
> I agree.  Why have a lawsuit against oracle for COW, when MS does it inside
> of VSS, and no lawsuit agianst MS?  Not to mention, IMHO, patenting COW is
> like patenting the number 3.  It's not an invention; it's a mathematical and
> logical requirement to connect 2 and 4.  You want snapshots?  You must not
> overwrite the old data.  But it's yet to be decided in court, and sometimes
> courts do make decisions that I think are stupid.  (Suing McDonalds because
> the coffee was hot.)

Are you sure that MS solved the problem of finding the most recent superblock
in a COW filesystem and are you sure that MS solved how to make "cheap" 
snapshots? This is what Netapp claims to be their patent and this has been 
solved by me 20 years ago.

BTW: The problem with the US law system is that you cannot cancel a patent 
separately. This needs to be done during the main hearing of the trial.

Jörg

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

> From: Joerg Schilling [mailto:joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de]
> 
> If netapp has a chance to win this case, then this can only happen in a
> non-cilized country. The "patents" netapp is claiming are just
> duplicates of
> prior art in my Dimploma thesis on a COW filesystem that I published in
> May 1991.
> 
> Netapp definitely does not own new ideas for COW filesystems
> so why care about this lawsuit?

I agree.  Why have a lawsuit against oracle for COW, when MS does it inside
of VSS, and no lawsuit agianst MS?  Not to mention, IMHO, patenting COW is
like patenting the number 3.  It's not an invention; it's a mathematical and
logical requirement to connect 2 and 4.  You want snapshots?  You must not
overwrite the old data.  But it's yet to be decided in court, and sometimes
courts do make decisions that I think are stupid.  (Suing McDonalds because
the coffee was hot.)

IMHO, I think Oracle benefits by keeping the lawsuit open.  It effectively
gives them commercial monopoly on ZFS, while other commercial companies
(like Apple) won't touch it.  The only non-oracle entities willing to
distribute ZFS right now are little things like FreeBSD, which have no
assets of interest to Netapp.

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-05 Thread Brandon Hume

On Mon, 2010-07-05 at 11:03 -0400, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

> I will suggest using "osol" to refer to opensolaris, and "sol10" to
> refer to solaris 10, and "OS" to refer to an Operating System. 

This also lends us the advantage of being able to use phrases like:
"Osol no longer needs the weirding module!" and so on.  No other OS can
offer such a feature.

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

Edward Ned Harvey  wrote:

> And I think radio silence while preparing Sol11 or whatever is totally
> appropriate.  Especially given the fact that netapp's copy-on-write lawsuit
> still is not closed.  And BTRFS still doesn't exist.  And ZFS for Linux is
> still unusable for production.

If netapp has a chance to win this case, then this can only happen in a 
non-cilized country. The "patents" netapp is claiming are just duplicates of 
prior art in my Dimploma thesis on a COW filesystem that I published in 
May 1991.

Netapp definitely does not own new ideas for COW filesystems
so why care about this lawsuit?

Jörg

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

"Richard L. Hamilton"  wrote:

> Some Solaris/OpenSolaris drivers were ported from *BSD originals.
> And not only ZFS, but DTrace have been ported to one or more *BSDs
> and derivatives.
>
> The license compatibility (in both directions) certainly helps.  But lest
> folks that prefer GPL view that as some vast conspiracy, remember
> that the *BSDs and Solaris have common ancestors, whereas Linux
> was intended from the beginning to be a completely independent
> implementation with similar functionality.  So porting a driver from
> a *BSD to Solaris might well be easier than from Linux to Solaris (or vice 
> versa),
> even if the licenses weren't an issue.

There are less license issues with Solaris vs. Linux than people may believe.

I am currently writing a book review on the book "Die GPL kommentiert und 
erklärt"
The book was written by:

Till Jäger / Olaf Koglin / Till Kreutzer / Axel Metzger / Carsten Schulz

these are the lawyers that did manage the GPL court cases for Harald Welte 
the founder of gplviolations.org.

These people are definitely not being expected to be hostile against the FSF 
and they clearly explain on page 70 of their book in 
http://www.oreilly.de/german/freebooks/gplger/pdf/025-168.pdf
why the filesystem AFS is no problem in the linux kernel. All arguments they
use also apply to ZFS..so why should there be a problem with ZFS or DTrace 
in the Linux kernel?

See my (currently incomplete) book review on:

http://www.osscc.net/de/gplger.html

BTW: While writing articles on license compatibility on http://osscc.net
I found that non of the claims seen on the FSF websites are confirmed by 
provable legal facts. On the other side, all lawyers that confirm their
statemens by proovable legal facts are claiming that there is no problem
unless you _directly_ mix CDDL anf GPL code sniplets inside a single work.

Jörg

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

> From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris-
> discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Ken Gunderson
> 
> Like you, however, I'd considered possibility of using OS for some of

I'm going to suggest dropping the term "OS" to refer to opensolaris.
Because "OS" is already a term which means "Operating System."  And
opensolaris is an Operating System.  This is ambiguous, and confusing in
context.

I will suggest using "osol" to refer to opensolaris, and "sol10" to refer to
solaris 10, and "OS" to refer to an Operating System.

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

Alan Coopersmith  wrote:

> If the community had ever taken a bigger role in the production of the distro
> you might have a stronger argument that it's an open source communtiy project,
> but the bulk of the work on it was always done by Sun employees.

This is not a result of the missing will in the community but a result of the 
missing wil from Sun in the past.

Jörg

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-04 Thread Ian Collins


On 07/ 5/10 02:36 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

From: Ian Collins [mailto:i...@ianshome.com]
 
 

No.  Trolls encourage FUD.

   

An information vacuum encourages FUD.
 

If that's true, please define what you're afraid of.

   

I think Ken Gunderson's later post on this thread sums up my concerns.

--
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-04 Thread Marion Hakanson

kgund...@teamcool.net said:
>   Support being effectively unaccessible on non Sun
> branded hardware,
> ...

I don't understand why people are saying this.  As I have mentioned
before, we have a Dell system running Solaris-10 which is covered under
an Oracle Premium Support for Operating Systems contract (just purchased
the contract in June).


> ..., coupled with ensuing exorbitant support fees even if you were
> running on Sun branded hardware, have made S10 irrelevant to this market. The
> path Sun had previously tried to encourage from OS to S10 and support for
> those who needed it have been priced out of reach for all but those
> enterprises with the deepest of pockets.
> ...

This also does not match our experience.  Naturally, "exorbitant" is
relative to one's own cash flow, but really, the prices are not horrible,
and we are in the non-profit/education end of the market.  The current
"Premium" support prices are either the same as, or significantly lower
than, the Gold- or Silver-level contracts were under Sun.  On most of our
systems the Oracle support prices are much lower than they were before.

Don't get me wrong:  We are paying more than we used to, because we used
to rely on free security updates for less-than-critical systems.  And we
will likely cut back on our use of Solaris on these lower-end services
(nameservers, mail servers, and the like), and focus its use where ZFS
and zones are valuable.  But Solaris is not irrelevant and need not
disappear altogether from our operation.

And if Oracle does not come up with a hardware pricing scheme similar to
Sun's Education Essentials program, we may have bought our last piece of
Sun/Oracle hardware.  We see the x64 lineup currently as being cheaper
than HP, but more expensive than Dell.

Regards,

Marion


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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-04 Thread Ken Gunderson

Very well said.  All the smb's we were promoting S10 to went back to MS 
following the takeover. Support being effectively unaccessible on non Sun 
branded hardware, license changes, security updates no longer being freely 
available, coupled with ensuing exorbitant support fees even if you were 
running on Sun branded hardware, have made S10 irrelevant to this market. The 
path Sun had previously tried to encourage from OS to S10 and support for those 
who needed it have been priced out of reach for all but those enterprises with 
the deepest of pockets.  So I no longer care a wit about S10, nor by extension 
"Oracle Solaris Next", wh/I expect to be similarly out of reach.  Larry's 
targeting the top %5.  We're not that market.   So let's just drop the pretense 
that we are and promoting the commercial stuff. 

Like you, however, I'd considered possibility of using OS for some of these 
services, behind well configured firewalls.  But even now that possibility 
seems to be fading into the sunset.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-04 Thread Edward Ned Harvey

> From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris-
> discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Richard L. Hamilton
> 
> Simply stating that either there will be another
> OpenSolaris distro release 
>  or there won't be one,

They already did that.  They said they planned it for Q2 of this year.
They're behind schedule.  That is all.

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-04 Thread Richard L. Hamilton

Simply stating that either there will be another
OpenSolaris distro release (delayed for an
unspecified time, obviously) or there won't be one,
(and that repository updates will or won't eventually
resume) should not endanger anything and would be morally
the right thing to do as well as reducing the
alienation of present paying customers, future
potential paying customers, 3rd party developers, and
contributors.

It isn't necessary to explain at this time what the reason
for the delay is.  It isn't even necessary to offer any new
timeline yet.

If that's too much to ask, then this universe is broken and
I want to start over!
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-04 Thread Edward Ned Harvey

> From: Ian Collins [mailto:i...@ianshome.com]
> >>
> > No.  Trolls encourage FUD.
> >
> An information vacuum encourages FUD.

If that's true, please define what you're afraid of.

I know I said this before, but maybe you don't believe it?  :

The worst case scenario is Oracle decided to terminate all development of
opensolaris.  In which case, you're still able to use what you've already
got, but during the next 1-2 years you have plenty of time to figure out
what you're going to use next.  

And I think we'll all agree that the above possibility, while possible, is
pretty darn unlikely.

I know I said this before:

Oracle made statements that their emphasis is on commercialization of
solaris, not opensolaris.  If I were in charge there, I would take this as
an opportunity to finally port all the osol developments into solaris now.
Prove the dedication to solaris by releasing Solaris Next, or 11, or
whatever they want to call it.  One really simple point for emphasis ... ZFS
is certainly a huge part of the attraction for solaris/opensolaris right
now.  But a fully patched sol10 can only reach zpool 15, while the ability
to remove a log device (zpool 19) is a pretty huge important reliability
feature.

Linux cannot do any of this stuff anytime soon.  Release Sol Next.  Make
money while you still have that opportunity.

I would close (or shrink) the technology gap between the commercial product
and the open source development product.

And I think radio silence while preparing Sol11 or whatever is totally
appropriate.  Especially given the fact that netapp's copy-on-write lawsuit
still is not closed.  And BTRFS still doesn't exist.  And ZFS for Linux is
still unusable for production.


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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-04 Thread Brandon Hume

> I know for several months, I have recommended the
> latest developer build of osol, as long as you're not using it in production.
>  But if you *are* using it in production, I recommend paying for sol10.
>  (Better yet, sun hardware ith sol10.)

I do wish people would remember that there's a spectrum in between "top tier 
support" and "no support at all".

I have Sun gear running Solaris with Oracle databases on them.  I want, and 
have, full support contracts on that gear.  It only makes sense.

However, before the full Oracle takeover, I was deploying Solaris onto the 
minor stuff... my mail hubs, for example, or the low-end web servers.  I 
certainly hope I wouldn't need to explain to anyone on this list why Solaris 
would be the bee's knees for these tasks.  It helps me maintain some 
homogeneity of environment, and more importantly it gives my coworkers a place 
where they can practice, a place where it's reasonably important that they 
watch what they do, but crashing the mail server isn't quite the same disaster 
as wiping out the payroll database server.

I DON'T need full Oracle support on those machines.  Because they're 
net-facing, I DO need updates.  I can't justify $1k per year per machine 
(Oracle's quoted price) for access to security patches... my managers will - 
and have - told me to just go with Windows 2008R2, which costs us ~$500 
one-time charge with OS updates for free for the rest of the serviceable 
lifetime of the product, or my coworkers tell me to switch to Redhat Linux, for 
half that again.

So Oracle has priced itself out of the small/medium internet services market.  
I can cope with that; that market is what OpenSolaris is for.  However, before 
I can start deploying OSol, I need *proof* that it's going to continue.

It's important to remember that - from a certain point of view - Oracle has 
NEVER put out an OpenSolaris release.  Have they said they plan to?  Yes, in 
uncertain terms.  Have others said they're going to?  Yes, in uncertain, "I 
can't speak authoritatively for Oracle" terms.  I've seen the words "have 
faith" thrown around, which is completely ridiculous... nobody makes business 
decisions based on "faith" except a church.

So I need concrete proof of a future OpenSolaris release, and I need it in the 
form of a binary release, even to /dev.  My coworkers are by no means dummies, 
but expecting them to build the distribution from source is unreasonable, not 
the least of which because it's a messy, convoluted process.  They've got 
things that need to be done, and they can flatten and rebuild using Linux (or 
Win2008) in less time. 

And to explain why that's a bad thing: once that happens, not only do I lose a 
*Solaris server, *they* lose a reason to learn Solaris at all.  And why is that 
bad?  Because when it comes time to refresh our database kit, my 
very-upper-management - who is already very pro-Microsoft as it is - is going 
to look at the fact that they have ONE Solaris expert, a bunch of Linux 
experts, a bunch of Windows experts, weigh the balances, and switch us over to 
SQL Server.

I'm not speaking from FUD here... this is *exactly* the same circumstances that 
caused my organization to kick IBM to the curb and switch us to Sun kit eight 
years ago.

But Oracle has one advantage IBM doesn't; a very-near-free version of their 
enterprise OS.  *All* I need to stave off the switch is a binary OpenSolaris 
release.  It doesn't even need to be a *good* release.  It can be buggy as 
hell; I simply won't upgrade to it.  But it will be a tactile, 
hold-it-in-your-hands proof of Oracle's commitment.  I don't need / repo 
updated, I need /dev updated.

To stave off a depressing series of events, I need to deploy a small, 
unimportant server using OSol, *without* my manager and coworkers looking at me 
as if I've just suggested deploying a server running BeOS.

I haven't ranted about this here before, because I *know* this list is filled 
with engineers who can't make the release happen, who can't adjust Oracle's 
marketing efforts.  I've been enjoying the fruits of their labours for a long 
time now, and I definitely don't want to increase their frustration.  But I've 
seen multiple people present three options: build OSol from source; run "old" 
OSol; buy a full Solaris support contract.  In my environment, none of those is 
particularly viable.  "Have faith" isn't a choice at all.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-04 Thread ken mays



--- On Sat, 7/3/10, Giovanni Tirloni  wrote in responded 
to a quote below:

> > You also have the legacy distros to review and learn
> > from:
> > http://www.genunix.org/dist/
> 
> 
> Are you saying the goal from the beginning was to encourage
> people to split their efforts ? In open source you usually
> don't care too much about wasted efforts when you've got
> lots of people working on everything. That doesn't seem to
> be the case for OpenSolaris so actually concentrating
> efforts would make more sense.
> 
> There is an OpenSolaris distribution (Indiana) and people
> should be encouraged to dedicate their time to make it
> better. Why can't they ?
 

Some good points. I'm not a spokeperson for Oracle, so take my answers for the 
coin throws they are worth. Let me toss this one out there for you:

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpj0t2ozPWY

1. Oracle has provided roadmaps and briefings on Sun products and migrations 
within Oracle's product umbrella. They have posted slides, publically, on their 
website. Also, a bunch of info is getting tossed into the OTN as well. Timeline 
specifics relating to 'Solaris Next Dev' is not
publically documented enough to warrant a true datestamp by anyone due to the 
feature set of 'Solaris Next Dev' not being truely defined, speculated, and/or 
approved for submittal to the general audience.

2. Split efforts is a community function and option. Contributions come in many 
forms (which some engineers fail to understand) whether it is basic feedback, 
bug reporting, code submittals, code review, or just friendly advice. It is not 
always about producing and submitting code (some good, some bad). Good 
documentation and technical support is worth its weight in gold for many 
software projects. Even financial funding is sometimes overlooked. Depends on 
how you look at the subject on contributing (kinda understanding a janitor is 
just as valuable as the office manager theorem).
As for OpenSolaris, remember that at an earlier time this was called Solaris 
Express - which was closed source. How did users/developers contribute 'source 
code' back then? The forums help unify people and
people are free to unify and work on projects together. That is an option
that I'm not against or opposed to (seems silly if "I" did). Also, remember 
that OpenSolaris binary releases are always considered ALPHA/BETA
engineering snapshots - not produced for data center "production-based" 
migrations or deployments. Solaris Express had a similar 'bail out' disclaimer 
in case finger pointing arose. 

As for splitting work, the final 'Solaris Next Dev' product may or may not 
consist of everything worked on. A lot of the work was engineering concepts for 
people would LIKE to see. This is the true 'whiteboard' and final roadmap we 
haven't seen yet within the general public yet. Same thing happened with during 
Solaris 2.5/6/7/8/9/10 versus Solaris Express/Next. Nothing has changed in how 
Solaris product releases were handled other than us peeking at source code and 
being more involved in engineering projects and conceptualization (or advisory 
boards).

3. Oracle Account or Business Relationship management. These people have the 
responsibility to make sure you (aka the company your work or own) are happy 
'somewhat' in your concerns with services or products provided by their company 
(aka Oracle). Make full use of them - if your company has support contracts in 
place.

What you received as a Live CD was part of a project to release a core binary 
distro (aka Indiana). Third-party developers took parts from the code available 
and worked on their own distro from the existing or  modified package set (IPS 
or otherwise). So, some people are 'rolling their own' which the comment is not 
meant for most sys admins and intermediate users. As for innovation, that can 
be what you do with what you got - not if the code is open or closed.

Many projects have rules of if the code doesn't fall in line with what they 
want then they can reject it. That is not Oracle specific. As for companies 
running off and making commercial competitive products, are we
talking on the OS product level (like CentOS versus RHEL or Ubuntu versus 
Debian) or application/appliance? I haven't seen any journalistic documentation 
or periodicals on that subject yet (i.e. OSOL 2009.06/DEV (Solaris Next Dev) 
versus competitor's OpenSolaris-based distro). At least not where I've 
witnessed a OpenSolaris-based competitor having a winning hand over Oracle/Sun 
in some review. Send me the link if its out there.

I pointed out the Paul Masson commercial when Orson Welles would quote and say 
"we will sell no wine before its time". I'd think this is what many 
'engineering employees' are trying to tell the general public is the generic 
umbrella mandate and NDA scrutiny of Oracle - in relation to Solaris Next Dev. 
As for OpenSolaris updated binary distros, there was some
commentary awhile ago that energies are focused

Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-04 Thread Richard L. Hamilton

> fwiw-- 8.1RC2 is at ZFS v14 as well.   I think 8.0
> was at 13.  
> 
> It's not ZFS per se that I'm hesitant to trust but
> rather FreeBSD's implementation.  Nothing against the
> FBSD developers. Just best to be conservative in the
> test of time department when it comes to production
> systems and "new features" ;)
> 
> And no, not too far off topic.  Good to see that Sun
> engineers aren't too "inbred" and keeping abreast.
> FreeBSD gets a LOT of stuff right and has done
> amazing progress as a true open source project.  I
>  think Open Solaris could learn from it.

Some Solaris/OpenSolaris drivers were ported from *BSD originals.
And not only ZFS, but DTrace have been ported to one or more *BSDs
and derivatives.

The license compatibility (in both directions) certainly helps.  But lest
folks that prefer GPL view that as some vast conspiracy, remember
that the *BSDs and Solaris have common ancestors, whereas Linux
was intended from the beginning to be a completely independent
implementation with similar functionality.  So porting a driver from
a *BSD to Solaris might well be easier than from Linux to Solaris (or vice 
versa),
even if the licenses weren't an issue.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread W. Wayne Liauh

> > Thanks. Oracle also provides a VirtualBox Solaris
> 10
> > 10/09 Appliance Image in Open Virtual Format
> (OVF):
> > 
> >
> https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-
> 
> >
> CDS_SMI-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?Produ
> 
> > ctref=virtualbox-s10u8-x86-...@cds-cds_smi
> > 
> > This is a standard default installation of the
> > Solaris 10 10/09 Operating system, which means
> that
> > it only has the posix-C local installed. To show,
> > say, Chinese characters, the user must
> subsequently
> > install appropriate locale(s). I forgot how to do
> > that, but if I was able to do it, then it should
> not
> > be very difficult.
> 
> There appear to be a lot of interests in trying to at
> least become familiar with the Solaris proper.  I
> apologize that I am unable to individually respond to
> those of you who have requested for more info.
>  However, I have:
> 
> (1)  attached a script file to install Oracle
> VirtualBox 3.2.6 into Ubuntu Lucid (Windows users can
> simply run the installation binary); and
> 
> (2)  provided a set of screenshots to illustrate how
> to install (more specifically, "import") the
> Solaris_10_u8 OVF provided by Oracle:
> 
> http://picasaweb.google.com/107164603204036199351/Sola
> risInVBox#
> 
> Pictures 1 through 7 show the main steps of creating
> a blank vdi disk image (similar to preparing a hard
> disk).  Pictures 8 through 14 illustrate the main
> steps of importing the OVF into this disk image.  The
> rest are screenshots of running the Solaris 10
> virtual machine.
> 
> I plan to provide a more detailed HOWTO after Solaris
> 10 update 9 comes out.
> 
> BTW, to run the installation script, you must first
> make it executable by executing the following
> command:
> 
> chmod +x virtualbox.sh
> 
> then proceed with running the script.  I am sure
> everyone is aware of this, but just in case. . .

I have installed OpenOffice.org 3.2 in this Solaris10u8 vdi (plse see the 
attached screenshot).  Previously I had a lot of trouble installing it in 
OpenSolaris, but this time around, the process seems to be straightforward.

Even without the inclusion of OO.o 3.2 and Firefox 3.6.6, Solaris 10, which has 
built-in Firefox 2 and StarOffice 8, can serve as a pretty solid desktop OS for 
business users.  Of course, performance-wise, OpenSolaris--and more 
particularly any of the well-known Linux distros--will be a better choice, but 
the Solaris proper has its unique appeals, for use as a business desktop OS.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

Alan, first of all my sincere apologies if it came across as though I was not 
appreciative of your contributions as a long standing community member.  Such 
is not the case. 

Also, like I said, nor was I trying to put words in your mouth.  I'd just never 
before heard OpenSolaris referenced as a commercial product, and given events 
of past few months, none of which have worked out too well for us outside of 
Oracle, I've more or less come to expect the worst.  In so doing I was perhaps 
insensitive that my comments may have been interpreted as putting you in any 
kind of difficult position.  So once again, please accept my apologies.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

fwiw-- 8.1RC2 is at ZFS v14 as well.   And it's not ZFS per se that I'm 
hesitant to trust but rather FreeBSD's implementation.  Nothing against the 
FBSD developers. Just best to be conservative in the test of time department 
when it comes to production systems and "new features" ;)
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread Giovanni Tirloni

> IPS decommissioning? No. You should read Dave Miner's
> blog on how to 'roll-your-own' OpenSolaris distro:
> 
> http://blogs.sun.com/dminer/entry/constructing_an_open
> solaris_distro
> 
> You also have the legacy distros to review and learn
> from:
> http://www.genunix.org/dist/
> 
> So, its like wanting good applesauce but not willing
> to peel any apples. We have the kernel as well as
> many of the packages available to us. We also have
> many toolsets and Live CDs from several distribution
> providers.

Warning: This is long. Feel free to ignore it if your time is short.

Are you saying the goal from the beginning was to encourage people to split 
their efforts ? In open source you usually don't care too much about wasted 
efforts when you've got lots of people working on everything. That doesn't seem 
to be the case for OpenSolaris so actually concentrating efforts would make 
more sense.

There is an OpenSolaris distribution (Indiana) and people should be encouraged 
to dedicate their time to make it better. Why can't they ? As others have 
pointed out, Indiana seems to be the base for Solaris Next and Oracle can't 
risk 3rd-parties meddling with their commercial project which, in my book, is 
totally correct. Now, should it really be a copy&paste to Solaris Next ? Where 
are you encouraging innovation with that ?

What happens today is that independent individuals are not actively working on 
any distribution of considerable size. They are also not contributing back to 
Indiana because emails about it have gone unanswered for quite some time. 
People have demonstrated repeatedly they would dedicate time to projects if 
they felt it would make a difference, get accepted, whatever. Right now they 
risk getting a "thanks, but no thanks" if their contribution is not aligned to 
Oracle's roadmap. And what roadmap is that exactly ? No one outside Oracle 
knows as there has not been any communication regarding Oracle's vision for 
OpenSolaris.

At the same time Oracle is shooting itself in the foot by allowing 3rd-party 
companies to take the OpenSolaris.org code, create commercial products on top 
of it (which directly compete its products) and barely contribute as much code 
as they could given all the paid engineers working for them. Why should they 
care though ? The project is engineered to encourage that anomaly. Now that's 
an argument against having open sourced it, isn't it ? It sure is, but open 
source is not to blame. Poor execution is. Whoever had the "vision" that Linux 
is so great because it has 10k different distributions was not in his right 
mind.

There was another email saying that changing the OpenSolaris binary distro name 
to something else would accomplish nothing but to make it clear that it's a 
commercial product. I would say that, at this point, making things more clear 
is exactly what's lacking. It would save yet another email complaining that 
it's not open enough.

IMHO, Oracle needs to get their open source act together and remove the 
barriers which today prevent OpenSolaris from reaching out to more people (both 
in usage and contributions). If they don't want to do this, which is TOTALLY 
fine by me, at least stop working against itself and create something like a 
paid OpenSolaris consortium of some sort where companies will pay to have the 
right to modify the source in a controlled way (even bound by a multi-million 
dollar contract if you will). Or close it completely and people will compare 
Solaris/OpenSolaris to AIX/HP-UX/IRIX/zOS and not Linux/*BSD. 

I would hate to see it happening since even as a system administrator, access 
to the code sometimes works better than documentation, but I won't be a 
hypocrite to pretend that the current situation is working quite right for 
Oracle either. They have to profit from it somehow but they are only getting 
frustrated users complaining all the time. It would be better to set the 
expectations once and for all. Sorry but the couple of phrases (yeah, that 
much) about OpenSolaris future are not enough. Someone has to officially stand 
up and try his/her best to answer the questions from concerned users. Unless 
there are secret plans for an open source project.

Please note that I'm not even talking about 2010.x being delayed. This is not 
an issue for folks like me working in the datacenter. ISVs working on keeping 
applications integrated to OpenSolaris (hoping it'll be Solaris Next) or even 
desktop users, usually like to see more action in the form of roadmaps or 
updates. Are they wrong? I can't say. It's not clear they are the niche Oracle 
is aiming this whole thing at.

Last I checked this was an open source project, so be clear, set the 
expectations right and drop the bureaucracy barriers. At this point nobody 
can't stand the "Oracle doesn't say anything until it's done" or "Oracle can't 
say anything before the fiscal year is over" anymore. This works for Oracle's 
customers, not for an open source project

Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

Thanks, Ken.  The Phoronix test are what I had in mind as well.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread Alan Coopersmith

Ken Gunderson wrote:
> OpenSolaris the binary distribution is now a commercial product?  I thought 
> OpenSolaris SUPPORT was the commercial product, not the distribution itself.  
> As far as I can recall, OpenSolaris the binary distribution has always been 
> free.  Might this portend another legalese sleight of hand, a subtle change 
> in license, etc. that effectively removes OpenSolaris the binary distribution 
> from free use, as we currently enjoy it, by the general public ??
> 
> Not trying to put words in your mouth here Alan, but in absence of any clear 
> guidance from Oracle, comments like that definitely raise an eyebrow, as, 
> like many who've been around the block a time or two, personal experience 
> leads me to tend to expect the worst form Oracle the company.  The optimist 
> in me would love to be wrong about this but damn if reality doesn't continue 
> rearing it's ugly head...

I did not mean to indicate any change of policy about the cost or license
of the product, just that since it generates revenue for Oracle, even if only
indirectly via the selling of support contracts, it falls under Oracle's
policies for information about future products.   Frankly, that it's a
commercial product is pretty much true for the OpenSolaris distro since the
very first release, and is not changed.

If the community had ever taken a bigger role in the production of the distro
you might have a stronger argument that it's an open source communtiy project,
but the bulk of the work on it was always done by Sun employees.

The only change is that the company producing it has much different rules on
public discussions of future releases than the previous company.

And though I expect everyone here should already know this, just to make it
absolutely clear:

*I AM NOT AN ORACLE SPOKESMAN.   MY POSTS ARE NOT OFFICIAL STATEMENTS OF 
ORACLE.*

I am posting here as a long time community member and leader who happens to
know a bit more about what's going on with the distro than most people, since
I've been part of the team building it for the past few years.   If anyone makes
it difficult for me to post things like this, I can just stop - I'll be sad
if it comes to that, but it's not a required task for my job, and I can live
without the grief.

-- 
-Alan Coopersmith-alan.coopersm...@oracle.com
 Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

OpenSolaris the binary distribution is now a commercial product?  I thought 
OpenSolaris SUPPORT was the commercial product, not the distribution itself.  
As far as I can recall, OpenSolaris the binary distribution has always been 
free.  Might this portend another legalese sleight of hand, a subtle change in 
license, etc. that effectively removes OpenSolaris the binary distribution from 
free use, as we currently enjoy it, by the general public ??

Not trying to put words in your mouth here Alan, but in absence of any clear 
guidance from Oracle, comments like that definitely raise an eyebrow, as, like 
many who've been around the block a time or two, personal experience leads me 
to tend to expect the worst form Oracle the company.  The optimist in me would 
love to be wrong about this but damn if reality doesn't continue rearing it's 
ugly head...
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread Ian Collins


On 07/ 4/10 04:17 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris-
discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Richard L. Hamilton

But when they release documents (that had both Sun and
Oracle's name on them) saying that OpenSolaris the distro would
have an update in the 1st half of 2010, and then they don't come
through, but generally fail to explain why, that encourages FUD.
 

No.  Trolls encourage FUD.

   

An information vacuum encourages FUD.


The missed release date doesn't encourage FUD if you just relax about it,
and ask yourself why do you care so much.  Does it create any material
difference to you, affect your bank statement, impact your personal health,
if 2010.x is delayed?  For the meantime, you can continue using the
developer builds, or 2009.06, whichever you prefer.  Or sol10.
   


Yes, in my case it does.  I make most of my living developing for and 
encouraging my clients to use OpenSolaris.  The unanswered FUD is making 
this hard to do at he moment.


--
Ian.

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread Richard L. Hamilton

[...]
> They didn't just miss a release date. They ceased to
> keep stuff up to
> date at all (after 134), and then went radio-silent
> on the community.
> All we've actually heard after the missed 2010.03
> (that was the one they
> missed) is hearsay.

Careful.  You're not wrong until now, but that's exaggerating.
AFAIK the source code that you can see or fetch (but not the binary 
repositories) 
are still being updated.  And I've seen (and in one case posted a link)
something that sure looked official that had said 2010 1st half (and
apparently said that after the Oracle takeover had started).

Up to that point, and given that adjusted date, I was ok with it, because
I know there have been at least a couple times that updates were delayed,
so there have been some problems which added up in terms of schedule
slippage.  And I'm only bothered by the silence rather than the slippage
even now, because I'm reasonably sure there have been some
additional problems, about which we've heard very little, and that
the takeover itself could only have slowed things down further.

However, I would point out some candor, which while it doesn't
answer our questions, does indicate that the problem the silence
is causing is being kicked upstairs (maybe to eventually reach a level
with the authority to do something):
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/message.jspa?messageID=489221#489221

I personally commend the courage to acknowledge that there is at least on
the front lines an awareness that this situation can't continue indefinitely,
and that at least some of the developers that made a great OS what it is are 
doing what they're allowed to do to try and change the situation.

One doesn't need to give away commercial secrets, or  tell schedules
that one is afraid might set unreasonable expectations, to be honest
with people when previous statements are no longer accurate.

> > Are you scared that osol will cease to exist?
>  That's not possible.
> No, I think he, and the rest of the community, is
> scared that what's
> there now will become stagnant, unmaintained, and
> largely irrelevant.
> New security issues pop up for ALL systems sooner or
> later, and having
> an OS that is unmaintained is not recommended for
> peaceful sleeping.

Again, the source is being maintained, bugs are being fixed, etc.

However, people that are using OpenSolaris the distro rather than
building their own distro and constantly integrating the bug fixes
will no doubt be dealing with unpatched bugs if the binary distro
is not being maintained also.  So...since I don't personally have the
extra systems (both SPARC and x86) with enough RAM to roll my own,
I wouldn't say scared, esp. since security has more than one level to it
(for example, a separate firewall as well as a reliable and  reasonably
secure OS).  But I would certainly say concerned, and more so as
uncertainty is prolonged.  Hypothetically, if there's neither update
nor information in some period of time, I'd switch to the latest update
of Solaris  10, even if that lost me some features I wanted to use, and
then (not being able to afford a maintenance contract for home use
given what the present terms on those seem to be) simply upgrade to
each new Solaris 10 update (and Solaris Next when it becomes available)
after they'd each had a month or so of settling time.

But since for home use, OpenSolaris (the distro) is stable enough, and
much closer to what the developers are running that even if I can't
build the whole OS, I can probably tinker with pieces of something
where I might want to make contributions if I have the time, I would
much rather be running that than even the latest update of Solaris 10.

Of course, that gets less true the further out of date what I'm running becomes.

> > Are you scared that oracle will cease development
> efforts on osol?  This is
> > the worst case possible scenario.  If oracle
> suddenly fired every employee
> > who ever worked on osol, it would not make today's
> osol a bad product
> > overnight.  If you're using it, you can continue
> using it.  You will have
> > plenty of time in the next year or two, to think
> about what OS you're going
> > to use next, and gracefully switch to it, before
> any significant feature is
> > missing from osol.
> 
> They don't need to fire them. Those are brilliant
> engineers. They just
> need to place them on other projects that won't be
> leaked out of the house.
> 
> But really. What worries me, is the absolute radio
> silence, not the
> noise made by trolls. Be that trolls who talk about
> doom, or those
> trolls who promise heaven.
> 
> //Svein

Agreed, save that rather than "worries", I'd say it's
unhelpful, discourteous, disruptive of previously
reasonable plans made by others, and contributes
to an inhospitable environment for community - the
inflexible policy, not those who are put at a disadvantage
by having to carry it out to stay out of trouble.

While I may differ with you on minor points, I do appreci

Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread Svein Skogen

On 03.07.2010 18:17, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>> From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris-
>> discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Richard L. Hamilton
>>
>> But when they release documents (that had both Sun and
>> Oracle's name on them) saying that OpenSolaris the distro would
>> have an update in the 1st half of 2010, and then they don't come
>> through, but generally fail to explain why, that encourages FUD.
> 
> No.  Trolls encourage FUD.  

Wrong. Lack of actual reliable information encourage FUD. Trolls add
downright lies, or in some cases "wishful thinking".

> The missed release date doesn't encourage FUD if you just relax about it,
> and ask yourself why do you care so much.  Does it create any material
> difference to you, affect your bank statement, impact your personal health,
> if 2010.x is delayed?  For the meantime, you can continue using the
> developer builds, or 2009.06, whichever you prefer.  Or sol10.

They didn't just miss a release date. They ceased to keep stuff up to
date at all (after 134), and then went radio-silent on the community.
All we've actually heard after the missed 2010.03 (that was the one they
missed) is hearsay.

> Are you scared that osol will cease to exist?  That's not possible.

No, I think he, and the rest of the community, is scared that what's
there now will become stagnant, unmaintained, and largely irrelevant.
New security issues pop up for ALL systems sooner or later, and having
an OS that is unmaintained is not recommended for peaceful sleeping.

> Are you scared that oracle will cease development efforts on osol?  This is
> the worst case possible scenario.  If oracle suddenly fired every employee
> who ever worked on osol, it would not make today's osol a bad product
> overnight.  If you're using it, you can continue using it.  You will have
> plenty of time in the next year or two, to think about what OS you're going
> to use next, and gracefully switch to it, before any significant feature is
> missing from osol.

They don't need to fire them. Those are brilliant engineers. They just
need to place them on other projects that won't be leaked out of the house.

But really. What worries me, is the absolute radio silence, not the
noise made by trolls. Be that trolls who talk about doom, or those
trolls who promise heaven.

//Svein

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread Richard L. Hamilton

> > From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org
> [mailto:opensolaris-
> > discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of
> Richard L. Hamilton
> > 
> > But when they release documents (that had both Sun
> and
> > Oracle's name on them) saying that OpenSolaris the
> distro would
> > have an update in the 1st half of 2010, and then
> they don't come
> > through, but generally fail to explain why, that
> encourages FUD.
> 
> No.  Trolls encourage FUD.  

Well sure.  I oversimplified, if you like. But
authoritative information, although it
won't eliminate trolls or FUD, will create a climate in
which their effects are minimized, and its absence
will at the very least do nothing to counter FUD, and
when its absence contradicts prior statements
(and thus established expectations), that's certainly
not helpful.  No, a statement in and of itself isn't
binding.  But simple courtesy, if nothing else, would
call for some explanation of what's changed if one
says one is going to do something, and then doesn't.

> The missed release date doesn't encourage FUD if you
> just relax about it,
> and ask yourself why do you care so much.  Does it
> create any material
> difference to you, affect your bank statement, impact
> your personal health,
> if 2010.x is delayed?  For the meantime, you can

No, not in my case (although arguably so in the case of some
3rd party developers), and no, in that order.

> continue using the
> developer builds, or 2009.06, whichever you prefer.
>  Or sol10.
> Are you scared that osol will cease to exist?  That's
> not possible.

Bits don't vanish off my disks, esp. if I have backups.
I understand that.  And in any case, there are copies
of both source and binary distro stored on more than
one non-Oracle server, so I'm well aware nothing that
already exists will vanish.

> Are you scared that oracle will cease development
> efforts on osol?  This is
> the worst case possible scenario.  If oracle suddenly
> fired every employee
> who ever worked on osol, it would not make today's
> osol a bad product
> overnight.  If you're using it, you can continue
> using it.  You will have
> plenty of time in the next year or two, to think
> about what OS you're going
> to use next, and gracefully switch to it, before any
> significant feature is
> missing from osol.

No, I'm not worried at all about that either.  In fact,
I'm quite comfortable that they'll keep chugging away
on development, and keep at least as much of the source
open as is open now.

I would however very much like to know what expectations
I _should_ have, given that the ones that were previously
justifiable based on the latest then-authoritative statements
are no longer valid.

I also think it would be desirable to continue to have a
distro-like mechanism for staying close to what the developers
are running, in case one wishes to either contribute or to write
application or utility code that takes advantage of very new features.

So no, it's not a crisis to be left in limbo for awhile.  But darn if
I see that it accomplishes any good thing, and it certainly fails
to prevent bad things, and for those who thought they had a
basis for making plans, it's at least in some sense disruptive.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread Edward Ned Harvey

> From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris-
> discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Richard L. Hamilton
> 
> But when they release documents (that had both Sun and
> Oracle's name on them) saying that OpenSolaris the distro would
> have an update in the 1st half of 2010, and then they don't come
> through, but generally fail to explain why, that encourages FUD.

No.  Trolls encourage FUD.  

The missed release date doesn't encourage FUD if you just relax about it,
and ask yourself why do you care so much.  Does it create any material
difference to you, affect your bank statement, impact your personal health,
if 2010.x is delayed?  For the meantime, you can continue using the
developer builds, or 2009.06, whichever you prefer.  Or sol10.

Are you scared that osol will cease to exist?  That's not possible.

Are you scared that oracle will cease development efforts on osol?  This is
the worst case possible scenario.  If oracle suddenly fired every employee
who ever worked on osol, it would not make today's osol a bad product
overnight.  If you're using it, you can continue using it.  You will have
plenty of time in the next year or two, to think about what OS you're going
to use next, and gracefully switch to it, before any significant feature is
missing from osol.

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread Richard L. Hamilton

> > From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org
> [mailto:opensolaris-
> > discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of
> Robert Milkowski
> > 
> > Oracle didn't deliver
> > OSOL within the time frame they publicly stated and
> there is no
> > explanation or any communication about it
> whatsoever. There might be
> > valid technical issues, or maybe even business
> reasons, or strategic
> > reason... The problem is the total silence about it
> and even if for
> > some
> > reason they can't go into details 
> 
> There is no problem.  "It is not the spoon that
> bends, it is only you."
> 
> This is free software we're talking about.  If you
> want support, pay for
> solaris 10.  If you are not worried about support, it
> doesn't matter if the
> thing you're using is called "osol dev134" or "osol
> 2010.06" or any other
> name.
> 
> I know for several months, I have recommended the
> latest developer build of
> osol, as long as you're not using it in production.
>  But if you *are* using
> t in production, I recommend paying for sol10.
>  (Better yet, sun hardware
> ith sol10.)
> 
> If there is any feature or bugfix you care about,
> which is present in osol,
> and not in sol10, open a support case.  I know I
> have.  And I know they were
> very responsive and helpful for me.  In the end, the
> problem was solved
> without any patch, but getting them to release a
> patch was certainly one of
> the options on the table while the problem persisted.
> 
> I don't know or understand why so many free-users
> developed such concrete
> expectations and demands of openness and rapid
> releases cycles, or an
> expectation to stick to schedule.  Yes, some other
> OSes or products do have
> faster release cycles (or better consistency sticking
> to their stated
> schedule) but certainly not all.  I love in
> particular, the examples of
> RHEL6, because well over a year ago, I advised my
> clients we need to migrate
> from RHEL4 to RHEL5, to avoid the EOL on RHEL4.
>  RHEL6 is a commercial
> roduct with support, used in production, and osol is
> free.

Oracle can do what it wants.  I don't think anyone is questioning
that.  But when they release documents (that had both Sun and
Oracle's name on them) saying that OpenSolaris the distro would
have an update in the 1st half of 2010, and then they don't come
through, but generally fail to explain why, that encourages FUD.

>From what I recall reading, it was always consistent that there would
be at least one significant refresh of OpenSolaris the distro after 2009.06, 
i.e.
not just incremental repository updates.  What Oracle's plans might
have been after that was left open, as I recall, implying the possibility
that OpenSolaris the distro, as a means of mass alpha testing,
occasional production use by folks that feel the need to be bleeding edge,
etc, might be subject to change after that.  (I _think_ I read words that
pretty much said that, but I'm not 100% certain, so I merely say "implying".)

When SXCE was discontinued, we had a decent amount of warning,
even as to the point that downloads of the last build would only be available
for a limited time (I got mine, in both x86 and SPARC, naturally, since
I mostly prefer CDE as a desktop).

Now, we're looking at the prospect that OpenSolaris the distro, which
fills some of the same roles, although leaving out most of the proprietary
stuff that SXCE still had, is in an unknown (to most of us, anyway) status,
one that has not delivered (yet, at least) the last release that was firmly
spoken of in the timeframe that was most recently mentioned.

That, plus the alleged lack of updates to the repositories (I run
Solaris 9 or SXCE on my SPARCs, and OpenSolaris only under VirtualBox
on a Mac that has barely enough RAM for that, so I don't update often
enough to know of personal experience where the repositories are at),
has been stated, from what I've seen, to be impacting at least two
commercially supported products that would otherwise have been
made available to run on the pending OpenSolaris release.  For those who are
running OpenSolaris for more than just alpha testing and familiarization
(whether application developers or folks running on the bleeding edge),
the lack of all of repository updates, the release formerly thought of
as 2010.H1, and also any information to correct expectations given
the lack of the above, is quite disruptive.

People both inside and outside Oracle have stated that they're trying to
get the attention of higher management that the policy of silence is
counter-productive at this point.  It remains to be seen at this point
whether that message will be received.

The limbo in which OpenSolaris the _distro_ is perceived to be
right now has nothing to do with OpenSolaris the source base, to which
AFAIK publically visible updates are still being made.  And unlike the
distro, nothing I've seen suggested any future re-evaluation of that might
occur, but quite the contrary, that development of at lea

Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?


On 03/07/2010 15:25, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris-
discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Robert Milkowski

Oracle didn't deliver
OSOL within the time frame they publicly stated and there is no
explanation or any communication about it whatsoever. There might be
valid technical issues, or maybe even business reasons, or strategic
reason... The problem is the total silence about it and even if for
some
reason they can't go into details
 

There is no problem.  "It is not the spoon that bends, it is only you."

This is free software we're talking about.  If you want support, pay for
solaris 10.  If you are not worried about support, it doesn't matter if the
thing you're using is called "osol dev134" or "osol 2010.06" or any other
name.

   


Where did I write that I want a support
btw: you can get a support for stable OSOL releases and it does make 
sens in some environments.


Now, lack of new /dev build and lack of new stable osol release might 
not worry you but it does worry others. Additionally the way it is 
handled is far from being community friendly. And yes, I do expect more 
- at least the same level of dialogue and transparency as Sun did when 
it comes to OSOL.



--
Robert Milkowski
http://milek.blogspot.com

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread Edward Ned Harvey

> From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris-
> discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Robert Milkowski
> 
> Oracle didn't deliver
> OSOL within the time frame they publicly stated and there is no
> explanation or any communication about it whatsoever. There might be
> valid technical issues, or maybe even business reasons, or strategic
> reason... The problem is the total silence about it and even if for
> some
> reason they can't go into details 

There is no problem.  "It is not the spoon that bends, it is only you."

This is free software we're talking about.  If you want support, pay for
solaris 10.  If you are not worried about support, it doesn't matter if the
thing you're using is called "osol dev134" or "osol 2010.06" or any other
name.

I know for several months, I have recommended the latest developer build of
osol, as long as you're not using it in production.  But if you *are* using
it in production, I recommend paying for sol10.  (Better yet, sun hardware
with sol10.)

If there is any feature or bugfix you care about, which is present in osol,
and not in sol10, open a support case.  I know I have.  And I know they were
very responsive and helpful for me.  In the end, the problem was solved
without any patch, but getting them to release a patch was certainly one of
the options on the table while the problem persisted.

I don't know or understand why so many free-users developed such concrete
expectations and demands of openness and rapid releases cycles, or an
expectation to stick to schedule.  Yes, some other OSes or products do have
faster release cycles (or better consistency sticking to their stated
schedule) but certainly not all.  I love in particular, the examples of
RHEL6, because well over a year ago, I advised my clients we need to migrate
from RHEL4 to RHEL5, to avoid the EOL on RHEL4.  RHEL6 is a commercial
product with support, used in production, and osol is free.

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread john kroll

OK, I'm not ready to get let down but I'm still disillusioned with terminology. 
When I first heard of cloud computing it was in conjunction with Solaris open. 
Nexenta seems to have taken this kernel to a higher spot. Their public & 
private clouds have seemingly surpassed Indiana.com . But to me the 
entrepreneurship held in public cloud merely reverts back to the sponsor for 
this open hostname spot. I'm still lost with private cloud but would that be a 
ZFS open hostname repo filesystem.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-03 Thread Ken Mays

On Jul 1, 2010 5:56 PM - David Brodbeck wrote:
"Are you going to be importing any existing ZFS pools? I'm particularly curious
if there are any pitfalls there. I'm also wondering what the current state of
NFSv4 is on FreeBSD; last time I looked it wasn't production-ready yet, but
that was over a year ago, now."
>

Just a note from my end of the spectrum, I use FreeBSD 9.0-CURRENT (x86-64/
amd64, and sparc64) and just installed FreeBSD 8.2-RC2 yesterday for review.

I'm only providing this information here for fair comparison purposes and
academia:

FreeBSD 9.0 (amd64, 06/07/2010 DVD) can be obtained at:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/201006/FreeBSD-9.0-CURRENT-201006-amd64-dvd1.iso

Nvidia driver (x86_64 driver for FreeBSD 9.0):
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/FreeBSD-x86_64/195.36.24/NVIDIA-FreeBSD-x86_64-195.36.24.tar.gz

ZFS v14 is used for FreeBSD 9.0. Much like OSOL 2009.06 in that regard. You can
compare NFSv4 and ZFS from that point with OSOL 2009.06 and OSOL-DEV-134. ZFS
v24+ is not in widespread use publically or in major production so any newer
implementations of ZFS pools beyond what is on OSOL-DEV-134 should get a
cautionary sticker.

If you use FreeBSD 9.0 amd64/ZFS with the Nvidia driver, you'll get a much
different performance especially if you use the right FreeBSD 'tweaks' as
Phoronix testing is usually done 'out-of-the-box' for automation reasons.

I think we are getting away from this thread topic... :o)

~ Ken Mays
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?


On 02/07/2010 14:51, Alan Coopersmith wrote:

Robert Milkowski wrote:
   

While I can understand it when it applies to commercial only products it
doesn't make much sense
when applied to open source products being in development.
 

This is a new aspect of the long standing tension with the dual nature
of the distro named OpenSolaris, since it is a commercial product for
which Sun&  Oracle generate revenue via support contracts.

Sure, we could rename the distro, but that wouldn't get users more advance
information, just make it clearer that it's a commercial product built out
of an open source base.

   


I for one never had any issue with the name.
The problem though is that new builds of /dev are not being made public 
and there is no new /stable release either. And while it is a commercial 
distro and the same time it isn't. Unless Oracle wants to change the 
rules and treat OSOL distro as a commercial product only and reduce Open 
Solaris community to discussions and code contributions only... but that 
would be a big mistake imho.


So far the way it worked was that we had /dev and also stable releases. 
And thanks to some great technologies not only many people but also many 
companies deployed them. Some of them even probably bought a support for 
it if needed.


I don't see an issue on Oracle's trying to monetize Solaris 10 and Open 
Solaris as well. Sun did try it as well.
But if it were to happen in the expense of free and open source OSOL 
distrubution that would be a mistake.


Right now though the biggest issue is a scarcity of information in 
regards to what's going on, why and how.


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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?


On 02/07/2010 12:19, Matthias Pfützner wrote:

You (Robert Milkowski) wrote:
   

I understand that but all I'm saying is that it is simply wrong when
applied to something like Open Solaris development. There are certainly
technical people here involved with OSOL 2010.06 and with /dev builds.
Before Oracle I'm sure they would explain what the issue is, etc.
Right now they can't and they keep silent. As I understand it it is not
their fault, it is Oracle's fault as a company. The problem is that it has
to be escalated to the management to get it right again. Otherwise you are
just discouraging lots of people, make some of your best allies to go
somewhere else, and you feed trolls as we've all have seen.
 

Putting the words "simply wrong" in there above seems a bit harsh. I do get
what you mean (and, at least, partially agree), but "wrong" is an absolute
term, and people's minds and decissions might be binary, their binary logic
still differs from person to person. So, what we all might see or feel as
"wrong", might well be "right" in someone else's reasoning/thinking.
   


Sure. But from where I sit, and as you can see here also from the point 
of view of many others, the current interaction (or rather almost lack 
of it) with non-Oracle community members is being perceived as wrong.

And I believe it is wrong.



And: It might not yet even be "Oracle's fault as a company", it might still be
"uncertainty" about "what to do" and "what not to do" (like, even speaking
publicly), that could explain silence here. Oracle is way more hierachically
structured than Sun ever was. I could easily write an email to Jonathan (and
in former times to Scott (and, yes, I even did! I even am on a podcast with
Jonathan!)), and even get answers, I wouldn't even dare to try this with Safra
or Charles or Larry. It's been made clear to use, that we need to use our
whole management chain to escalate stuff. At each layer (although that chain
isn't very long!) the escalation gets re-evaluated. It's very precise, very
structured and very quick. And currently is business driven (close to
"only"). Yes, there are people dealing with how to handle communities (mainly
handled inside the thing called OTN!) and how to restructure those according
to new needs induced by the acquisition of Sun. My thinking (and again: I
don't have any insight into that, so it's my pure speculation!) is, that the
main customer and community event is called Oracle Open World (which this year
is combined with JavaOne! The biggest event ever that San Francisco ever
saw!), so my current working assumption is, that we might see/hear something
then... Still it's my speculation and assumption...

So, it's not "us", who are discouraging people, I would call it the
"circumstances", as I did call it right in the beginning. Remember, as Erik
also put it: It's the first time ever, that Oracle (although they (I now need
to learn to say: "we") have bought over 60 companies in the last 6 years!)
bought a company, that did something very different in a very different
market. Oracle never did hardware. Oracle never really did OSes. So, this is
all very new to them. They need to experience it. Give them time. I know, it's
not easy, I know, we all are desperately waiting to see OSOL 2010.?? (whatever
it might be called). The main thing they currently still deal with, is:
Integration. Just yesterday marked the day for a lot of countries (mine,
Germany, also) to go through the so-called LEC (local entity combination),
still, not all countries are really merged or combined... So, although the CiC
(Change in control) already happened months ago, operational there still are
many hurdles to overcome inside. I for example, still don't have an Oracle ID,
nor an Oracle login. That does require the LEC, and only after the LEC the
newly combined local company is legally allowed to access employee data
(country to country, local laws!). Therefore it will still take some time,
before all former Sun employees will have all access and managementchains in
place. Oracle is a big company now, and it manages that fairly smoothly. I'm
really impressed! Still, it takes some time. You simply can not "suck in"
close to 3 employees over night...

   


I appreciate and understand what you are saying above.
And I believe that you are right - I think many others here (except for 
some trolls) see it in a very similar way to what you described. Having 
said that it's been dragging for far too long, Oracle didn't deliver 
OSOL within the time frame they publicly stated and there is no 
explanation or any communication about it whatsoever. There might be 
valid technical issues, or maybe even business reasons, or strategic 
reason... The problem is the total silence about it and even if for some 
reason they can't go into details about why it is delayed a firm 
assurance that they working on it and they hope to release it soon would 
be greatly appreciated by many here. Not to mention that it woul

Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?


On 02/07/2010 19:03, Gary wrote:

"From some tests reports provided by third party analysts, OSOL 2009.06 and OSOL-DEV 
performed as well or better than FreeBSD and Fedora (Linux)."

Strictly speaking to VirtualBox running on OpenSolaris 2009.06/build 129/ build 
134 and FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE:  FreeBSD hands-down beats OpenSolaris in the 
performance category.

I had six guests running on a FreeBSD host and the load average was negligle as 
well as low CPU usage, while the same number of guests on an OpenSolaris host 
had a higher load average and more CPU consumption.
   


You shouldn't really compare load and/or CPU usage values across 
different operating systems.


Did you actually test application performance inside guests? Was there 
any difference?


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http://milek.blogspot.com

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Ken Mays

Ken Gunderson wrote: 'Could we please have links to these third party tests?'

Phoronix has a test report to debate between OSOL-DEV-b127 and FreeBSD 8.0:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=freebsd8_benchmarks&num=10

The newer article was  January 25, 2010 based on FreeBSD 8.0 and OSOL 2009.06:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_bsd_opensolaris&num=1
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Edward Martinez

> Hi,
> 
> While searching for details of Solaris 10 update 9, I
> found the following on
> http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html
> 
> Extract 
> 
> Solaris Next not OpenSolaris?
> Many of us have patiently been awaiting the 2010.xx
> release of OpenSolaris frustrated by the lack of
> communication from Oracle. After some digging I
> realized that something quite interesting has been
> going on for a while. Oracle themselves are not
> building OpenSolaris anymore, not since build 135.
> They are building "Solaris Next Development", this is
> from /etc/release:
> 
> Solaris Next Development snv_140 X86
> Copyright (c) 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All
> rights reserved.
> Assembled 29 April 2010
> 
> This kind of makes sense, since OpenSolaris always
> have been the development branch for the
> Solaris.next, but the distributions have been named
> OpenSolaris for a while. I also found some tags like
> "osol_2010.05u4" which seems to be related to build
> 140. So have there been a change in plan for
> OpenSolaris 2010.xx release or is this just something
> for the future, "Solaris 11". But since build
> 134[a|b] which once should have been the release
> build for the next release still has the old names in
> them there might sill be a "OpenSolaris" release.


awesome, I guess solaris 11 is on it's way. I think this was  explained before 
here at opensolaris forums:

quote:

Don't make the mistake of thinking that OpenSolaris is going to somehow be 
"finished" at some point, and *then* become "product".  Sure, it's the 
development branch, but it's also where Solaris Next will come from (i.e. 
Oracle will fork off a branch of the current OpenSolaris distro and use that as 
the basis for Solaris Next, while OpenSolaris will continue along happily).  If 
I had to guess (and I'm going to, though I have no specific knowledge of this), 
I'd say that the OpenSolaris distro actually gets the lions share of 
development resources - Solaris 10 is in maintenance mode, and thus the only 
work going on for it is bugfixes and backports from OpenSolaris for a limited 
set of features.

http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=131291&tstart=15
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Paul Gress


On 07/ 2/10 03:43 PM, russell wrote:

Hi,

While searching for details of Solaris 10 update 9, I found the following on 
http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html

   


I've been thinking the same thing for a while.  It makes a lot of sense, 
and all the evidence/pieces fit.  If and when this does happen, there 
are some thoughts.  Will Oracle start up the development branch again 
for maybe Solaris 12/Next again.  And if so, I have some thinking to 
do.  Do I go for Solaris 11 and updates or the development branch again 
assuming it may start up again.


Time will tell.

Paul
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread russell

Hi,

While searching for details of Solaris 10 update 9, I found the following on 
http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html

Extract 

Solaris Next not OpenSolaris?
Many of us have patiently been awaiting the 2010.xx release of OpenSolaris 
frustrated by the lack of communication from Oracle. After some digging I 
realized that something quite interesting has been going on for a while. Oracle 
themselves are not building OpenSolaris anymore, not since build 135. They are 
building "Solaris Next Development", this is from /etc/release:

Solaris Next Development snv_140 X86
Copyright (c) 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Assembled 29 April 2010

This kind of makes sense, since OpenSolaris always have been the development 
branch for the Solaris.next, but the distributions have been named OpenSolaris 
for a while. I also found some tags like "osol_2010.05u4" which seems to be 
related to build 140. So have there been a change in plan for OpenSolaris 
2010.xx release or is this just something for the future, "Solaris 11". But 
since build 134[a|b] which once should have been the release build for the next 
release still has the old names in them there might sill be a "OpenSolaris" 
release.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Ken Gunderson

Ken - Could we please have links to these third party tests?  The last I saw 
put FBSD-8.0-RELEASE and OSOL  each clearly beating the other in certain sub 
tests.  My conclusion from the analysis put them at overall even for general 
all around use. Thank you.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Gary

"From some tests reports provided by third party analysts, OSOL 2009.06 and 
OSOL-DEV performed as well or better than FreeBSD and Fedora (Linux)."

Strictly speaking to VirtualBox running on OpenSolaris 2009.06/build 129/ build 
134 and FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE:  FreeBSD hands-down beats OpenSolaris in the 
performance category.

I had six guests running on a FreeBSD host and the load average was negligle as 
well as low CPU usage, while the same number of guests on an OpenSolaris host 
had a higher load average and more CPU consumption.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread W. Wayne Liauh

> Based on what Paul said
> 
> I don't think 'us' as the community that use Solaris
> or OpenSolaris-based distros
> should feel shafted if Oracle is focused on releasing
> Solaris 11. I'd hope we'd want this
> as the end goal as most of the OpenSolaris-based core
> snapshots were not considered 'production-ready' or
> well tested. Many people used the snapshots but
> nothing was officially supported.
> 
> What we have available is mainly OSOL 2009.06 as the
> tested release as well as the IPS snapshot based
> around it. We also have the DEV release based on
> snv_b134.
> 
> From some tests reports provided by third party
> analysts, OSOL 2009.06 and OSOL-DEV performed as well
> or better than FreeBSD and Fedora (Linux). The main
> points brought out by competitors is in value-adds
> included with their distro. Also,
> how much software runs on their current distro.
> 
> Kinda like when you buy a car. Either you look at
> something that gets you from point-to-point,
> reliability, and has good gas mileage or you look at
> the creature comforts and exterior/interior styling.
> 
> I'll speculate to answer these questions:
> 1. Should we jump ship and propose mutiny? No, if you
> know the value of OpenSolaris kernel and core
> environment.
> 
> 2. Should we just fork it and just roll-our-own
> distro? The OpenSolaris project model was designed
> with 'forking' in mind by third-party developers. A
> core distro that is expanded upon. Meaning, you can
> take the kernel, core packages, and toolsets provided
> and create your own OS distro (if more software
> developer inclined). Not as easy as it sounds but is
> possible if well funded. Otherwise, wait for the
> production-grade major update of Solaris 11 (if you
> want a commercial product versus an open source
> solution).
> 
> 3. Wait for 2010.H2? I'll speculate and say wait till
> the end of 2010.Q3 at least. If you are truely a
> die-hard Solaris user/advocate then waiting is not a
> big deal. Anyone with production-grade Solaris-based
> server setups  are not thinking too hard about
> updating their OS environment to Solaris 11. They are
> either using an OpenSolaris-based solution, keeping
> what they got intact, or using some other
> FOSS/commercial solution wrapped around some support
> agreement or partially-skilled sys admin ninjas.
> 
> 4. Move on? NO. Only move on if what you pick
> resolves your problem or is much better than what you
> are using today (without any doubts or regrets). This
> is the 'grass is greener' fail safe we all fall back
> on - but is a two-edged sword. Do you buy another car
> once your old car's brakes start to squeal or the
> engine seal leaks?!? Depends on the price to fix the
> issue versus investing in something new.
> 
> 5. Fork the community? Well, the community-at-large
> considers themselves somewhat forked at the moment.
> Oracle is providing OTN with BigAdmin and forums.
> Oracle also has support agreements and account
> management to provide assistance. Again, we have to
> understand the Solaris community versus the
> OpenSolaris community. Linux and FreeBSD have
> communities that are forked
> from the main forums. This is not a big deal and
> fosters independent innovation.
> Some will leave and some will stay. That's life on
> the bus. We can be wise souls and be supporters of
> the forked communities versus the unforked. In the
> end, if it resolves our issues and helps us sleep at
> night - then I won't tell if you don't.
> 
> Seriously, Oracle is making several announcements
> which some people may have ignored. Three things deal
> with new certifications, updated x64 hardware, and
> the OTN portal with Solaris/OpenSolaris and BigAdmin
> support articles. This is the infrastructure to
> support 'things to come' dealing with Solaris. I
> think some people want the 'cart-before-the horse'
> when the focus is on producing 'and' supporting the
> OpenSolaris-based version of Solaris - as well as
> migrating the Sun IP web infrastructure(s) within
> Oracle's umbrella(s).
> 
> So the only true let down would be if the shoe
> dropped and the releases of Solaris 10u9 and Solaris
> 11 don't happen this year. As for OSOL 2010.X, just
> wait till after Solaris 10u9 is released and the
> OTN/BigAdmin portal is fully operational.
> 
> My crystal ball is currently on lock-down via iPhone
> 4.
> ~ Ken Mays

Hi Ken,

Thanks for taking an eldership role during this vacuum.  This is particularly 
appreciated since you have always kept a low but productive profile by, for 
example, helping others like myself offline.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Ken Gunderson

Thanks for digging that up.  This is precisely what I was referencing.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Ken Gunderson

Briefly, because I don't want to get into depth about FBSD on an OS forum:

1) ZFS: No, I'm not planning to use ZFS on FBSD.  At least not yet.  I, too, 
have a long history with FBSD, dating back to 2.8 (??) days.  I left it circa 
6.x because of frustration with file system snafus resulting from careless 
MFC's whilst tracking SECURITY branches.  Hence, although ZFS is no longer 
listed as "experimental", I'm just paranoid enough to not trust it until it's 
withstood the test of time for a bit more time...  Maybe 9.x.  

That said, I did bring up an amd64 gpt zfs boot on 8.0-RELEASE workstation 
config w/Gnome Desktop.  My seat of the pants impression was that it felt 
sluggish compared to 2009.06 running on identical hardware. Whether this was 
due to less mature ZFS implementation or something else I cannot say.  I can 
say that such is not the case with gmirror though.

2) NFSv4:  Supposed to be ready for prime time but I've not tested, as my focus 
has been application, web, and mail server usage.

You've touched on two areas where OS leads FBSD.  ZFS, CIFS, and to lesser 
degree NFSv4 were key factors behind migrating to Open Solaris.  And also why I 
have been being patient for so long.

However, they're also more aspects to consider than technical excellence. Based 
on past experience (lots) I don't like, nor trust Oracle (the company).  The 
only "business" I'd ever want to do with ORCL is to buy on the dips and sell on 
the peaks.

Maybe OS will get a 2010.Q3 release.  Or 2010.Q4.  Or maybe yet another bait 
and switch  But like the cartoon featuring the starving vultures perched on 
a dead tree out in no man's land; "Patience, my ass!  I'm going to go out and 
kill something!" - there comes a time when one must draw the line. 

So it's back to the land of the Free BSD.  Ironically appropriate for 
Independence Day, no?
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Ken Mays

Based on what Paul said

I don't think 'us' as the community that use Solaris or OpenSolaris-based 
distros
should feel shafted if Oracle is focused on releasing Solaris 11. I'd hope we'd 
want this
as the end goal as most of the OpenSolaris-based core snapshots were not 
considered 'production-ready' or well tested. Many people used the snapshots 
but nothing was officially supported.

What we have available is mainly OSOL 2009.06 as the tested release as well as 
the IPS snapshot based around it. We also have the DEV release based on 
snv_b134.

>From some tests reports provided by third party analysts, OSOL 2009.06 and 
>OSOL-DEV performed as well or better than FreeBSD and Fedora (Linux). The main 
>points brought out by competitors is in value-adds included with their distro. 
>Also,
how much software runs on their current distro.

Kinda like when you buy a car. Either you look at something that gets you from 
point-to-point, reliability, and has good gas mileage or you look at the 
creature comforts and exterior/interior styling.

I'll speculate to answer these questions:
1. Should we jump ship and propose mutiny? No, if you know the value of 
OpenSolaris kernel and core environment.

2. Should we just fork it and just roll-our-own distro? The OpenSolaris project 
model was designed with 'forking' in mind by third-party developers. A core 
distro that is expanded upon. Meaning, you can take the kernel, core packages, 
and toolsets provided and create your own OS distro (if more software developer 
inclined). Not as easy as it sounds but is possible if well funded. Otherwise, 
wait for the production-grade major update of Solaris 11 (if you want a 
commercial product versus an open source solution).

3. Wait for 2010.H2? I'll speculate and say wait till the end of 2010.Q3 at 
least. If you are truely a die-hard Solaris user/advocate then waiting is not a 
big deal. Anyone with production-grade Solaris-based server setups  are not 
thinking too hard about updating their OS environment to Solaris 11. They are 
either using an OpenSolaris-based solution, keeping what they got intact, or 
using some other FOSS/commercial solution wrapped around some support agreement 
or partially-skilled sys admin ninjas.

4. Move on? NO. Only move on if what you pick resolves your problem or is much 
better than what you are using today (without any doubts or regrets). This is 
the 'grass is greener' fail safe we all fall back on - but is a two-edged 
sword. Do you buy another car once your old car's brakes start to squeal or the 
engine seal leaks?!? Depends on the price to fix the issue versus investing in 
something new.

5. Fork the community? Well, the community-at-large considers themselves 
somewhat forked at the moment. Oracle is providing OTN with BigAdmin and 
forums. Oracle also has support agreements and account management to provide 
assistance. Again, we have to understand the Solaris community versus the 
OpenSolaris community. Linux and FreeBSD have communities that are forked
from the main forums. This is not a big deal and fosters independent innovation.
Some will leave and some will stay. That's life on the bus. We can be wise 
souls and be supporters of the forked communities versus the unforked. In the 
end, if it resolves our issues and helps us sleep at night - then I won't tell 
if you don't.

Seriously, Oracle is making several announcements which some people may have 
ignored. Three things deal with new certifications, updated x64 hardware, and 
the OTN portal with Solaris/OpenSolaris and BigAdmin support articles. This is 
the infrastructure to support 'things to come' dealing with Solaris. I think 
some people want the 'cart-before-the horse' when the focus is on producing 
'and' supporting the OpenSolaris-based version of Solaris - as well as 
migrating the Sun IP web infrastructure(s) within Oracle's umbrella(s).

So the only true let down would be if the shoe dropped and the releases of 
Solaris 10u9 and Solaris 11 don't happen this year. As for OSOL 2010.X, just 
wait till after Solaris 10u9 is released and the OTN/BigAdmin portal is fully 
operational.

My crystal ball is currently on lock-down via iPhone 4.
~ Ken Mays
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Alan Coopersmith

Robert Milkowski wrote:
> While I can understand it when it applies to commercial only products it
> doesn't make much sense
> when applied to open source products being in development.

This is a new aspect of the long standing tension with the dual nature
of the distro named OpenSolaris, since it is a commercial product for
which Sun & Oracle generate revenue via support contracts.

Sure, we could rename the distro, but that wouldn't get users more advance
information, just make it clearer that it's a commercial product built out
of an open source base.

-- 
-Alan Coopersmith-alan.coopersm...@oracle.com
 Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Edward Ned Harvey

> From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris-
> discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Alan Coopersmith
> 
> Ken Gunderson wrote:
> > Yeah, but you got to admit that this one surely set a new slippage
> > record. 
> 
> Not even close:
> 
> [some examples]

I might add:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/red-hat-31/when-we-shall-expect-rhel
-6-a-711537/

rhel 6, people were expecting over a year ago.

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Matthias Pfützner

You (Robert Milkowski) wrote:
> I understand that but all I'm saying is that it is simply wrong when 
> applied to something like Open Solaris development. There are certainly 
> technical people here involved with OSOL 2010.06 and with /dev builds. 
> Before Oracle I'm sure they would explain what the issue is, etc.
> Right now they can't and they keep silent. As I understand it it is not 
> their fault, it is Oracle's fault as a company. The problem is that it has 
> to be escalated to the management to get it right again. Otherwise you are 
> just discouraging lots of people, make some of your best allies to go 
> somewhere else, and you feed trolls as we've all have seen.

Putting the words "simply wrong" in there above seems a bit harsh. I do get
what you mean (and, at least, partially agree), but "wrong" is an absolute
term, and people's minds and decissions might be binary, their binary logic
still differs from person to person. So, what we all might see or feel as
"wrong", might well be "right" in someone else's reasoning/thinking.

And: It might not yet even be "Oracle's fault as a company", it might still be
"uncertainty" about "what to do" and "what not to do" (like, even speaking
publicly), that could explain silence here. Oracle is way more hierachically
structured than Sun ever was. I could easily write an email to Jonathan (and
in former times to Scott (and, yes, I even did! I even am on a podcast with
Jonathan!)), and even get answers, I wouldn't even dare to try this with Safra
or Charles or Larry. It's been made clear to use, that we need to use our
whole management chain to escalate stuff. At each layer (although that chain
isn't very long!) the escalation gets re-evaluated. It's very precise, very
structured and very quick. And currently is business driven (close to
"only"). Yes, there are people dealing with how to handle communities (mainly
handled inside the thing called OTN!) and how to restructure those according
to new needs induced by the acquisition of Sun. My thinking (and again: I
don't have any insight into that, so it's my pure speculation!) is, that the
main customer and community event is called Oracle Open World (which this year
is combined with JavaOne! The biggest event ever that San Francisco ever
saw!), so my current working assumption is, that we might see/hear something
then... Still it's my speculation and assumption...

So, it's not "us", who are discouraging people, I would call it the
"circumstances", as I did call it right in the beginning. Remember, as Erik
also put it: It's the first time ever, that Oracle (although they (I now need
to learn to say: "we") have bought over 60 companies in the last 6 years!)
bought a company, that did something very different in a very different
market. Oracle never did hardware. Oracle never really did OSes. So, this is
all very new to them. They need to experience it. Give them time. I know, it's
not easy, I know, we all are desperately waiting to see OSOL 2010.?? (whatever
it might be called). The main thing they currently still deal with, is:
Integration. Just yesterday marked the day for a lot of countries (mine,
Germany, also) to go through the so-called LEC (local entity combination),
still, not all countries are really merged or combined... So, although the CiC
(Change in control) already happened months ago, operational there still are
many hurdles to overcome inside. I for example, still don't have an Oracle ID,
nor an Oracle login. That does require the LEC, and only after the LEC the
newly combined local company is legally allowed to access employee data
(country to country, local laws!). Therefore it will still take some time,
before all former Sun employees will have all access and managementchains in
place. Oracle is a big company now, and it manages that fairly smoothly. I'm
really impressed! Still, it takes some time. You simply can not "suck in"
close to 3 employees over night...

> Getting the balance between a corporate environment and an open source 
> product like Open Solaris right is tricky. While Sun not necessarily did 
> the best job it worked pretty good. IMHO there was about right balance 
> between Sun's developers and community having a dialog and knowing what was 
> going on. Cutting all of that for non-Oracle people is not helping at all. 
> It only makes people to reconsider their options and possibly walk away 
> from Open Solaris. I can't see how it is going to help Oracle.

There's no "cutting"... There's a different policy. Still, you see us talking
and engaging. There still are OpenSolaris User Group Meetings. So, it's not
over, it's still there. Different, yes, but still there. This weekend is
"birth of a nation day" ;-) in the US, many employees are on summer vacation
already...

> We've never had really much code contributions from the non-Sun folks but 
> we had some, including a couple from me. The problem is that the current 
> situation is so discouraging and I honestly hope it

Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Richard L. Hamilton

> I don't recall seeing any Oracle promises. I
> believe they were all
> assumptions based on information available. The
> last promise I
> remember seeing is 2010.03 from Sun, not
> Oracle. I'm getting really
> disappointed in not seeing anything. I would
> like to see the
> development branch opened up, I even would be willing
> to pay a small
> fee to get the development branch releases. But
> nothing is offered at
> all.

Actually, I see
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:jt7TPSfRB1gJ:www.eecis.udel.edu/~bmiller/DE-OSUG/Oracle-Sun.pdf+opensolaris+oracle+solaris&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShscq5zgqcDlABTGqk8p3UFpOw-T-72W49g8ffpgpqJum9ey7z07ibM3flHif4kyeSksy6YOz1DI7J9YKHfUF9Y8lQdPu5jF17c_FGLF80Pb-M9F5xGUaCtoGkRB2V3nVzOvH0I&sig=AHIEtbRtHFIHSQSPHdooFANeZLr86kFA7g

(not sure if the original is still on a Sun/Oracle site somewhere).  That
says "Next update 1st half 2010", and also says both "Sun" and "Oracle" on it.

And it has an email address of the person that wrote it, which I won't repeat
here.  It isn't a promise in the sense of a _contract_ if there's no
_exchange_ of consideration (that is, you're not paying for anything, so it's
not like anyone has done you wrong).  But it has set expectations, and since
by months we're already in the 2nd half (by days too, now), I _would_ agree
that it's reasonable for us to expect an update.

(There _has_ been some talk about a few showstopper bugs slowing
things down, but given the ban on talking about the timeline of future events 
without very high authority, that's been too vague for me to guess at the 
impact.  Still, I have seen nothing that calls into question the intent to
come out with an update...eventually; if they had decided _not_ to have
the update at all, they could have done that and announced it a lot earlier.)

It's a matter of being patient with no news right now, which is difficult, and
certainly impacts anyone who was making plans based on any of the previously 
mentioned dates.

If it were me, I'd try that email address...but not for a week or two yet (and 
then very courteously!) because I have reason to believe that there are some
folks trying to get answers, and it might be a good idea _not_ to undercut
them, or to look like an unruly mob, at least not to the people who haven't
already seen the way we carry on here. :-)
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Ian Collins


On 07/ 2/10 09:07 PM, Robert Milkowski wrote:


I understand that but all I'm saying is that it is simply wrong when 
applied to something like Open Solaris development. There are 
certainly technical people here involved with OSOL 2010.06 and with 
/dev builds. Before Oracle I'm sure they would explain what the issue 
is, etc.
Right now they can't and they keep silent. As I understand it it is 
not their fault, it is Oracle's fault as a company. The problem is 
that it has to be escalated to the management to get it right again. 
Otherwise you are just discouraging lots of people, make some of your 
best allies to go somewhere else, and you feed trolls as we've all 
have seen.


Getting the balance between a corporate environment and an open source 
product like Open Solaris right is tricky. While Sun not necessarily 
did the best job it worked pretty good. IMHO there was about right 
balance between Sun's developers and community having a dialog and 
knowing what was going on. Cutting all of that for non-Oracle people 
is not helping at all. It only makes people to reconsider their 
options and possibly walk away from Open Solaris. I can't see how it 
is going to help Oracle.


We've never had really much code contributions from the non-Sun folks 
but we had some, including a couple from me. The problem is that the 
current situation is so discouraging and I honestly hope it will 
change really soon.


Again, I understand that developers are not to blame here but still it 
needs to be changed.



I totally agree with everything Robert says.

If those of us who have invested a lot in this project over the past 
five years are becoming disillusioned, what hope is there for growing 
this community?  The way things are now, I think community is no longer 
the appropriate term.


Perhaps CAB should organize some kind of a petition and open letter 
signed by community (both Sun and non-Sun people) which would state 
what issues there are and it could be presented to senior management? 
Perhaps if we organize a little bit it would make some difference.


It might get us somewhere, after all it was user action that saved 
Solaris x86 form oblivion.


--
Ian.

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Robert Milkowski



I understand that but all I'm saying is that it is simply wrong when 
applied to something like Open Solaris development. There are certainly 
technical people here involved with OSOL 2010.06 and with /dev builds. 
Before Oracle I'm sure they would explain what the issue is, etc.
Right now they can't and they keep silent. As I understand it it is not 
their fault, it is Oracle's fault as a company. The problem is that it 
has to be escalated to the management to get it right again. Otherwise 
you are just discouraging lots of people, make some of your best allies 
to go somewhere else, and you feed trolls as we've all have seen.


Getting the balance between a corporate environment and an open source 
product like Open Solaris right is tricky. While Sun not necessarily did 
the best job it worked pretty good. IMHO there was about right balance 
between Sun's developers and community having a dialog and knowing what 
was going on. Cutting all of that for non-Oracle people is not helping 
at all. It only makes people to reconsider their options and possibly 
walk away from Open Solaris. I can't see how it is going to help Oracle.


We've never had really much code contributions from the non-Sun folks 
but we had some, including a couple from me. The problem is that the 
current situation is so discouraging and I honestly hope it will change 
really soon.


Again, I understand that developers are not to blame here but still it 
needs to be changed.


Perhaps CAB should organize some kind of a petition and open letter 
signed by community (both Sun and non-Sun people) which would state what 
issues there are and it could be presented to senior management? Perhaps 
if we organize a little bit it would make some difference.


--
Robert Milkowski
http://milek.blogspot.com



On 02/07/2010 09:44, Matthias Pfützner wrote:

Robert,

the reason we're silent is at least twofold, I guess...

1.) We simply don't know
2.) There had been way to much discussion with negative, even 
offending words


Eric and Alan did at least try to describe, why we have to be silent. 
Procedures at Oracle currently do not differentiate between 
money-making and non-money making products. They apply to every 
outbound messaging...


We all hope, it might change sooner then later, but those are 
currently wishes... We employees discussing with you here are way to 
low in the foodchain, so we don't have any insight into upper 
management's thinking or their pending decisions or the reasons for 
decisions being in pending state... We perform the same interpretation 
based on the same set of information. And we are new inside Oracle, so 
we don't know very much yet on what's "doable" and what's to be 
"punishable"


The only thing we know for sure, is, that Oracle tends to perform big 
announcements at Oralce Open World... And then some smaller 
announcements once a quarter (like the x86 announcement this week)... 
But we also do not know, what's going to be announced...


  Matthias

-Ursprüngliche Nachricht-

Von: Robert Milkowski 
An: opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Gesendet: 2.7.'10,  10:14

On 01/07/2010 22:03, Alan Coopersmith wrote:

Ken Gunderson wrote:
Thank you sincerely for clarifying that effectively everyone 
outside of Oracle with an interest in this somehow came to same 
deluded conclusion that there was going to be a 2010.H1 release.
I didn't say that - clearly there were plans and schedules 
previously discussed
that were not met (and they were always plans and schedules, not 
contracts or
guarantees) - I just said that there was no public statement yet 
about what the

new plans/schedules are.



While I can understand it when it applies to commercial only products 
it doesn't make much sense

when applied to open source products being in development.

I wouldn't except Oracle to publicly commit to Solaris 11 date but I 
would definitely expect them to allow their engineers the same amount 
of freedom Sun did when it comes to publicly talking about OS 
development. Basically what happened recently is that all of you guys 
went totally silent here. Then there are no new dev builds in form of 
a distro and there is no new stable osol release either. At the same 
time there is no clarification on why, etc. It is just plain wrong.


I hope Oracle will realize it rather sooner than later.

--
Robert Milkowski
http://milek.blogspot.com

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Matthias Pfützner

Robert,

the reason we're silent is at least twofold, I guess...

1.) We simply don't know
2.) There had been way to much discussion with negative, even offending words

Eric and Alan did at least try to describe, why we have to be silent.
Procedures at Oracle currently do not differentiate between money-making and
non-money making products. They apply to every outbound messaging...

We all hope, it might change sooner then later, but those are currently wishes... We employees
discussing with you here are way to low in the foodchain, so we don't have any insight into upper
management's thinking or their pending decisions or the reasons for decisions being in pending
state... We perform the same interpretation based on the same set of information. And we are new
inside Oracle, so we don't know very much yet on what's "doable" and what's to be
"punishable"

The only thing we know for sure, is, that Oracle tends to perform big
announcements at Oralce Open World... And then some smaller announcements once
a quarter (like the x86 announcement this week)... But we also do not know,
what's going to be announced...

Matthias

-Ursprüngliche Nachricht-

Von: Robert Milkowski
An: opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Gesendet: 2.7.'10, 10:14

On 01/07/2010 22:03, Alan Coopersmith wrote:

Ken Gunderson wrote:

Thank you sincerely for clarifying that effectively everyone outside of Oracle
with an interest in this somehow came to same deluded conclusion that there was
going to be a 2010.H1 release.

I didn't say that - clearly there were plans and schedules previously discussed
that were not met (and they were always plans and schedules, not contracts or
guarantees) - I just said that there was no public statement yet about what the
new plans/schedules are.

While I can understand it when it applies to commercial only products it
doesn't make much sense
when applied to open source products being in development.

I wouldn't except Oracle to publicly commit to Solaris 11 date but I would
definitely expect them to allow their engineers the same amount of freedom Sun
did when it comes to publicly talking about OS development. Basically what
happened recently is that all of you guys went totally silent here. Then there
are no new dev builds in form of a distro and there is no new stable osol
release either. At the same time there is no clarification on why, etc. It is
just plain wrong.

I hope Oracle will realize it rather sooner than later.

--
Robert Milkowski
http://milek.blogspot.com

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Robert Milkowski


On 01/07/2010 22:03, Alan Coopersmith wrote:

Ken Gunderson wrote:
   

Thank you sincerely for clarifying that effectively everyone outside of Oracle 
with an interest in this somehow came to same deluded conclusion that there was 
going to be a 2010.H1 release.
 

I didn't say that - clearly there were plans and schedules previously discussed
that were not met (and they were always plans and schedules, not contracts or
guarantees) - I just said that there was no public statement yet about what the
new plans/schedules are.

   


While I can understand it when it applies to commercial only products it 
doesn't make much sense

when applied to open source products being in development.

I wouldn't except Oracle to publicly commit to Solaris 11 date but I 
would definitely expect them to allow their engineers the same amount of 
freedom Sun did when it comes to publicly talking about OS development. 
Basically what happened recently is that all of you guys went totally 
silent here. Then there are no new dev builds in form of a distro and 
there is no new stable osol release either. At the same time there is no 
clarification on why, etc. It is just plain wrong.


I hope Oracle will realize it rather sooner than later.

--
Robert Milkowski
http://milek.blogspot.com

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Matthias Pfützner


I'd call that a "negative interpretation"... On a comparable product: Did you 
ever see any roadmap, release dates whatever for Oracle Enterprise Linux? Or even for 
Java? Oracle Solaris Cluster? Siebel? Bea?

  Matthias

-Ursprüngliche Nachricht-

Von: Svein Skogen 
An: opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Gesendet: 2.7.'10,  9:10

On 01.07.2010 23:21, Erik Trimble wrote:

On 7/1/2010 2:08 PM, Hillel Lubman wrote:

Oracle Policy
 

That's self obvious. I was asking what is that policy exactly.
   


Generally:   No comment on anything in the future.

To paraphrase Larry:"Why would I want to tell you about a
product you can't get now, and don't know when we might be able to get
it for you?"


Wouldn't that rather be "Why should I tell you about a product Oracle
can't monetize right now?"

I think this is where OpenSolaris fails. It's a product that doesn't
generate any income short-term, and thus illogical for Oracle to waste
engineer resources on. Worse than that, it's a product in direct
competition with products they CAN make money from...

//Svein

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-02 Thread Svein Skogen

On 01.07.2010 23:21, Erik Trimble wrote:
> On 7/1/2010 2:08 PM, Hillel Lubman wrote:
>>> Oracle Policy
>>>  
>> That's self obvious. I was asking what is that policy exactly.
>>
> 
> Generally:   No comment on anything in the future.
> 
> To paraphrase Larry:"Why would I want to tell you about a
> product you can't get now, and don't know when we might be able to get
> it for you?"

Wouldn't that rather be "Why should I tell you about a product Oracle
can't monetize right now?"

I think this is where OpenSolaris fails. It's a product that doesn't
generate any income short-term, and thus illogical for Oracle to waste
engineer resources on. Worse than that, it's a product in direct
competition with products they CAN make money from...

//Svein

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Erik Trimble


On 7/1/2010 9:04 PM, me wrote:

Well I don't think that policy works in this instance since:

1. Most if not all features are shown through the ON portal.
2. This is "supposedly" a respin of b134 so everyone knows whats coming.
3. If they did not want to have anyone know about futures releases they would shutdown 
their "Open Source" initiative.
   


I'm not saying it does "work". I'm saying that's what the policy *is*.

I suspect that over the next year, we're going to see Oracle re-consider 
a whole bunch of its "standard" policies in all areas.  Frankly, running 
a company that has significant hardware sales, and one where Open Source 
is a big component of the business, is *very* different than running a 
closed-source, proprietary Software company.  Up until now, all of 
Oracle's acquisitions have been proprietary software companies, so 
Oracle's model of how to do business has worked well with each 
successive acquisition.  Sun, however, is very distinctly different than 
any of their previous purchases, and I think Oracle is only slowly 
starting to realize that the Tried-and-True Way of doing things doesn't 
work quite so well with Sun.


Given that I see no real indication that Oracle's management isn't 
willing to make needed changes if profit is threatened (and, are willing 
to spend cash to make an increased profit), I suspect the major hangup 
is the time it takes the news that "this new 'Oracle Way' isn't working 
well - we're losing sales" to boil up from the lower levels to Larry. 
Once Larry sees that he's losing (potential) cash, expect holy hell to 
break loose and things to change.   Hopefully, that change will be 
something we all consider better than the current situation, but I'd be 
a big fat liar if I told you that I had even a small clue as to what 
that change would be...


Sadly, I don't think anyone in the needed Sales/Management chains reads 
these forums much.



As should be obvious by the above, I don't speak for Oracle in any 
capacity here, nor to I know anything the public doesn't.


--
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Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-123
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread me

Well I don't think that policy works in this instance since:

1. Most if not all features are shown through the ON portal.
2. This is "supposedly" a respin of b134 so everyone knows whats coming.
3. If they did not want to have anyone know about futures releases they would 
shutdown their "Open Source" initiative.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread ken mays

--- On Thu, 7/1/10, betchou betchou  wrote:


I really don't care about delay. It has still existed, will exist...
To say : "There will be a release every 6 month." is not that much precise. I 
don't really care if we have one two or three month to wait. But I really care 
about letting people without any news. Just to say a tiny : "Due to the quality 
of the product we want to provide there is a delay but don't worry about that." 
would be wonderful.

>
 
I agree with Alan - nothing is what it seems. Let Oracle give the official 
press release.  
 


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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread betchou betchou

I really don't care about delay. It has still existed, will exist...
To say : "There will be a release every 6 month." is not that much precise.
I don't really care if we have one two or three month to wait. But I really
care about letting people without any news. Just to say a tiny : "Due to the
quality of the product we want to provide there is a delay but don't worry
about that." would be wonderful.

A lot of people would like to invest time to learn opensolaris and won't do
it for this lack of confidence in the future.
I don't think we want a schedule, we want to be confident that all the time
we'll spend in the community won't be a wasted time.
I can't be confident with someone who say anything.

May be there will be a little official tiny word to the community soon! :)
That's true that Opensolaris should be needed for Oracle. So yes we should
be more confident. They don't like schedule to not beeing worried about
delay... ok But now that's done. So a tiny word to the community would be
really appreciated.


Sorry for my poor english... ;)
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread David Brodbeck

On Jul 1, 2010, at 1:34 PM, Ken Gunderson wrote:

> In other news, FreeBSD-8.1RC2 was released yesterday.  RC1 has been working 
> great on test my test bed but I have been delaying final migration 
> commitments to give 2009.06's successor a chance.  

I would love to hear how this works out.  I'm considering the same exit 
strategy; it's particularly attractive because I have a lot of experience with 
FreeBSD.  Are you going to be importing any existing ZFS pools?  I'm 
particularly curious if there are any pitfalls there.  I'm also wondering what 
the current state of NFSv4 is on FreeBSD; last time I looked it wasn't 
production-ready yet, but that was over a year ago, now.

-- 

David Brodbeck
System Administrator, Linguistics
University of Washington

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Alan Coopersmith

Ken Gunderson wrote:
> Yeah, but you got to admit that this one surely set a new slippage
> record. Maybe the Guiness Book would be interested?  Seriously.  Would
> at least be amusing and the marketroid types say there's no such thing
> as bad press

Not even close:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/12/vaporware-2009-inhale-the-fail/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
http://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959

-- 
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 Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Paul Gress


On 07/ 1/10 05:08 PM, Hillel Lubman wrote:

Oracle Policy
 

That's self obvious. I was asking what is that policy exactly.
   



Taken from this document, Social Media Participation At Oracle:

http://www.sun.com/communities/guidelines.jsp




"
Don't Discuss Future Offerings

As a general rule, don't discuss product upgrades or future product 
releases. Because of potential revenue recognition issues, it is 
especially important that we do not give the impression to customers or 
potential customers that a given product upgrade will include specific 
features that will be incorporated into the product within a specific 
time frame. See Revenue Recognition Guidelines. Any exceptions must be 
approved by senior management, Legal, and Revenue Recognition.

"
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Erik Trimble


On 7/1/2010 2:08 PM, Hillel Lubman wrote:

Oracle Policy
 

That's self obvious. I was asking what is that policy exactly.
   


Generally:   No comment on anything in the future.

To paraphrase Larry:"Why would I want to tell you about a 
product you can't get now, and don't know when we might be able to get 
it for you?"




I also think that there's a bit of Fight Club mentality going on:  The 
First Rule of Oracle Policy is: You Don't Talk About Oracle Policy.




ObDisclaimer:This is just me being flippant. That's not actually 
the Oracle policy (as if there was Just One Policy). But it seems to sum 
up the thinking rather well.


--
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Java System Support
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

That would be my take.  Actions are loud.  Listen to what Oracle is NOT saying 
and what they ARE doing. Doesn't take a rocket scientist
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Rick Ramsey


Alan, I might just make a bumper sticker out of that

Rick

On 7/1/2010 3:03 PM, Alan Coopersmith wrote:

Ken Gunderson wrote:
  
Thank you sincerely for clarifying that effectively everyone outside of Oracle with an interest in this somehow came to same deluded conclusion that there was going to be a 2010.H1 release. 



I didn't say that - clearly there were plans and schedules previously discussed
that were not met (and they were always plans and schedules, not contracts or
guarantees) - I just said that there was no public statement yet about what the
new plans/schedules are.

This is why companies like Apple & Oracle usually don't preannounce schedules
months in advance - no disappointment when any of the dozens of things that can
cause software schedules to change or be missed happen.   This is software -
slip happens.

  
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Hillel Lubman

> Oracle Policy

That's self obvious. I was asking what is that policy exactly.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Alan Coopersmith

Ken Gunderson wrote:
> Thank you sincerely for clarifying that effectively everyone outside of 
> Oracle with an interest in this somehow came to same deluded conclusion that 
> there was going to be a 2010.H1 release. 

I didn't say that - clearly there were plans and schedules previously discussed
that were not met (and they were always plans and schedules, not contracts or
guarantees) - I just said that there was no public statement yet about what the
new plans/schedules are.

This is why companies like Apple & Oracle usually don't preannounce schedules
months in advance - no disappointment when any of the dozens of things that can
cause software schedules to change or be missed happen.   This is software -
slip happens.

-- 
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 Oracle Solaris Platform Engineering: X Window System

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Gary

I'm currently running FreeBSD 8.0 RELEASE but will update to 8.1 when it's 
released.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Paul Gress


On 07/ 1/10 04:14 PM, Hillel Lubman wrote:

Alan Coopersmith wrote:
   

(I and other employees who are aware of the details have asked
management if there's some sort of statement we can make, but
so far there is nothing we can pass on. It sucks, and we know it.)
 

Is the reason for such secrecy also a secret, or it is something commonly known?
Thanks,

   



Oracle Policy
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Paul Gress


On 07/ 1/10 03:46 PM, Ken Gunderson wrote:

Except that a 2010.03, and then a 2010.H1 were promised.  The later 
specifically by Oracle.  To be clear, Oracle's new and updated guidance is that 
these promises will not be honored?
   
I don't recall seeing any Oracle promises.  I believe they were all 
assumptions based on information available.  The last promise I remember 
seeing is 2010.03 from Sun, not Oracle.  I'm getting really disappointed 
in not seeing anything.  I would like to see the development branch 
opened up, I even would be willing to pay a small fee to get the 
development branch releases.  But nothing is offered at all.


Where do we go from here.  There are a few choices mentioned in previous 
posts and some speculation on my part:



1) Wait for 2010.H2

This is still speculation, as Oracle hasn't officially stated if and 
when it will be released.  Maybe the binary development distro will 
start then?




2) Start your own binary distro, not a fork, almost the same as Sun provided

I'm not a programmer, this is basically not an option for me, or for 
most people for that matter.




3) Move on

For me, I've been using Solaris since v2.1 from an Interactive Unix 
upgrade and since purchased Sparc Workstations as well as X86 
Workstations.  I feel abandoned.  I am now started to give this some 
thought, but not there yet.  I sure others feel the same.




4) Start a new forked community

Basically someone, or group of people and providing option # 2.  
Basically this is going to be harder to gain support now, based on all 
the disappointment today.  It should have been announced 3 months ago 
when people were very much enthusiastic.





As other people have stated previously, Oracle needs to announce 
something.  It's not fair to an online community based around 
Opensolaris.  How much longer do they think the community can handle?  
Do they intend to orphan Opensolaris by neglect?


Paul
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

Thank you sincerely for clarifying that effectively everyone outside of Oracle 
with an interest in this somehow came to same deluded conclusion that there was 
going to be a 2010.H1 release.  Must have been something in the water.. 
Guess I need to drink more beer.  Safer %-P

In other news, FreeBSD-8.1RC2 was released yesterday.  RC1 has been working 
great on test my test bed but I have been delaying final migration commitments 
to give 2009.06's successor a chance.  

Speaking of beer, what are you drinking?
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Hillel Lubman

Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> (I and other employees who are aware of the details have asked
> management if there's some sort of statement we can make, but
> so far there is nothing we can pass on. It sucks, and we know it.)

Is the reason for such secrecy also a secret, or it is something commonly known?
Thanks,

Hillel.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Alan Coopersmith

Ken Gunderson wrote:
> To be clear, Oracle's new and updated guidance is that these promises will 
> not be honored?

Oracle has made no statements of any such kind.   Ken Mays and
other community members here are providing their opinions and
speculation, and not speaking for Oracle, and anyone who has been
discussing any sort of date or release plans in this thread for any
future release of Solaris or OpenSolaris does not have the information
to be able to give accurate details.

(I and other employees who are aware of the details have asked
management if there's some sort of statement we can make, but
so far there is nothing we can pass on.  It sucks, and we know it.)

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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

Except that that doesn't give you an entitlement.  You still need to buy a 
support contract.  Which for all practical purposes also requires Sun/Oracle 
branded hardware.  Insidious, isn't it?
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Ken Mays

"People want a binary release of OpenSolaris which would be tatamount to 
FreeBSD and OpenBSD, not Linux where you get a kernel only and told to "build 
your own." There are many advantages to having a complete operating system 
rather than a roll-your-own distro."
>

True, as most users will want something like an distributed OS image already 
built and somewhat tested by a trusted source. I don't expect a user to 'roll 
their own' distro. This is an option for those people that want to utilize that 
option.
Otherwise, users have to wait awhile for the next major release or use what is 
available today. Kinda like saying," you can either build your own current game 
machine or wait till the next upcoming gaming consoles'. You either patiently 
wait or start working on your solutions with what you got (or can get).

My point is that for most of today's solutions most users need 'probably' can 
be done, for production use, on Solaris 10. Those users wanting the latest 
'stuff' can use OSOL-DEV-134 or a recently updated distro from a third-party 
supplier. Then, you have the tested releases of OSOL 2009.06 and previous 
SXCE/SXDE snapshots (if you were lucky enough to grab those).

So, other than running *BSD/Linux/Other you do have some options unless people 
just want the latest and greatest OpenSolaris distro release based on the 
current public kernel release (i.e. snv_b143 at the moment). But then users 
will want a bunch of the packages in IPS updated which starts a cycle of 
unpaid/paid work allotment. 

Well, sadly we have to think about whose gonna foot the bill for that if 
'certain people' don't want to 'roll-their-own' packages nor pay for the 
'package rolling' work being done? 

That's for another thread at another time...

Oracle is working on the next production release of 'Solaris'. Either we wait 
for it, use what we got, or look for other options - especially for those 
people not willing to pay for it or the work involved there or elsewhere. 
Exempt yourself if you do.

Not trying to sound mean...;o)

~ Ken Mays
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?

2010-07-01 Thread Gary

Maybe I'd better purchase my $20 Solaris 10 set now, before they decide to 
rescind sales because they won't get a support contract to go along with my 
purchase.
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Re: [osol-discuss] So who is ready to be let down?