On 5/5/07, Lukas Rovensky <lukas.rovensky at sun.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> this is a really interesting discussion -- I read all posts but I am
> deliberately replying to David's response.
David Comay ?
> I am from Solaris Revenue Product Engineering (== Solaris sustaining)
I don't know what that means. .
In fact, I will say that it looks to be some sort of Sun Microsystems
Inc business thing.
> team and one of my responsibilities is to make sure that we (== Sun)
> can sustain open source products in SFW, that is products, which
> Sun supports (see [1]).
What do you mean by support because as far as I know you don't support
anything in the CCD and never did. There is and never has been so much
as the ability to file a bug report or get an update even when that
update was a security patch.
This is why a community project ( Blastwave ) was created in the first
place. At the very least we would have a way to get open source
software for Solaris that had some signs of maintainance, some support
in that there were people to communicate with and you could generally
do two things easily and freely :
(1) get an update to a piece of software
(2) do the update yourself on freely provided infrastructure
In either of these cases you would be able to get a up to date
package released via a worldwide network of mirror sites. Quickly.
As of this morning there are 1680+ software titles available for
Solaris 8 upwards. Some of them are getting a little crusty but the
majority are well taken care of.
> So, I know about advantages and disadvantages
> of SFW as well as of the real problems we (Solaris sustaining) have to solve.
? I don't see that you have anything to solve related to this discussion. ?
> (Note for Brian -- in general every fix for Solaris XY goes first to Nevada
> and then it is integrated to Solaris 10, 9, ... and this is true not only for
> ON but also for SFW.)
Again, that looks to be some sort of Sun Microsystems Inc thing
related to the commercial distribution called Solaris.
> What I would like to stress is that regardless of the actual solution
> to be chosen (merge everything, keep SFW separate) we have to keep
> in mind that it has to be clear how to sustain critical open source products
> in the future.
Like Apache and PostgreSQL and PHP etc ?
http://www.blastwave.org/packages.php/apache2
Version: 2.2.4,REV=2007.02.19
http://www.blastwave.org/packages.php/apache
Version: 1.3.34
http://www.blastwave.org/packages.php/postgresql
Version: 8.2.3
http://www.blastwave.org/packages.php/php5
Version: 5.2.1,REV=2007.03.15
http://www.blastwave.org/packages.php/samba
Version: 3.0.23,REV=2006.08.09b
The latest "stable" release is actually 3.0.24 from Feb 2007.
This needs a minor update and we will get to that.
The list is long and it does need continual maintainance. That is
the purpose of an open source software service, that is be continually
maintained. Not simply dropped onto a CDROM or DVD image and then
forgotten.
> When Sun (or anyone else) delivers an OpenSolaris based
> distribution then it has to be known what end users shall expect in terms
> of support and how this will be achieved.
Are you talking about Solaris here or OpenSolaris ?
If SchilliX has a website that tells the world about updates then
that takes care of that. If BeleniX gets updated continually then we
don't have to worry about BeleniX. If there is some grand unified
software service in place that will provide community built and
maintained software packages to end users of any or all of them then
we don't have to worry about that either. The software will get
maintained by those that need it. If Solaris users need access to an
up to date version of Apache 2.2.4 ( or whatever ) then they can just
type "pkg-get -i apache2" and viola they will have all that they need.
Each distro may implement the software specifics as they see fit but
we can certainly provide a generic starting point for all software
titles for all distributions.
> There are two major categories of Solaris users today:
> - People who use Solaris in production environment and they need
> stability. They are often interested only in security fixes and
> not too much in the latest features.
Again, this is Solaris and not OpenSolaris. Solaris as a product
has support and maintainance contracts that people can purchase and
when they call for support they get taken care of I presume. The open
source software ( like Apache ) may or may not be part of the product
called "Solaris". That is Sun Microsystems Inc's business and not the
business of SchilliX or BeleniX or marTux.
> - People who use Solaris on a desktop -- they typically can
> sacrifice some stability in order to be able to get the latest
> features.
You forgot developers that may have both worlds as well as strange
hardware all over the place.
> Similar view can be taken from the actual product's point of view.
> - For example, vim is important for end users but its unlikely
> that missing vim will cause problems in a production environment.
Right .. so they can download the VIM package whenever they want it
and it gets installed . Updates provided continually as needed,
requested or required.
> - However, samba is quite opposite type of product -- many people
> do not need to set up samba server on their laptop but samba is
> essential for many enterprises (Solaris servers and Window clients)
Same as above.
> The above simply means that different products have different
> support requirements and possible changes in SFW shall satisfy
> them.
>
> Regards,
> Lukas
>
> [1] http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/
>
Let us look at that link shall we?
That page allows a user to download the "Solaris 10 11/06 OS
Companion Software DVD" which is part of the release called Solaris 10
Update 3. I go through some hoops and download that thing to find that
it contains some software packages that I need to manually pkgadd one
by one and resolve dependencies as I go. A bloody nightmare. All in
all you have maybe 150 software packages there for Solaris users.
That page clearly says this :
Now, you have two primary sources of freeware that work with the
Solaris 10 Operating System:
****************
There are in fact a number of places to get open source software
from that is every bit as unsupported as what you list there. Actually,
the software found elsewhere is better supported than the CCD.
****************
1. Freeware that is included on the Solaris 10 11/06 DVD in
separate and distinct modules, which is being made available as a
convenience to our customers
* technologies that users may expect to find with their
operating environment are now included with the Solaris environment
****************
Some of that means supported or not. Who knows.
It is a "convenience" to your customers.
****************
2. Freeware that is co-packaged via the Solaris 11/06 Companion DVD
* other useful and popular technologies are offered as an
unsupported value-add DVD
*****************
unsupported. That is clear.
Further down that page after your software list you have "Related
Links" in which you point to a number of places but strangely no link
to the Blastwave.org site that delivers tons of software to Solaris
users for five years. No link at all.
I have no idea what the Companion CD is but it certainly is not up to
date, maintained nor supported. It is convenient software that Sun
Microsystems Inc. provides freely to Solaris users. It is not part and
parcel of the OpenSolaris project nor will it suffice to satisfy the
current modern user nor the future user.
I find the whole CCD to be an afront to my senses. Something broken
that needs to be fixed or killed and this has been said many times
before in many ways for years and years now.
Dennis
