[advocacy-discuss] Corporate Open Source

[Shawn Walker]

On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 6:42 PM, Rafael Vanoni <Rafael.Vanoni at sun.com> wrote:
> Jim Grisanzio wrote:
>  > We seem to be in some blogs and on Slashdot recently -- and not
>  > necessarily in nice ways.
>  >
>  > There are many things in these blogs below I disagree with, but when you
>  > spend the time to dig through them you are left with the realization
>  > that we as a community are not well understood -- at best. :) For those
>  > of us involved in this project, we certainly know we are behind in some
>  > key ares, but it seems that others are using that fact to continually
>  > hit us instead of getting involved and helping out or at least rooting
>  > us on from the sidelines. Also, we are doing some great things here as a
>  > community, and that's not getting out nearly as much as it should. Why?
>
>  I guess it's easier to see the short comings than what we've been
>  acomplishing. I was at FISL last week and during Ted Ts'o's talk asked
>  him his opinion on OpenSolaris and technologies like DTrace and ZFS. He
>  answered very neutrally, with the same opinions as he stated on his blog
>  except for the negative remarks towards some aspects of the program.
>
>
>  > OpenSolaris has been knocked around many times in our three years of
>  > life, and I've always said that the knocks would continue until we built
>  > a community -- something that is obvious and could not be denied.
>  > Perhaps I was wrong. I think we have built a community, but perhaps it's
>  > not obvious or easily seen. Or perhaps it's still too soon and the
>  > community is still too small. Perhaps we are not open enough and our
>  > community doesn't contribute enough. I don't know. What do you guys
>  > think?
>
>  IMO, when we're compared to other big OSS projects, one of the things
>  that stands out is the low % of patches submitted from developers
>  outside Sun. Which I believe is the key point to Ted Ts'o's comments.
>  When replying to my question at FISL, he said that having little
>  contributions from outside Sun mean that OpenSolaris is not getting the
>  benefits of open source development, which is a reasonable argument.
>
>  I don't know if the sole reason for low contributions is not having the
>  gate out yet. That adds to it, but I think we still have ways to go in
>  terms of getting developers in our code. I'm confident that
>  OpenSolaris2008.05 will have a very positive impact here, as I believe
>  having a solid distribution will bridge a huge gap.
>
>  So it just might be that these two gaps will be filled within very
>  little time of one another and we'll have an even more interesting year.
>
>  In any case, I think the negative critics will continue to come because
>  OpenSolaris is different than most OSS projects. Just like those other
>  projects were bashed when no one understood their model.
>
>  I think we have a great community, roughly 60k to 90k in one year shows
>  that even if you don't like numbers ;)

My problem is with the basis of that argument. The patches and
contributions that are being counted are only the ones for the ON
Community's Projects. That means that none of the contributions to
other communities are being taken into account. Only the patches that
go through request-sponsor.

It completely devalues the contributions made to other Community
Groups and attempts to place the sole value of OpenSolaris as being
represented by ON.

-- 
Shawn Walker

"To err is human -- and to blame it on a computer is even more so." -
Robert Orben