[advocacy-discuss] "What is OpenSolaris" page

[Jason King]

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 11:51 AM, John Plocher <John.Plocher at sun.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > >  The target for OpenSolaris2008.05 is developers,
> > >
> > I thought one of the concepts was 'look at all this cool stuff
> >
>
>  As with any community effort, there isn't only one answer to this
>  type of question, which is why I suggested that we try to keep things
>  in perspective.
>
>  Just because one group is focused on enabling linux familiarity and
>  doing a bunch of modernization does not imply that either the work
>  is complete or that other groups can't do anything.
>
>  Rather than expecting *every* effort to be perfect on day1, wouldn't
>  it be better to take smaller steps and start with "good enough", and
>  then improve it?
>
>  I think that is what is being attempted here.  IMO, getting "linux
>  stuff working on OpenSolaris" is simply a first step.  Right now,
>  we have "nothing"; after this work is done, we will have "something".
>
>  Once we have "something", we can work to improve it.  We could
>  enhance it to take advantage of the many cool OpenSolaris features.
>  We could add new features that does stuff on OpenSolaris that can't
>  be done elsewhere.  etc.
>
>  Walk before you run.  Perfect is the enemy of "good enough".

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that.  But in this instance,
we're regressing in one area to make progress in another.  That
precedent concerns me.  It's all too easy to say 'we'll fix it later'
and later never happens.  I would much rather see progress that
doesn't come at the expense of existing features.

It doesn't mean things have to be perfect.  It might mean things are a
bit harder because of that due diligence (which might mean more effort
than just putting something in), but then I always thought that
diligence was one of the things that set *solaris apart from the rest.