[arc-discuss] The relationship between OpenSolaris and ARC

[Darren Reed]

Warning: this email is in no way related to opensolaris-arc...

Martin Bochnig wrote:
> John Plocher wrote:
>> Martin Bochnig wrote:
>>> John, are you serious about what you just said? Joerg Schilling has 
>>> contributed a resourceful repository of free software (see his ftp 
>>> site).
>> No, he has not contributed it - he has produced it, and kept it
>> independent from the work being done here.  His groundbreaking (and
>> IMO much needed and much appreciated) efforts have gone to naught
>> because they never became part of the work being done here, /in/
>> the OS.o community.  This is a completely frustrating situation
>> for me, Joerg and many others.
>
> If it is so frustrating, why is there nobody else that starts the 
> integration? I bet Joerg Schilling would then  join in. That is, if his 
> opinion on this and that and else would be truly respected.
> Isn't an elephant made out of two mice here? Isn't that unnecessary 
> bureaucratic overhead, effectively leading to discussions like this time 
> and again (hence to nothing worthwhile)?
> I call it hair-splitting.

There are some interesting things going on here...
1) various people inside OS believe that Joerg should
   integrate (or request the integration of) his tools
   himself;
2) it would appear that Joerg doesn't want to do that
   dance himself;
3) OS appears to Joerg to move in hostile ways by
   "deliberately" making changes that conflict with
   what he's done.

So for the people in (1), consider (2).

I'll add a note that as an open source participant there's
a mindset that perhaps Sun people miss, that being that
various people in open source just want to *write* s/w,
it is up to others to use/integrate it, *if* they want it.
This is particularly relevant to (2).  Or to put it
differently, we don't ask the people who write gcc,
wireshark, etc, to do the legwork and integrate their code
into OS, so why should we be asking Joerg?  If someone
asked me, today, to integrate ipfilter into opensolaris
today, I'd probably say no because it *feels wrong* -
software should be pulled in by the people that want
to use it, not pushed in by the authors.  I don't know
if I can explain it any better/more than that.

Note that (2) applies more to individual works, such as
star/mkisofs, etc, rather than work done for a larger open
source project.

For (3), Joerg has to stop thinking everyone is out to get
him.  I often think the same because of the shifting sands
that are the header files and interfaces for networking
across open source os's but get over it with some (sometimes
loud) swearing at the monitor or occasionally in email and
then let it go.

All that said, by advice to Joerg is to stop taking decisions
by Sun's engineers to do whatever personally and just
workaround whatever problems the OS engineers that work for
Sun create for you.  They did stupid/crazy things in the past,
they'll probably keep doing them in the future and there's
nothing you can do via OS to stop that.  So if a PSARC case
introduces an issue with star, etc, raise it *once*, hope for
the best and otherwise let it slide if they don't agree or
accept what you have to say.

Darren