[indiana-discuss] Distro proliferation and causes of incompatibility (Was: Name of Distro?)

[Eric Boutilier]

On Fri, 22 Jun 2007, Shawn Walker wrote:
> On 22/06/07, BVK Chaitanya <bayapuneni_chaitanya at symantec.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Ian Murdock <Ian.Murdock at Sun.COM> writes:
>> 
>> > Are Solaris Express and Nexenta compatible today? I.e., can you build
>> > a package on Solaris Express and install it on Nexenta and vice versa
>> > without any concern about whether something might break? -ian
>> 
>> Can you tell us how Indiana will solve it anyway?
>
> In theory, by having a reference platform. But that doesn't actually
> solve the problem. People can always create incompatible
> distributions.
>
> The theory is that by having a reference distribution, no one will
> want to deviate from the reference in incompatible ways because they
> value compatibility.

Shawn -- Well put. This also suggests the following notion which I find
really interesting:

To the extent Solaris 10/11 (SunOS 5.x) _is_ a reference platform today,
that theory doesn't seem to be holding up in the Nexenta case!

Eric