[ogb-discuss] Device Driver Community

[Alan Coopersmith]

Alan DuBoff wrote:
> On Fri, 4 May 2007, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>>> I would like to see some way of starting by cleaning up what needs
>>> cleaning, and try to align some of the communities together (based on
>>> consolidation is fine with me, but currently we really only have ON).
>>
>> I don't know why you continue to insist this when you know it's not true.
> 
> No, I don't know it's true, and in fact I don't believe it to be true. 
> Just because you toss a tarball into one of the communities doesn't 
> actually make it a part of OpenSolaris, and there is where we see a 
> difference.
> 
> As noted by Keith, nothing is tied into any consolidation. Using Xorg as 
> an example, how do you tie that into OpenSolaris, other than it is 
> available in the X community?

How do you tie ON into OpenSolaris other than it is available in the ONNV
community?

> We need to be realist. Saying we are comprised of a large set of 
> opensource packages is all great, but are those packages in the 
> OpenSolaris consolidation today? When you download the sources for 
> OpenSolaris, does it include Xorg?

Yes.

> So, what are you trying to prove by insisting that Xorg is a part of 
> OpenSolaris? Your tarball is useless with a compilation of OpenSolaris. 

What makes it useless?   It has sources you compile to produce binaries
and packages, just as pretty much every other consolidation in OpenSolaris
does.

> This is the same reason people come here after hearing Sun's management 
> talk up OpenSolaris, thinking it's a distribution, and then they find 
> out what is there is only a subset. This is not a bad thing, so I'm not 
> sure why you always take exception to my comment that OpenSolaris is 
> really only ON today, because it is. 

Because it's simply not true and only hurts the community when you repeat it.
We have enough confusion around what OpenSolaris is (as you noted) without
you making more.

> We can agree to disagree on this, no skin off my back. I'm only pointing 
> out that OpenSolaris is not all the packages that would be in a 
> distribution, such as Sun's Solaris product.

It's not all of them, but it's a lot more than just ON.

>> Sounds like a candidate for SFW then.
> 
> Considering that SFW was originally a designation for Sun Free Ware, it 
> seems that doesn't fit very well. Maybe it should be OFW, but I suspect 
> this might be another issue we'll agree to disagree on.

I thought it was Solaris FreeWare, but still, it's where random bits from
other open source projects that aren't covered by another consolidation
integrate into Solaris/OpenSolaris.    If you don't like it, find another
way to get it in, but it will probably be much harder anywhere else.

-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-           alan.coopersmith at sun.com
	 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering