The relationship between OpenSolaris and ARC

[Paul Jakma]

On Sun, 13 Jan 2008, Joerg Schilling wrote:

>> nudges to the rudder.  It rarely, if ever, denies projects.  So in effect,
>> the authority to veto the ARC would be the authority to veto projects.

> If only 4 people decide in the current ARC, this is obviously a problem as
> these people cannot have expert knowledge in all needed areas.

There are dozens (at least) more ARC interns, and even more subscribed 
as interested observers who may contribute their expertise /prior/ to 
the ARC deciding. You yourself participate in many PSARC discussions. 
Further, for any ARC case, the project team also are supposed to be 
involved. I'd have thought it obvious that the ARC makes its decisions 
based on the input received from all those sources.

The ARC's standing within Sun may officially be derived by the decree of 
Suns' executive, however it could not exist without the general consent 
of those engineers who contribute to and abide by it (which need not be 
Sun engineers).

> If a veto from a knowledgeable person does not even result in a 
> discussion of people with the needed special skills, something is 
> wrong.

Well, the project team /must/ have the needed skills to understand the 
issues. It is their job to explain the issues to the ARC and answer its 
questions.

I guess a problem could arise where a project team has, for whatever 
reason, problems with communicating with the ARC.

A final problem is where the project team is incapable of accepting the 
ARC's decision. Inside Sun there is an appeals process to the Sun 
executive leadership. However, there's no analogue in OpenSolaris at 
this time.

One could appeal (informally at this time, apparently) to the OGB or to 
the community for remedial action of some sort (ultimately that might 
need to be structural).

Even that might not always satisfy all project teams I guess. They might 
just need to learn to live with it.

> This is no longer "Sun Solaris" but OpenSolaris and we need to take 
> care of the long term effects on the whole OpenSolaris and not just 
> about short term commercial interests for a single project.

How can you define the long-term interests of OpenSolaris seperately 
from the interests of the contributors to it (a significant number of 
which are in the employ of Sun). I suspect you can't.

Further, you're suggesting a large proportion of OpenSolaris 
contributors are "corrupted" by their employment, and do /not/ always 
have the long-term interests of the project at heart. Even if you were 
right, that just doesn't seem a way to win friends and influence people.

NB: Opinions are my own. I post from my work address to make my 
interests clear.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma,
Solaris Networking                       Sun Microsystems, Scotland
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/quagga tel: EMEA x73150 / +44 15066 73150