[Opensolaris-discuss] The Governance Model

[Bryan Cantrill]

Hey Ben,

> I'm excited to see so much moving forward.  Progress is being made, huge 
> strides forward, on both the Solaris10 FCS, Update 1, OpenSolaris and 
> CDDL fronts; all this is truely excellent.  However, and this is a very 
> big however, we are _still_ missing an governance model.  All the trains 
> are on the right track but that one.  Now that CDDL acceptance, both by 
> the larger community and by the OSI, we've got to answer the final 
> questions: What do I do with the code?  The CDDL takes care of 
> distribution, because if I wish I can offer the code at cuddletech, no 
> problem... so that sorta works out beyond the already seemingly decided 
> mechanisms of RO CVS and tarballs... but people will deeply question 
> (and indeed already have) the commitment if there isn't either a model 
> to get code back, or at the least a really good story about why that 
> hasn't been decided.  

How can the commitment be questioned if the code is out there?  I agree
with you that we need a governance model, but I don't believe that the
lack of one is going to prevent people from taking it seriously.  Quite
the contrary, I think the graver danger is that we impose too much
bureaucracy and create a fork out of sheer frustration... 

> Should this model not be avalible at the time of 
> code release, preview or otherwise, Sun should expect fully that a fork 
> may occur, at least in a temporary time, into private or shared non-Sun 
> controlled repositories by which a community governance can emerge in 
> the abscence of a formally indoctrinated one.

That's okay.  If there's one thing we've learned from watching Linux, it's
to not become forkophobic.  Paradoxically, in an environment where forks
are actively encouraged (e.g. Linux) forking seems to be less of a problem
than in environments where forking is viewed as apostasy (e.g. BSD).  

> Is Claire's team again working on this, or someone else within the 
> organization?  It seems like, again, no one knows.

A governance model _is_ being worked on, but much of the heavy lifting
is going to be figuring out how to retool our internal processes.  That
is, there aren't talks happening in secret so much as conversations
happening with the people who are intimately familiar with our existing
processes.  Everyone agrees that the governance model is important, but
everyone also agrees that getting the source out there is a lot more
important...

	- Bryan

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Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development.       http://blogs.sun.com/bmc