[opensolaris-summit] Establishing a Successful OS Platform

[Shawn Walker]

Greetings,

One of the things I think we need to discuss at the summit is what we
can do from a technical and community perspective to establish
OpenSolaris as a premier platform for development.

Notably, every existing commercially (including in the past)
successful operating system (Windows, OS X, AIX, etc.) has chosen to
select certain technologies as the ones that they invest resources in
and recommend to developers for that platform.

OS X has Core Image, Core Animation, Core Video, Core Audio, OpenGL,
etc. Windows has Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,
DirectSound, etc.

I believe that one of the major failings of the GNU/Linux, FreeBSD,
and other free software platforms, is that they have failed to
establish a standard set of platform technologies that developers can
rely on and that are optimised for the platform.

OpenSolaris, especially with the advent of Project Indiana, has an
opportunity to focus on and invest primarily in certain technologies
as "core platform technologies" -- specific, high-value areas.

Before anyone mentions it, I also believe it is possible for the
majority of these technologies to be desktop-agnostic, so this *is not
about* a Desktop Environment vs. Desktop Environment war :-)


With this in mind, I would like to see an evaluation process being to
see how we are doing in the following areas and what can be done to
improve upon them. I've included my own commentary in-line:
* 3D - we have OpenGL support nVidia, some Intel chipsets, ATi in
progress, Mesa, etc. thanks to the excellent work of Sun's X11 team.

* Audio - we will have OSS soon, thanks to 4Front, but need a good 3D
Audio library to complement it. I believe OpenAL would be an excellent
cross-platform choice given it's support level on Windows and OS X

* Video - gstreamer seems the obvious choice at the moment, but I
don't have much familiarity with this area

* Windowing APIs - we have Gtk now, and will have Qt integrated soon,
thanks to Stefan Teleman


It is my belief that we can attract new developers to our OS platform
and spark new innovations by:
* Ensuring these APIs are as well-documented as possible

* Ensuring changes and contributions are done in cooperation with the
upstream project

* Ensuring these technologies are prominently featured in developer
documentation as the "supported" solution to application development
on the platform

* Ensuring that issues with the chosen APIs get resource allocation
priority over competing APIs

* Ensuring that these APIs take full advantage of OpenSolaris-specific
technologies (all APIs should have full DTrace probes, are RBAC-aware,
ZFS, etc. where applicable)

* Ensuring that each of these APIs are fully reviewed for
architectural issues (via OpenSolaris ARC)

* Ensuring that any new tools specific to our platform are written
using these APIs

I'd like to know what others think.

Cheers,
-- 
Shawn Walker

"To err is human -- and to blame it on a computer is even more so." -
Robert Orben