[opensolaris-summit] Establishing a Successful OS Platform

[Tim Cramer]

Shawn,
   Excellent excellent feedback.   Thank you.   This is exactly one of 
the discussions I really want to see at the Summit.  We have a session 
(perhaps titled incorrectly) around prioritizing packages for 
OpenSolaris.   I really would love to see a prioritized list we can 
focus Sun and the community on to make OpenSolaris the premier 
development and (once we get there) deployment platform.

Tim

Shawn Walker wrote:
> 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,
>