[oi-dev] OpenIndiana and illumos

[Garrett D'Amore]

So, I have been having "reservations" about OpenIndiana and illumos
interaction.

OI is still working on a b148 release, based on Oracle's code base.  Yet
SX11 based on b151 is already out.  (I'd argue that OI is "too little
too late".)

illumos needs changes to SFW, and other supporting consolidations.  It
needs a cooperative relationship with a primary distribution.

However, because of the insistence of continuing to "follow" Oracle
rather to proactively lead, it seems that progress towards any of
illumos' goals is not something I can reasonably expect from OI in the
near, and possibly even mid-term, future.

OI itself is understaffed.  I can help with that.  But I refuse to
contribute resources towards a solution that doesn't at least indirectly
lead towards my goals of a usable illumos-based distribution.  Burning
my resources on a Solaris 11 clone that doesn't at least support my own
kernel bits is not economically sound.

In my opinion, its time to just abandon the OI 148 "effort".  It will be
too little, too late, following on the heels of SX11.  There is
absolutely no point in a "new" release of an OpenSolaris clone that is
older than what Oracle itself ships.

The *right* solution going forward is to move efforts towards a
self-hosting distribution based on illumos, working on the *future*.
Perhaps taking a number of months to arrive at a complete product, but
doing so in a way that is collaborative with the illumos developers.
(Right now there is a huge disconnect with the illumos-gate team and the
OI team.)

So, my question to the OI team leads: what are you going to do?  Are you
going to try to continue to follow Oracle's lead?

Or are you interesting in *innovating* and joining a team that is intent
on standing on its own and cutting the dependencies from Oracle?

If you're not going to do the latter, then I need to know -- now, so
that I can start staffing my own effort, starting first with proper
"forks" of the other key consolidations.

If you do choose the latter, then I can immediately start helping you
with some of your challenges surrounding improved integration of g11n
and sfw, and other bits.  There are many other opportunities once we
agree to have reasonably synchronized/coordinated code bases between the
underlying illumos foundation and the other consolidations.

And to those of you running OI "in production", you're nuts.  OI has had
exactly "one" release (of dubious quality), and has a sum total of a
half dozen engineers behind it; and I'm not sure all of them are
actually software engineers and not just integrators.  I sure as heck
don't advocate illumos for production use *yet*, even though my own
desktop runs it.  (Although I'm working hard to get it into a condition
when I will be happy to do so.)

	- Garrett