[oi-dev] Time for Divorce from Oracle (was Re: pkg5 Linked Images)

[Bayard Bell]

On 31 May 2011, at 00:59, Philip J. Robar wrote:

> 
> On May 30, 2011, at 6:53 PM, Alasdair Lumsden wrote:
> 
>> Without starting a massive packaging debate, IPS is one of the main non-
>> negotiable points! It's exceptionally good and one of the foundations of
>> the OS. There's no way we could switch now. There's a lot of FUD out
>> there about IPS but I hope over time people will come to realise just how
>> good it is.
> 
> I agree that we need to keep IPS. Packaging and their dependencies are a lot harder of a problem than many people realize. For instance take a look at this short article by Bart Smaalders:
> 
> 	http://blogs.oracle.com/barts/entry/satisfaction
> 
> I think that a lot of people who make very significant contributions to open source projects would just stare at you blankly at the mention of terms like "boolean satisfiability solvers" and "conjunctive normal form".
> 
> Some really smart people at Sun, like Bart, took a good hard look at what it would take to solve this problem and came up with IPS. If Bart says that IPS is the way to go then that's good enough for me*.

So here's my quandry about this particular thread: I'm pretty supportive of the need to be less dependent on Oracle for a number of things. As I see it, Oracle's doing well enough with JDS, xnv, and pkg, and with the rest there's just too much chaff to make it worth our while. I'm fine with the idea that things like userland can be done better if we roll our own.

In the thread that's brought this to the fore, I don't see that this is what tells us to split further from Oracle. We're still saying we want to use IPS, and any problems linked images creates because of related changes in snv that are unavailable to us are effectively passed on to the Illumos  upstream, who are also committed to using IPS. I can't say I've fully read and apprehended the linked images architecture doc, but what I understand of the objectives tells me that this isn't something we should casually pass on, certainly not without feedback from Illumos. I think it muddies the waters a bit if further taking a few steps further back from Oracle comes up in a context that's quite distinct from the compelling reason to do so and turns out to be a matter on which we seem to remain close.

It's as much the language of divorce that makes me feel more equivocal on this. It's more like OpenIndiana and Oracle are an estranged couple who have been living apart for a while. We're coming to announce that we're officially moving out from Oracle's place (since we've already been living with Illumos for some time), never to return or reconcile, but it's really important to us that we continue spending time with people like alanc. It's a further de facto separation, and we're trying to make sure it doesn't go too much like Woody Allen's Interiors. There nevertheless ties that continue to bind, so divorce isn't quite the word.

I prefer this analogy to describing OpenIndiana as a new identity for OpenSolaris, now a liberated minor and coming into her own, despite the neglect of stepfather Oracle, who married her destitute mother, Sun, and then threw her out of the house.

Cheers,
Bayard
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 1515 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://openindiana.org/pipermail/oi-dev/attachments/20110531/58dfbc58/attachment-0010.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 841 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://openindiana.org/pipermail/oi-dev/attachments/20110531/58dfbc58/attachment-0011.bin>