[oi-dev] oi_151a9 roadmap & planning

[Andy Stormont]

On 19 Feb 2014, at 12:17, Alasdair Lumsden <alasdair at lumsden.eu> wrote:

> illumos is not a distribution. It carries packaging metadata in IPS format as a convenience for downstream distributions, but downstream distributions are not obliged to use IPS. Perhaps in the future illumos will stop shipping package metadata completely.
> 
> Many other illumos based distributions use other package formats, such as rpm, deb and SVR4. Ultimately, packaging is a distribution specific implementation detail.
> 
> If you wish to use SVR4 in SchilliX, you are free to do so. Nobody is stopping you.
> 

The IPS metadeta isn’t really that useful to non-IPS distributions but I’m not sure removing it is a good idea.  Instead I’d rather see the SVR4 data reintegrated if it’s going to see some use and somebody cares enough to maintain it.
I also think the “nobody is stopping you” attitude is anti-collaborative and (I hate to resort to name calling here) childish too.  illumos needs to learn to be more accommodating if it wants to have the collaboration of distributors.

And that’s my 2c.

Andy.