[oi-dev] [OpenIndiana-discuss] ANNOUNCE: gcc ported Firefox 37.0b3 now backported to snv_130 x86/x64, Should work on OI/Hipster/S11.[0-3]/S12 etc.

[Andreas Wacknitz]

> Am 26.03.2015 um 06:27 schrieb Martin Bochnig <mb1x at gmx.com>:
> 
> Hi Nikola,
> 
>> Glad to see you back on the list Martin, you are welcome sharing your views.
> 
> thank you, I'm glad to hear that (although it may not be representative for this list).
> 
> 
>> OI is in need of source contributors testing and maintaining.
>> I am glad you are using CDDL for code contributions, as per release
>> notes and I like your dedication to support SPARC.
> 
> 90% of the work I did since 2013 was closely related to amd64 (x86/x64-only), rather than sparc.
> But probably it will take 25 further years until somebody starts to figure this out.

The situation regarding the OpenSolaris derivatives as I see it is:
	- there are a few Desktop oriented distributions: openindiana, OpenSXCE, TribbliX, XStreamOS, DilOS  (did i forget any?)
	- there are a few server oriented distributions (OmniOs, SmartOS, Nexentra OS, and some more)
To my knowledge the server oriented distributions are being developed by companies, some of them feeding illumos.
Despite XStreamOS none of the desktop distributions are supported or even run by companies.
All of them share some problems:
	- publicity (probably >99% of computer users don’t even know that they exist)
	- missing drivers (especially desktop would need more and better graphics support (eg. Intel and AMD), USB 3.0).
	- few developers (especially for the desktop derivatives)

The companies involved try to enhance or add functionality that their customers need (mostly network card and HBA drivers).
Alas they don’t seem to see the desktop valuable and gave up - desktop users should/could use other operating systems.

For the server side we have some arguments to attract possible users: advanced technologies like ZFS, SMF, FMA, …
But these are not so interesting for desktop users. Here we have somehow a chicken-egg-problem:
To attract more users we need wider support for drivers and desktop applications like Firefox and OpenOffice.
In order to get this we need either more money (to pay developers) or more voluntary work.
But we will only get it when we attract more users and thus more developers...

I don’t know how many users we have; especially the number of desktop users seem to be very low (are there more than 50?).
There might be more users for the server oriented distributions but compared to the numbers of BSDs or even Linux the number is for sure marginal.
(BTW this is an explanation for the low donations Martin gets - there is simply not enough people knowing the desktop distributions (and finding them attractive).)

So the question is: how can we change the situation?

Andreas