[OpenIndiana-discuss] Our position within the Illumosphere

[Tom Kranz]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

First of all - impressive work everyone, I'm amazed at the progress
that's been made.

I'm pretty much in complete agreement with everything you've said,
Alasdair. As a brand Illumos strikes me as weak, and as it's supposed to
be a 'core' and not a distribution, I don't see the reasoning for tying
a distribution in to it.

If they wanted to do that, surely they'd just use Nexenta? Or do they
want a 'reference distribution' to avoid it looking like this is just a
repeat of OpenSolaris, with the Nexenta guys replacing Oracle? ;-) In
which case, why announce it as just ON and not a full distribution right
from the get-go?

I think it makes a lot of sense to keep a separate 'identity' - there's
a lot of good work that's been going on from people like Joerg, and I
think it'll be easier to gather existing distros around Illumos if
there's no hint of a 'favoured' distribution.

Not that anyone has much of a real choice now anyway .....

I'd be interested to hear if they've asked any of the established
distros (like Schillix) to also be sub-projects?

And I think you definitely should be on the Illumos admin council. If
nothing else you deserve more recognition for stepping up and making
stuff happen - but I think it'd also give the project a great way to
exert influence over Illumos' decisions. I think that model (of having
key people from each distro that uses the Illumos core on their admin
council) is the best way to balance diverse needs from downstream
distros against what they want to put into Illumos - I'm thinking
specifically of contentious new features like IPS (ick) or AI (gah).

I also think OpenIndiana is a great name, and if Oracle do complain,
think of all the publicity ;-)

You could even have a logo that was of Indy's had, in the Red Hat style
- - go for the high score and get sued by Oracle, Red Hat *and* LucasArts
at the same time ;-)

Cheers,
TOM

Alasdair Lumsden wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> We're facing one of our first big decisions as a project, and that's where we fit in with Illumos.
> 
> I had a 20 minute call with Garrett at the weekend, and he stated that he would like OpenIndiana to consider becoming an Illumos sub-project.
> 
> He was proposing one of us join the Illumos Admin council and one of us join their developer council. Garrett had nominated myself for the Admin council should I accept (which I haven't done yet), and was asking for me to nominate one of us to the developer council.
> 
> He also was hoping we'd consider renaming to something Illumos-ey, to become the official Illumos reference distribution. He also hopes we'll use the Illumos bug tracker so bugs can be easily swapped from onnv to the distro and vice versa, and probably hopes we'd use their Redmine CMS for our homepage/wiki/etc.
> 
> Now, having discussed this with a few on IRC, my thoughts are that:
> 
> 1. If Illumos has an official distribution, then that's just maintaining the same status-quo that we had with Sun. I believe Illumos should remain distribution neutral, favouring no single distribution. I don't think they should make the same mistake Sun did.
> 
> If Illumos has an official distribution it shows favouritism which may dissuade other distributions from forming or created negative feelings.
> 
> If Illumos remains distribution-neutral it also avoids confusion.
> 
> To quote the leaked memo:
> 
> "As you all know, the term “OpenSolaris” has been used colloquially to
> refer to any or all of a collection of source code, a development
> model, a web site, a logo, a binary release, a source license, a
> community, and many other related things. "
> 
> We don't want to repeat this. 
> 
> OpenIndiana is a distribution.
> 
> Illumos is a kernel and core userland tools.
> 
> 2. Regarding the name, my personal feeling is that I'm fond of OpenIndiana and don't feel a need for change. It is somewhat hard to type, but there's "oi" for shorthand which is half the length of "osol" ;)
> 
> I'm not a fan of the name Illumos - I feel OpenIndiana sounds more palatable to pointy haired bosses when you say "I'd like to replace our OpenSolaris server with OpenIndiana" compared to "I'd like to replace our OpenSolaris server with Illumos". Branding is (sadly) important.
> 
> One of the things I'm keen to do before we announce is fund a designer to come up with a range of possibilities for designs/logos/identities for the project which we can vote on. I'm happy to sponsor this. Going with Illumos might stifle things like this a bit as Illumos also has its own branding.
> 
> I'm open to renaming the project - just say. The pros are that we have the domains for OpenIndiana, it's not trademarked, nor do Oracle/Sun have any trademarks on "Indiana" as a name - it was only ever a project codename. The cons are that Indiana was used by Sun/Oracle and they could bark at us even without any legal grounds for doing so.
> 
> Some of Garrett's suggestions for potential name changes include Solumos and Siralos (Solaris backwards).
> 
> 3. Project infrastructure wise, I like our wiki far more than Redmine (the illumos one). Using their bug tracker could be nice, but it isn't necessary. We can have our own website developed. We already have mailing lists.
> 
> 4. I do feel Illumos has a considerable talent pool and now that Oracle have closed the onnv gate, Illumos is more important than ever. So collaboration and working together is essential. How we do this effectively is open to discussion.
> 
> So what I was thinking of proposing was:
> 
> OpenIndiana becomes a sub project of Illumos, but only if any other distribution can do the same. This is to benefit from the Illumos foundation non-profit entity (saves us doing it ourselves). It shows the two projects are collaborating closely and are tied together.
> 
> We maintain our independence however in most other regards - separate governance council for ourselves, do not adopt an Illumos-ey name, keep our own infrastructure, own website, own logo, etc. Potentially share a bug tracker.
> 
> I would not like to be unilaterally appointed to the Illumos admin council just because I took the initiative to start this distro. That's not community - that's not democracy or openness. I would however like to represent our interests within Illumos as we depend upon them and we should be exerting influence over their decisions.
> 
> To that end I think it might be an idea for us to suggest they set up a "Distribution Council". Community distributions could appoint members to this council to represent their interests within Illumos.
> 
> Those are my thoughts thus far, and I'm opening the floor to debate. Get stuck in!
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Alasdair


- --
Tom Kranz
Email: tom at gaeltd.com    Skype: siliconbunny
Mobile: 07779 149281    Phone/fax: 01344 773240
http://www.gaeltd.com        http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomkranz
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iEYEARECAAYFAkx0c38ACgkQCaTe3ZK74hm8iACgixHE5oPplN/Swo1Ae6iHVh9i
DB4An05FVRy8Qe4O5KItdR8RBARCEfYA
=0uRd
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----