[OpenIndiana-discuss] OpenIndiana, from opensolaris background...

[Guido Berhoerster]

* Edward Ned Harvey <shill at nedharvey.com> [2010-10-14 16:19]:
> That's really excellent, cuz that was always a downfall for opensolaris.
> "You want what?  Security bugfixes?  Downgrade to solaris 10 and pay, and
> you can get those updates."  The end result was IT discomfort and fear to
> put either one into public internet exposure.  I mean ... ubuntu, rhel,
> centos, everything out there ... Have simple reliable update managers so you
> can easily get the latest apache bugfix etc, as they become available.
> Critical, IMHO, for production.
> 
> That's what you're talking about, right, in OI?

Yes.

> So for packages such as apache, etc, I presume Illumos is doing something to
> pull in and build those publicly available packages and so forth.  Right?

No, Illumos just provides a replacement for OS/Net. We pull in the
other consolidations (e.g. SFW which provides Apache) from Oracle.

> And for things like ZFS, it's just a matter of waiting for the release cycle
> that Oracle determines, and pull in those updates, just like any other
> packages such as apache etc.  Right?

ZFS is part of OS/Net and Illumos will be our upstream, so you'd
have to ask them what their plans regarding ZFS are. For all
other consolidations Oracle is our upstream and our development
releases track their bi-weekly builds (currently we are a bit
behind).
Exact policies are still being worked out, but our development
releases will likely only contain backported fixed for very grave
issues, generally we will track upstream and stay compatible as
far as possible.
Stable releases will however receive either our own or backported
security and bug fixes during their lifetime.

> > Firstly, only ONNV development has been closed for now and
> 
> What precisely is included in ONNV?  Kernel, dtrace, ZFS, and some other
> things I presume.  Right?

Yes, kernel and userland, see
http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/ for the
details.

> > Illumos is there to replace it and aims to innovate on its own.
> 
> You don't mean that Illumos plans to develop non-oracle branches of the
> kernel & ZFS & dtrace I assume ...

Currently Illumos is replacing remaining closed bits with
opensource equivalents, but they have stated their intent to
innovate on their own (while valuing backwards-compatibility), see
e.g. http://gdamore.blogspot.com/2010/08/tap-is-turned-off.html
For a discussion of their future plans I'd refer you to
discuss at lists.illumos.org

-- 
Guido Berhoerster