[OpenIndiana-discuss] OpenIndiana roadmap

[Sašo Kiselkov]

On 02/19/2013 12:41 PM, "Weiergräber, Oliver H." wrote:
> Moreover, providing security fixes has been a defined goal of OpenIndiana right from the beginning.
> 
> See the FAQ:
> 
> Q: Will OpenIndiana provide security and bug fixes to their stable releases?
> A: Yes, absolutely. We view this as one of the key missing features that prevented widescale adoption of OpenSolaris in production environments.
> 
> Precisely.
> 
> I think a small fee for security fixes (on the order of, say, $50/y) would appear quite acceptable even to private or academic OI users.

It might seem like a fine idea for a business, but for me this is a deal
breaker. I have lots of OI systems, some for personal use, some for
business use, and all of them need security fixes. I don't want to have
to pay for support on machines which generate zero revenue.

Also, how do you enforce this? Will you make access to security
repositories subscriber-only? And how will you manage subscriptions? How
will you manage machine IDs? This necessarily forces you to close off
portions of OI code, which is a dangerous path to take.

My personal hopes for OI were to have something like the Debian model,
where all the source code, community support and security fixes are open
and free. Then, if somebody wants to provide additional expertise on top
of that, be it consulting or direct commercial support (with phone
calls, e-mail/chat support, remote administration, SLAs and all that
jazz), be my guest. But keep the code open.

If OmniOS can do it (http://omnios.omniti.com/wiki.php/ReleaseNotes),
then OI can too.

Cheers,
--
Saso