[OpenIndiana-discuss] Martin Bochnig

[Andrew Gabriel]

On 15/04/2015 22:23, Ivar Janmaat wrote:
> Hello,
>
> In my humble opinion there are several questions which Illumos might 
> want to answer because they are relevant to others as well.

I supply some answers, but I suspect you are thinking Firefox is part of 
illumos, but it is not, so these questions/answers are not relevant to 
Firefox.

> 1. Which support levels and services can a distro, distro developer, 
> partner or sponsor expect from Illumos?

*Expect*? - none direct from Illumos.
Support is contributed to Illumos by (for the most part) the consumers 
of illumos, i.e. the distros, and other interested individuals.

People looking for supported solutions need to go to one of the distros 
which provides support, such as OmniTI, Nexenta, Delphix, Joyent, etc. 
and check out what's required to get support coverage.

> I believe answering this question in a transparent manner on the 
> website would be beneficial for all distro providers. It would be the 
> basis of trust and a equal playing field. A distro developer might be 
> a single person who can add code to Illumos while working for Illumos 
> distro partner so these roles might be different.
> 2. Is distributing binaries of opensource code with distro specific 
> patches or configurations in the sourcecode and not providing the this 
> source code in violation with the Illumos licensing model?

Illumos is only source code. Binaries are created by the individual distros.
(There were some expections for the closed source binaries supplied by 
Sun, but these are mostly now replaced with opensource. The aim is to 
have no binaries in Illumos.)

You need to check the license which applies to each of the source files 
you use. Some will allow you to modify+distribute and keep the changes 
private (such as the Mozilla public license, I think), others will not 
(such as CDDL, I think).

> 3. Will Illumos put limitations on a distros business model when using 
> Illumos sourcecode?

Yes, as covered by the various licenses in each part of the source code 
(mostly but not exclusively CDDL).

> I try to structure this discussion so we can move forward.

As Firefox is not part of Illumos, I don't think these answers will help 
at all for that purpose.

It is up to each distro if they ship Firefox at all (not all do), and if 
so, which Firefox they ship. I can't imagine any distro shipping a 
closed source Firefox binary. They all build all the items they ship 
from source, to ensure they have a completely compatible set of 
parts/versions, and to ensure that other people can take over if one 
person doesn't continue building an item for any reason.

What Martin could do if he wants to ship his binary for OpenIndiana is 
to setup an IPS repo with it in, which people can pull in to their own 
installations if they want to, and/or a simple tar-file package which 
could be used on other distros. That leaves the choice to the end-user, 
which is where is has to be for a binary built and maintained by just 
one person with no sources or build instructions available publically.

He hints that he wants to make money from his firefox builds, but I 
doubt that's viable. The market for the product is too small and in the 
desktop space comprises mostly people who want to run free opensource 
software, which doesn't match what Martin is offering. It would only be 
viable if there was a company which wanted to launch a product based on 
an open Solaris desktop that needed Firefox, and they were willing to 
pay for support, but no company would ever do that based on a 1-man 
support organisation - support needs to be provided by enough people 
that loss of some of them doesn't risk the business venture.

-- 
Andrew