[OSUNIX-dev] OSUNIX as ILLUMOS replacement?

[Giovanni Tirloni]

2011/4/15 Stamos Tolias <stamtolias at gmail.com>:
> 2011/4/11 Damian Wojsław <damian at wojslaw.pl>:
>> Quoting Stamos Tolias <stamtolias at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> Hello OSUNIX list,
>>>
>>> I've been very dissatisfied what is happening at ILLUMOS and I found
>>> many many others which are suffering from Garrett D'Amore/NEXENTA and
>>> their narrow-minded, ZFS centric dictatorship and cathedral
>>> development model.
>>> We are going to fork ILLUMOS and make it the place we think will be
>>> the real successor to OPENSOLARIS with a different development model
>>> where multiple equals, each owning a functionality, work together in a
>>> bazaar of ideas and dreams.
>>> Would OSUNIX be willing to become an ILLUMOS replacement and host us?
>>>
>>> Stamos
>>>
>>
>> Would you please state and give examples?
>
> I'm not free to give much examples because many of them have only be
> provided under NDA from the companies involved willing to sponsor a
> fork of Illumos. But I can say this:
> Garrett has driven everyone who is not of value for Nexenta off the project.
> He's saying he'll welcome every project and contribution but when it
> comes to the guts he and Nexenta are not willing to share control.
> With him as leader and Nexenta as almighty power there won't be a port
> to MIPS or other architectures.
>
> With him as leader there won't be a participation of other major
> companies like Nvidia or AMD. Both already said that they will not
> invest or support Illumos as long as Garrett leads the project as
> benevolent dictator who can block contributions. Both companies are
> not interested in sponsoring Illumos to save Nexenta the licensing
> costs if Garret does not cease his omnipotent control.
>
> With him as leader there won't be participation of companies which may
> compete with Nexenta in the same market. You may not have noticed by
> Nexenta controls and employs all of the advocates who can block
> contributions.
>
> Garrett ruined many opportunities to grow Illumos by driving value
> people and companies away or force them into submission. The only way
> to move forward is to fork out of this situation, make a clean start
> and get sponsored by the companies Garrett has driven away.
> Fortunately Garrett has created such as mess that we have ample
> funding to run the fork :-)

If this is happening, I think a reasonable approach is for these
companies to take the risk and deliver code anyway. If the
OpenSolaris/Illumos codebase is so valuable to them, I don't think
they should be held back by either Illumos leadership or any other
problem. Companies use *BSD all the time and contribute what they can
back.. if it's not accepted, too bad, they're still reaping the
benefits internally. If the contribution was reject and it was so
great, other individuals will point it out to the key holders. Public
scrutiny works great.

The problem with OpenSolaris and, from what you say, Illumos, seems to
be basically the attempt to create collaboration artificially and
hidden agendas. The best open source projects that I know start with
individuals (either employed, as hobby, etc) contributing code. It'll
take a while and that's fine.

-- 
Giovanni Tirloni