Open Community vs. Open Code

snydeq writes "Recent silence regarding the future of OpenSolaris under Oracle's hand has InfoWorld blogger Savio Rodrigues questioning the relative importance of open code. 'Source code availability is a central factor in establishing trust in the open source community, as knowledge that the source is available can often allay fears about the future of a particular open source project or product. And yet, this trust can often be overstated,' Rodrigues writes. Members of the OpenSolaris community have been agitating for Oracle to clarify its plans for OpenSolaris in the wake of its acquisition of Sun, with some suggesting a fork as a way of severing ties. But, as Rodrigues points out, 'The community around an open source project or product can certainly be vibrant without having the resources to support a fork. In fact, this is true for many open source communities, which count numerous members, very few of whom would be qualified to develop the open source project further should a fork occur. Worse, even fewer would be interested in doing so.'"

Forked to death

[aws4y]

I am wondering, why OpenSolaris should even continue?, its not like there is no open UNIX available for x86, you have the BSD family, and even though its not a UNIX you have GNU/Linux. If you are running on Sparc hardware it may be worth it but methinks that oracle might have been interesting in Solaris as a way of getting away from linux.

Re:Hmmm

[0123456]

Also, haven't Oracle been supporting btrfs development? That may not be doing that much longer if they now own ZFS.

Obviously development would continue without such support as it is GPL and is important for Linux in the future, but perhaps not at the same rate.

Re:Free as in Future

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish that were true about upgrading even most of the time. I have been using Linux off and on since the Yggdrasil Mitsumi CD/Floppy install days (mostly Ubuntu/Mint lately), and it had been more off than on until the last few years. One big downer is the unreliability of Ubuntu upgrades, and the usual rash of bad experiences reported on the fora when a number of folks try to upgrade instead of re-install. I have had enough bad experiences of my own that I don't even bother trying any more - I just keep /home on a separate partition, and point to that with the new installation.

But then there are issues with all those configuration "dot directories" having configuration conflicts that seem to accumulate over the versions. My wife's Gnome desktop has gotten really strange since Edubuntu 5.04 days up through Mint 7. I keep thinking I will create a new Id for her under the current version, and copy over her files, and make sure all her favorite desktop links carry over. And that is after each upgrade when I have to re-install all the little "enhancements" she depends on such as the Windows fonts she has in all the old class materials she has been using for the last 10 years or so in teaching first grade (gotta have that MS Comic Sans to show her kiddies the lowercase "a" the way she teaches them to write it, not the way most other fonts render it), old Lexmark Z515 driver I found some years ago, and not since, Wine for the educational programs (with suitable scripts/links) she has been using since Windows 95, etc.

And a recent "upgrade" on my main personal PC to Grub 2 (blindsided me there - gotta curb my ever-hopeful new release fever long enough to read ALL those pesky Release Notes) with Kubuntu 9.10 really hosed up my separate /boot partition when I decided to try that on a new partition. I had to re-install Mint 7 just to get my multi-boot setup back to a usable state (that took a lot less time than trying to figure out Grub2 and how to make it play nice with my long-standing /boot partition - I did not like Kubuntu 9.10's "blobby" look/feel anyway).

Although I use Linux for personal computing 98% of the time, this is such an issue since I still have to keep XP around to use some old, and occasionally new, Windows software since that version is more of a "constant" than Linux which has so MANY different distributions/versions (yeah, I am something of a distro hopper). They might as well be considered equivalent to all those Windows editions you sneer at, only there are so many more of them. Actually, it strikes me that Linux is at a significant disadvantage in that respect since there are so many issues with having the right library/gcc versions.

I do this for "fun", but certainly could not suggest it to non-geek types as something to depend on vs Windows with its support eco-system that most ordinary users can "connect" with much more easily (albeit for a significant cost in money terms vs my costs in time). Check out the Linux Hater's blog for a view from someone who seems to understand (with zero tolerance) the issues all too well: http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/

RO