A Considered Future For OpenSolaris

You may have seen some of the news reporting of the OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) meeting that was held last Monday (I am an elected member of the Board). At a meeting with an unusually large number of community observers, we discussed how to respond to the 100% radio silence the OGB has experienced from the new owners of the OpenSolaris copyright and infrastructure. I believe we reached a balanced and well-considered conclusion and remain hopeful of a good outcome.

Given our mandate to facilitate the OpenSolaris community, a key requirement - called out explicitly in the governance documents for OpenSolaris - is to have a liaison provided by Oracle to help the OGB understand the direction they have chosen for both their infrastructure provision and their dominant coding activity. Without a liaison, it's impossible to discuss and escalate infrastructure issues (such as the fact that the membership management facilities on OpenSolaris.org do not match the new Constitution voted in by the membership this spring, or the fact that the main kernel for OpenSolaris is not available for commits on the public internet) as well as to understand the strategy around the code (such as the apparent de-emphasis of the OpenSolaris distribution, telegraphed by engineering changes and the lack of an on-time release).

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