Open Community: Opensolaris, Open Source, and the Future of Software
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Sun Net Talk On Demand: Open Community: OpenSolaris, Open Source, and the Future of Software [1 February 2006] Length : 42 minutes Sharing destroys...barriers, that is. Hear the latest on OpenSolaris and open source, and why participation, community, and sharing are the future of software. Check out this Sun Net Talk on Demand as Sun experts survey the fast-changing open source landscape. Learn how Sun's open source philosophy is driving such innovations as the Solaris Enterprise System, and why OpenSolaris.org has racked up 26,000 downloads, 10,000 members, and 32 community projects in just six months. Net Talk Agenda • Software Economic Upheaval • Myths of Open Source • Open Source Business Strategies • The Effect on Solaris • The OpenSolaris Community • Participate! Speakers: • Hal Stern, CTO Sun Software • Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer • Stephen Hahn, Senior Staff Engineer, Solaris Kernel Development 1 From communications.sun.com/dialog/eventdescription.do#1 30 March 2006 Open Community: OpenSolaris, Open Source, and the Future of Software Get Offers Feedback Program Console Features Segments List Save Slides Speakers Hal Stern Chief Technology Officer Software Group Simon Phipps Chief Open Source Officer Stephen Hahn Senior Staff Engineer Kernel Development Group Software Economic Upheaval • Open source as mechanism • Initial vs. incremental innovation • Distribution vs. compensation • Coase's Penguin Open Source In A Nutshell • A community of developers • Sharing a code commons • Creating “wealth” from the commons • Enriching the commons in the process • The “craft guilds” rediscovered... • ... Connected Capitalism Dealing With The Mythology • Contribution • Anarchy • Security • Administration • Survival OSS Business Strategies 1) “Dual” License > Differentiation of 6) Stewardship open source and > Drives standards, commercial developer capture > Add value to base & sell 2) Subscription 5) Embedded > Combined > Use as a minor offering of part within software and another product support 3) Hosted 4) Consulting > Software as a > Enterprise service integration > With or without consulting data DNA Triangle Moti vation License Governance Most Freedom for Most People • Class A Licenses – Promote freedom to innovate – Does not protect the commons • Class B Licenses – Balances both freedoms – Protects the commons – Leaves innovators free to do their work • Class C Licenses – Promote constant growth of the commons – Limit the freedom of the developer Sun's Activities • Open source projects – OpenSolaris, OpenSSO, NetBeans, Glassfish, Jini, JXTA, OpenOffice.org... • Open standards work – OASIS OpenDocument Format (ISO)... • Software user interfaces – GNOME, accessibility... • Patents covenants to create “open space” Architecture and Rate of Change • Maintaining architecture stability • Accommodating high rate of change • “Waistlines” for innovation Developing as a Community • Openness presents a challenge: 20 years of software development that worked – How to change safely? – Not that much distance on shared values • Needs communication – Explain and modify existing tools and processes – Learn about newer tools and development models – Describe architecture and influence on design • Being explored by cross-community team Effect on Solaris Why does openness matter? ● New and earliest chance to affect product development or evaluate risk to current use ● Direct communication with implementors ● Active technical contributors can influence technical programs Intent is to extend participation in a predictable software development process • A credible inquiry should result in a timely and appropriate resolution The OpenSolaris Community Browse Source code FAQs Communities Discussions Download Source Code Binaries Tools Participate IRC #opensolaris Discussions Blogs Communities User Groups Buttons By the Numbers 10,000+ Members (1000+ Sun) 32 community projects 55 submissions, 17 integrations 24 user groups worldwide 26,000+ downloads SchilliX, BeleniX community distros available FreeBSD DTrace port underway Data available at http://opensolaris.org/os/community/marketing/metrics/ Participate! opensolaris.org USE interesting profile blog IMPROVE evangelize del.icio.us/tag/opensolaris EVANGELIZE user groups (OSUGs) irc # opensolaris flickr opensolarisenthusiast buttons Final Thoughts Hal Stern Chief Technology Officer Software Group Simon Phipps Chief Open Source Officer Stephen Hahn Senior Staff Engineer Kernel Development Group Next Steps OpenSolaris community site http://opensolaris.org/ OpenSolaris primary discussion list [email protected] Open Source www.sun.com/opensource Open Standards www.sun.com/standards Speaker blogs http://blogs.sun.com/ {stern,webmink,sch} Hear from the Experts Sun Online Discussion Programs Sun Net Talk Series Online, on demand seminars sun.com/nettalk Sun Expert Exchange Live chat forums sun.com/expertexchange Thank You! Sun Expert Exchange “OpenSolaris Participation, Licensing, and Innovation” Wednesday, February 1, 2006 (Q): How does the OpenSolaris team expect important kernel updates to flow to the various distributions? Linux is terrible in that an important bug gets fixed in mainline, but the distros have to backport the patch themselves (sometimes they never do). Stephen Lau (A): This is indeed a problem we see upcoming. One thing we have talked about is figuring out a way to track bugs upstream from bugs.opensolaris.org to various other distributions bug trackers (like Nexenta for example). Currently, most distributions pull the ON kernel source periodically which brings in the most current kernel updates. So if we have upstream bug tracking, it will enable us to at least notify upstream distributions that an important bug has been fixed in mainline. Obviously, we can't force them to pull in the bugfix. This becomes more complicated once Nevada is released as a stable "Solaris 11" and we release security fixes/patches - and this is something we definitely need to think about. (Q): What is your thought on contributing code to open source product that's "owned" or "managed" or "shared" by competitors? From a different angle, to develop OpenSolaris on Power, do you want help from IBM? If so, what will you do to make that happen? (i.e. why would IBM do that) Liane Praza (A): Sun has contributed to a number of open source projects which are sponsored by competitors (e.g. Derby). From an OpenSolaris perspective, we're happy to include anyone who wants to contribute and can sign a contributor agreement! There's already a thriving community working on getting OpenSolaris running on PowerPC. (Q): Can OpenSolaris be built in several different ways to meet the special needs of database servers or web site servers, etc? This will make system administrators' work much easier. Thanks! Al Hopper (A): In general, you don't need a specific build of OpenSolaris to support different and varied workloads. There has been a long term goal within OpenSolaris to eliminate requirements for tuning of kernels. There is also an active community interested in building a "minimal" OpenSolaris which could be used in embedded applications and small memory type appliances. Typical applications would be dedicated firewalls etc. Search for "appliance" at opensolaris.org . (Q): Any chance Open Solaris can be run on a SUNpci3 card in a Sparc based box? Stephen Lau (A): Solaris 10 supports SunPCI3 as a host. I'm not sure if it is supported as a client. But Solaris 10 was supported on a SunPCI3, so I would hope we would continue to support it. If it doesn't, we would certainly like to know why so we could fix it. If you try it and it doesn't work, please file a bug so we can work on it. (Q): Does Solaris support superpaging? Dan Price (A): Yes, very well. We tend to call them "large" pages, so it took us a while to work out what you meant. The answer is yes, we support them for heap, stack, text and the kernel nucleus is allocated from a large page (typically 4MB). On our newest SPARC systems, we support 8K, 64K, 512K, 4M, 32M, and 256M pages, and the system will by default automatically supply them to applications as needed. On Opteron systems, we support 4K and 2M pages. You can always find out what pages are supported by using the “pagesize -a” command. (Q): Why has Linux compatibility (Janus project) taken so long to be available in OpenSolaris? Liane Praza (A): The BrandZ project is the name of the project we're pursuing to support running native Linux (and other types of) applications. It doesn't yet meet the criteria for integrating into the Nevada consolidation (it's not done yet!), so remains a separate project. We encourage you to look around the community for more information. (Q): Can you point to any commercial uses of OpenSolaris today and any web sites powered by OpenSolaris ?? Dan Price (A): I think the question is better phrased as: is anyone running a web site using an OpenSolaris distribution? The answer is yes, at least for users of "Nevada" which is Sun's SX distribution. That said, I don't know that I can disclose the name of that company without lawyers in my office :) . (Q): There is not much literature on OpenSolaris Internal to help interested hackers, as compared to Linux. Are there any portals that are built to consider this matter? Stephen Lau (A): Please see my answer I just posted on the Nevada community for some references. The Solaris Internals book is also a great reference. We would love to see more documentation/literature on this though. The Documentation community is probably the best place to discuss literature/docs. (Q): What build of JDS is supported on Nevada 31? Liane Praza (A): Sun does not offer support for any Nevada releases currently. However, JDS based on Gnome 2.6 is included in Nevada 31. The new JDS based on Gnome 2.10 is available through the JDS community. (Q): What is the advantage of pushing Xen for Solaris instead of using Zones? Dan Price (A): We're not pushing Xen instead of Zones. We're planning to do both. The goal is to offer our customers a portfolio of virtualization products, and help them to pick the ones best suited to their specific needs.