From Andy Tucker's Weblog: on opening up solaris (link via ongoing � Sunbeams, Father’s Day Edition) a good post asking for input into how to get Solaris to open source.
I like the questions and the attitude. As a Linux user it also does not worry me, in fact it is exciting for all. I hope the license allows cross fertilization (as Linux is GPL and I doubt Solaris will be then it will mostly be one way ie towards Linux).
I would have thought the best places to be looking for ways to do this would be from Mozilla, Apple, IBM and of course Sun with OpenOffice as examples of large corporates with large open source projects.
What will be needed to make it work?
- A roadmap
- Open bug reporting and monitoring
- Really good build environment
- Some good bite sized chunks of work to get people involved
- Stability. I don't imagine that the Mozilla mistake of a complete rewrite but I think a gentle start a good idea to let the process get sorted
- Focus on community building, support and getting installs out there
Not knowing a lot about Solaris I wonder to what extent the success will depend on getting Solaris to other hardware architectures - what is the current state of intel versions of Solaris as that will open it to many more hackers.
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