/devices/pseudo/bitbucket@0:bitbucket

Earlier this evening I emailed my response to Bryan's email to OGB candidates on behalf of the DTrace Community. Here's the same text, for another grasp at the public record.

Licensing Questions:
* DTrace is one of only a small handful of OpenSolaris technologies that has actually
been incorporated into other operating systems. Thus, your position on dual-licensing
is very important to us; what is your position on dual-licensing in general?

Generally, I am against multiple-licensing. I think it creates more problems than it solves - unless none of the licenses are GPLv2 in which case I am prepared to consider such a proposal carefully.

I do not have a problem with forking, but I am concerned that the effect of licensing OpenSolaris under CDDL as well as another license will dilute or otherwise render void the benefits which I see the CDDL providing to the OpenSolaris community and others which with to make use of the CDDL.

* Do you agree with the conclusions and decrees of CAB/OGB Position Paper # 20070207?

Given the way which that particular discussion was progressing, I was glad to see that the OGB published that document. It addressed my concerns with that debate, and I agree with the conclusions therein. I am quite happy to consider GPLv3 as a potential license for OpenSolaris subject to my concerns above, however until GPLv3 has been formally released and discussion concerning it has calmed down, I see no reason to give it any consideration.

On the flip side, I was disappointed that the OGB felt that there was a need to issue such a position paper.

* The OGB is responsible for the representation of OpenSolaris to third parties. If a
third party were to inquire about incorporating DTrace into a GPL'd Program, what would
be your response or position?

As long as the third party was planning to re-implement DTrace from theoretical and algorithmic first principles rather than copy code, I would not have a problem with it.

Constitutional Questions:
* DTrace is currently a Community Group, but some could argue that it would  make more sense
for DTrace to be a Project in (say) the Observability Community Group.  In your mind, what is
(or should be) the difference between a Community Group and a Project -- and where should DTrace fall?

I'll answer the second question first - I think DTrace should be a fully fledged Community, since its facility is so far reaching.

Overall I think the current structures have worked reasonably well as a first approximation. Like any approximation, these need to be refined and since we've now got ~2 years worth of experience with the evolution of our OpenSolaris community I think the new OGB should take this as an item requiring their consideration.

To me, a Community is a group of people who have a collection of goals, some of which can be expressed as or worked towards as Projects.

*The Draft Constitution says next-to-nothing about where the authority lies to make or accept
changes to OpenSolaris -- only that Projects operate at the behest of Community Groups, and
that Community Groups can be "terminated" by the OGB.  In your opinion, where does or should
this authority lie?

I find this question to be vague. Are you (on behalf of the DTrace community) asking about changes to the software which forms OpenSolaris, or are you asking about changes to the way our community is constructed?

From a software perspective, if a Project can convince the OGB that their entity has sufficient value to be included or integrated into the OpenSolaris source tree, then I think that opinion should carry some weight or influence to the relevant ARC. Until or unless the ARC process changes, that is.

From the community perspective, I do not think that termination of a Community would necessarily be a good thing, unless there was serious conflict within that Community which prevented it from achieving its stated goals. I would want to see all members of the OGB engage with a Community which was believed to be in such a state, and try to give it a kickstart as a first response.

* And do you believe that the Constitution should or should not make this explicit? 

I think it should be made explicit, to remove doubt.

* Finally, under what grounds do you believe that a Community Group should be "terminated"?

(a) if the Community Group is unable to be kickstarted back to life (b) if the Community Group is riven by the inability to work cooperatively in pursuit of its stated aims

Following on from this, if a Community group has achieved its stated goals, I think it preferable that rather than terminating the group it was given the opportunity to re-form into something more appropriate which reflects the effect which it has had on the wider OpenSolaris community.

* The Draft Constitution says that Community Groups (and in particular, the Community
Groups' Facilitators) are responsible for "communicating the Community Group's status
to the OGB"; what does this mean to you?

(a) On an as-required basis, the OGB may request that a Community's leadership provide an indication of the health of the group. This might include an appraisal of whether the Community's stated goals are being addressed.

(b) "alive" or "dormant" or "dead" :)

* According to the Draft Constitution, "nominations to the office of Facilitator shall
be made by the Core Contributors of the Community Group, but the OGB shall not be
limited in their appointment to those nominated."  Under what conditions do you believe
that the selection of a Facilitator would or could fall outside of the nominations made by
a Community Group's Core Contributors?

Assuming that there are sufficient experienced people who join the Community, this should be a very rare occurrence. I define "experience" in case as "people who have worked on software engineering projects" - not a very tight definition, but one which should allow people who are new to get a foothold. Rather than appoint a Facilitator in such a circumstance, I would suggest that the Community accept a mentor.

* According to the Draft Constitution, "non-public discussion related to the Community
Group, such as in-person meetings or private communication, shall not be considered part
of the Community Group activities unless or until a record of such discussion is made
available via the normal meeting mechanism."  In your opinion, in the context of a
Community Group like DTrace -- where a majority of the Core Contributors spend eight to
ten hours together every work day -- what does this mean?  Specifically, what does it
mean to be (or not to be) "considered part of the Community Group activities"? 

Exactly what it says. Now, in the context of a tightly knit group of Core Contributors such as DTrace or FMA, I have absolutely no objection to continuing on as you have done in the past, however if you want something you decide to be part of the Community direction then you'll have to publicise it and get the Community members to agree.

* And in your opinion, what role does the OGB have in auditing a Community Group's activities?

Minimal, unless the Community Group requests it.

Potpourri:

* Historically, binary compatibility has been very important to Solaris, having been viewed
as a constraint on the evolution of technology. However, some believe that OpenSolaris should
not have such constraints, and should be free to disregard binary compatibility. What is
your opinion?

Binary compatibility must stay. It is one of the most powerful and tractable selling points for OpenSolaris. I understand the desire to move away from this guarantee, but I think such desires are based on a misunderstanding of the benefit which binary compatibility brings.

* If a third-party were to use and modify DTrace in a non-CDDL'd system, whose responsibility
is it to assure that those modifications are made public? To put it bluntly: is enforcing the
CDDL an OGB issue?

In the first instance, I would expect that the Initial Contributor would have the responsibility of enforcing the CDDL conditions. I also expect that the OGB could be used as a path for providing public support for such effort, but since the OGB has no ownership of copyrights or IP I do not expect that the OGB would have any other standing.

* Do you have an opinion on the patentability of software? In particular, what is the role of
the OGB -- if any -- if Sun were to initiate legal proceedings to protect a part of its software
patent portfolio that is represented in OpenSolaris?

I accept that patents on software exist, and there are justifiable reasons why they exist, but I am not in favour of patents on software.

Unless a member of the OGB was requested to provide expert testimony in patent litigation over OpenSolaris started by Sun, I do not expect that the OGB would have anything to do except keep up with the current status of the case. Any serious or in-depth comment would have to be referred to Sun.

* When you give public presentations, do you run OpenSolaris on your laptop? Have you ever
given a public demonstration of OpenSolaris technology?

I run Solaris Nevada on my laptop. I have done so since build 5. Prior to that I ran pre-FCS builds of Solaris 10.

I have presented/talked about ZFS and the Leadville stack, but I have not demonstrated their features per se. If I could just find a pc-card fibre channel hba .....

* And an extra credit question:  Have you ever used DTrace?  When did you most recently
use it, and why? The answers "just now" and "to answer this question" will be awarded no points. ;)

(a) yes. I even got the DTrace Iron Chefs to autograph my bound copy of the manual while at SunEngCon 2005.

(b) yesterday, to help a new engineer provide more data for his performance bug so that I could triage it appropriately.

(c) I'm certainly no expert at using DTrace and hit the manual a lot, but there's no way I want to go back to a pre-DTrace universe. Technorati tags: topic:{Technorati}[OpenSolaris] topic:{Technorati}[OpenSolaris Governing Board] topic:{Technorati}[DTrace] topic:{Technorati}[Bryan Cantrill] topic:{Technorati}[CDDL]