OpenSolaris ARC is Dead

I had tried to dial in to ARC today, but no luck. But then someone else pointed out that we have not seen any ARC cases since the tap was turned off.

In fact, I posted a query about this to the opensolaris-arc mailing list today, and I got back an interesting automated reply:

This mailing list is no longer active and accepting posts. Mailing
list archives can be found at
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/opensolaris-arc/. You can check
http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo to find another list to
which to send your email.


So, OpenSolaris ARC is dead. This has ramifications that go beyond just ON. Because there are other consolidations that we were promised were going to continue to be developed in the open: JDS, X11, and the pkg-gate. If the decisions for these technologies are no longer being made openly, or even the opinions being made available, then this makes Oracle's promise to continue to work with the community on them seem hollow.

So, what's left for "OpenSolaris" as so named? There are some code drops still being made. How long will that keep up? Are they continuing to take contribution from external parties? (I don't work on those gates, so I don't really know.) I'd like to know if the other consolidations have shut down too. At least the key decisions relating to those consolidations seem to have moved behind closed doors.

Comments

Fiver said…
I don't know. Same happening with the flagdays and heads-up pages? They too included non ON information. Clearly Oracle is creating a new definition of open source communication. Now I just wish my Oracle stock has seen the benefits.

---Bob
September 1, 2010 at 1:06 PM
Binary Crusader said…
pkg(5) development continues in the open as it has in the past, and external contributions are still being accepted as they were in the past.
September 2, 2010 at 4:52 PM
Anonymous said…
This shouldn't come as a surprise if you believe the leaked memo, which said "We will no longer post advance technical descriptions of every single ARC case by default, indicating what technical innovations might be present in future Solaris releases. We can at any time make a specific decision to post advance technical information for any project, when it serves a particular useful need to do so."
September 2, 2010 at 5:55 PM
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