[csw-maintainers] Our infrastructure on Solaris 9

[Peter FELECAN]

Laurent Blume <laurent at opencsw.org> writes:

> On 06/08/13 13:49, Peter FELECAN wrote:
>> A fact is part of a causality chain. What's the cause of this effect? Is
>> this not a myth, folklore, FUD, &c?
>
> Of course not. You just provided another example. If you believe that
> people running S9 are a myth, then just suggest dropping it
> altogether.

This what me and 3 others have proposed already.

My example was in fact a counter example: showing how is possible to run
an old version but not needing the bleeding edge.

> Me, I know there are people still running it, and they want to
> continue running it, their reasons, goodf or bad, are their own.
>
> But I think we all assume there are plenty of S9 out there.

Sure. My question was: who runs S9, needs the latest version for their
other software (see the contradiction?), cannot migrate to S10 or
better.

>> The point is that for such an infrastructure to exist it must be
>> maintained, administrated, &c. So it costs, indirectly, energy from
>> OpenCSW members. If someone wishes to take a contract job of this kind
>> he should provide also the material par of it.
>
> See below.
>
>> Per previous point, it's certainly not.
>
> Because for some reason you want to split them :-)

Huh? sorry, but I don't get the meaning of "split" in this context.

> My point is very clearly to outline something that would not cost
> OpenCSW when S9 packages start breaking, and somebody requests an
> update.
> Whatever is needed, money, hardware, human operators...
>
> If somebody wants to pay for such a support, OpenCSW very clearly has
> a very interesting infrastructure existing, so why not, a. make it
> somehow available, and b. make sure the result of those resources
> invested can be shared with others rather than have 1000s (okay, maybe
> just dozens) of people reinventing the same wheel separately,
>
> Ideally, OpenCSW could even allow those people to pool resources if a
> given package is requested several times.
>
>> Seriously, has any of the foundation's members a request of this kind?
>> If someone propose me a contract of this kind I will gladly provide a
>> quotation.
>
> Well, that's why I'm talking about, and there could be a page on
> OpenCSW advertising it.

I'm not sure that the foundation statuses permit this. But that is
another discussion.

> The goal is that nobody feels ripped off. If I got such a contract,
> and I could use OpenCSW's infrastructure, I'd made sure to make it
> clear what I need and what's needed in exchange.

I don't get how a voluntary project as ours can rip of people when we
consider to focus on the core of our activity which is to provide a
reasonably up to date FOSS stack on current versions of the Solaris
operating system.

> But that's all to make it clear to companies that if they seriously
> intend to continue using obsolete OS's, there's a cost. Since the
> human cost is so often ignored, a direct fee makes it clear, If it
> convinces them to switch to S10/11, it's obviously better. If they
> have no interest whatsoever, and just want some free lunch after
> having wasted so much money on expensive hardware, then it's their
> problem.

Agreed.

> But then again, maybe that's not possible, and maybe OpenCSW does not
> want to get involved in that (I'm aware there are very good arguments
> against, particularly with Oracle's attitude).

>From my stand point, OpenCSW doesn't want that. This is why, James'
proposition is a good proposition: old collection for old clunkers.
-- 
Peter