[os-infrastructure] Re: [os-engineering] Model discussion boileddown

[Joe Abbate]

Hi Alex,

Alex Hanshaw wrote:
>  The choice of platforms will have a significant impact in terms of
> tools etc. I do not think that the choice of platform affects the choice
> between model a) or model b) for content of the community repository.
>  Did you have a preference or an alternative model?

All else being equal, as Daryl pointed out, the "fresh" model "wins 
easily."  But I think the two models could be a false dichotomy because 
of an implied assumption:  that the Community Edition and the Enterprise 
Edition should always go hand-in-hand, in terms of platforms and 
features, except for time differences.  I think the editions serve 
different audiences and therefore *may* diverge in terms of platform 
coverage or features.  For example, shortly after the CA Ingres open 
sourcing announcement, Jonah Harris --who I believe had done some work 
with Emma--, wondered why there was no Ingres port to FreeBSD and he 
offered to do it.  Even though we couldn't provide much help (he asked 
for a porting document and the CL Spec), he apparently did it on his own 
and was even looking for testers (posts still in the forums).  But 
apparently Jonah's "itch" wasn't shared by many in the community or at 
CA/Ingres, so I believe nothing happened after that (last time I checked 
Jonah was working for EnterpriseDB).  Similarly, those two lonely 
individuals who were interested in building Ingres on VMS didn't appear 
to spark any further interest in the community.

To put it in extreme terms:  even if we had a Subversion client and a 
full set of tools on platform X (VMS, MVS, Commodore 64, the iPhone) 
would there be an interest from individuals not associated with Ingres 
Corp in porting, developing new features or enhancing exisiting 
functionality on that platform, and is it in Ingres Corp's interest to 
encourage such community activity.  Being open source and supporting a 
community doesn't mean we have to
support every platform in the Community Edition even if it's supported 
in Enterprise, and vice versa.  After all, how many open source 
enthusiasts are interested in enhancing products on commercial Unixes?

Joe