August 4, 2003

Attendees

• Chris Baker - Sun
• Alan DuBoff- Sun
• Rich Teer - Rite Online Inc.
• Phil Brown - x86 rep
• Bruce Riddle - x86 rep
• Steve Christensen - Sunfreeware
• Sascha Ferley - x86 rep

Rich Teer joined us today for his first conference call. Eric is stuck on a plane flight and can't attend. We were unable to bring Mariusz into the call.

CCD

Brief mention of the CCD and the intent to use the NetBSD tree in the future. This was for new people that were not attending the last meeting where this topic was discussed.

Multi-terabyte filesystems

Sascha asked for clarification, since MTB UFS support was announced in 8/03 for the SPARC platform only. Chris explained that demand for such a feature on Solaris x86 is currently too small, and the engineering investment required to "force" this functionality onto a 32 bit OS is simply not a cost effective use of resources. Hence Sun decided to focus on delivering new filesystem functionality in Solaris 10 where we will see parity across both platforms. In the short term Sun is looking to support storage e.g. via Fiberchannel.

Developer program

Alan asked how would the community feel about a developer program and what would be the preference, free or charging? The community feels that they would rather Sun charge something, so they have a program that can sustain on it's own. As an example of how Sun can help developers, Phil would ideally like to have access to at least relevant sections of Solaris source code to assist, for example, in developing a 3ware RAID controller driver. The topic of how Sun can engage with the community and how we can start providing more information to developers along this line was discussed.

Solaris for Dummies

Phil commented about Solaris for Dummies, more for sake of showing that there is actually demand enough for Solaris that we have the book.

Tech Data

Tech Data is going to be carrying V60/V65 and software as well. They are a volume channel reseller for Sun entry systems.

SE Toolkit

Richard Pettit was mentioned regarding the SE toolkit, and the topic was brought up if the community could pick up the pieces and work on and develop the SE toolkit and get it away from Adrian Cockcroft and Richard Pettit. Steve Christensen will contact Richard and find out what will be possible to work with. Steve has a relationship with Richard already and seems to be the likely candidate to handle such correspondence, we await his response and will report status after next meeting.

Bug submissions

Bug submissions for the community and how we move forward. Eric is working on a plan which is almost in place. Eric wasn't available to confirm details. We understand a chosen few community members will be able to process bugs from the community and submit "validated" bug reports to Sun, possibly with Alan screening them when received at Sun. (Note - a bug report does not guarantee an escalation or fix).

HCTS

Phil Brown, Bruce Riddle, and Sascha mentioned the need to help people better understand and run the HCTS so we have a higher success rate. Both Chris and Alan agreed and pointed out that they've raised this topic to management already.

AI - did the prtconf output upload feature for HCTS submission get fixed?

Device Drivers

At a previous meeting, John Loiacono mentioned about device drivers that had been acquired by Sun. The community has been speculating that these drivers are SCO drivers, but nobody has confirmed for certain that they are. The community asked if we could ask management if they would be willing to release the list of drivers that were acquired. Management really needs to consider the big picture before doing that. This could be an issue that doesn't get resolved because of legal reasons.

Zero Dollar Contractors

(This topic arose from Phil's suggestion that developers in the community could "volunteer" to join Sun as a contractor for no fee^* in order to have access to source, tools and other resources).

Procedures in Sun, be it hiring/managing a contractor, producing a Confidentiality Disclosure Agreement or processing an application for a source code license take a lot of time and effort. Finding easier ways to engage with the community on a variety of topics where exposure to confidential plans and Sun IP might be required was discussed - it was agreed that a more lightweight approach to the community is required, however no specific implementation or timeline was discussed.

* - editors note - this might be construed as a breach of the California minimum wage laws:-)

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