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       1. March 2008

January 2006 OpenSolaris Community Newsletter

Overview

January 2006 marks about six months since the OpenSolaris project opened. The community continues to grow, which is demonstrated by a wide variety of metrics. More communities and projects are opening on the site, which is generating significant levels of conversation across the mail lists; the OpenSolaris Charter conversation has largely come to fruition and Constitution conversations have begun; new code has been released with still more on the way; contributions continue to be offered and integrated; and sections of the website have been updated to make it easier to participate.

January was also a time when this newsletter entered its second month of open operations, and we are starting to see some interest from community members who want to participate. The newsletter will live within the Content Project for now, and we hope that writers from the community will start to draft some news pieces we can highlight. The newsletter is still going out late, and for that we apologize. We are improving, however, and with next month's issue we'll be on time. Starting with the February issue, each newsletter will be published on the first day of the following month. So, the February issue will go out on March 1.

Community Status

Community Advisory Board

In late January, the OpenSolaris Community Advisory Board (CAB) and Solaris engineering came to agreement about the OpenSolaris Charter -- which basically outlines the terms of reference for the OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) and the OpenSolaris community. Additionally, the CAB has created a governance working group, invited community members Keith Wesolowski and Ben Rockwood to participate, and initiated conversations to complete the OpenSolaris Constitution. Just as the Charter was developed in the open on the CAB's list with community feedback, the Constitution will also be developed, debated, and ratified in the open.

User Groups

If you are interested in forming a user group or participating in a group in your area, check in on the OpenSolaris User Group Community. There are 26 groups now. Here are some highlights from January:

• The Atlanta OpenSolaris User Group met on January 10th. Topics of discussion included what's new in OpenSolaris, building & accessing OpenSolaris source, and lightening talks.
• Warangal OpenSolaris User Group met on January 12th. Topics of discussion included smart card source integration into OpenSolaris and issues around the NIT Warangal India students starting an OpenSolaris user group.
• The Front Range OpenSolaris User Group met on January 19th to discuss ZFS and hear from Mark Maybee, a Solaris engineer who has spent the last five years working on ZFS.
• The Sydney OpenSolaris User Group met on January 25th with talks from James McPherson on getting to know the SAN stack, Brendan Gregg on Zone resource controls, and Alan Hargreaves on non-debug OpenSolaris.
• The Silicon Valley OpenSolaris User Group met on January 26th with Max Bruning as the main speaker talking about OpenSolaris drivers.
• New OpenSolaris User Groups created recently include Germany, Turkey, and French.

Projects & Communities

New communities and projects are forming consistently on OpenSolaris. Here is a summary for January:

• The OpenSolaris Systems Administrators Community opened on January 11th for systems administrators, engineers, and architects to collaborate and enhance the manageability of OpenSolaris.
• TheEthernet bridge project opened on January 10th to maintain a software Ethernet bridge module for Solaris.
• The OpenSolaris ARC Community opened on January 13th and is responsible for driving the development, deployment, and use of transparent processes that guide the evolution of the OpenSolaris architecture, both at the macro (systems) and micro (project) levels.
• The Appliances Community also opened in January to sift the enormous configuration permutations of hardware, application software and OpenSolaris itself and to provide low cost, feature rich appliances for all (especially for the home and the small office).
• The OpenSolaris Storage Community opened on January 27th and is dedicated to the storage software in OpenSolaris.
• The OpenSolaris Content Project opened on January 30th. This project will provide a forum for community members interested in writing, editing, and reviewing a variety of OpenSolaris content.
• In late January, the PowerPC community launched a new community site called Polaris, which is a project name for the OpenSolaris port to the PowerPC architecture. The site is based on Trac open source software and has resources like wiki, ticket tracking, and project management.

Contributions

• The request-sponsor program continues to be successful. Four putbacks were integrated in January. At the end of the month we had a total of 34 contributions putback, two were awaiting sponsors, and 18 had sponsors and were in progress. A total of 76 request-sponsor contributions have been offered since launch. Full details on the contributions are in the request-sponsor report. Also, there is information about the request-sponsor process as well.
• We are beginning conversations about how to quantify contributions (code and non-code) and recognize those community members who contribute to the project, such as offering articles, artwork, documentation, code, etc. In the upcoming months, look for some new pages on the website that will start listing contributions.

Conversations

• Conversations on the OpenSolaris Jive discussion forums topped the 2 million views mark since the project opened. That's a significant level of conversation occurring on the community's 91 mail lists. Also, just recently, the forums attracted the highest number of unique visitors for one week: 57,577. What this means is that the OpenSolaris community conversation is continuing to grow and is engaging new people.

Technical Status

New Components

• The Network Storage consolidation published its source in the Storage Community on January 27, 2006.

Website Functionality

• The Downloads Page was updated to better reflect OpenSolaris as a whole. It was originally an ON consolidation page because at launch that was the only source code available. Now that more consolidation source code and binaries are available, a picture of the whole program hopefully provides easier navigation to find pieces that interest you. This page lists the Solaris consolidations and their availability. Where binaries and/or source are available, there are links to specific download pages that contain details about the technology and how to access and work with it.
• The Communities Portal was updated. The icons and information explaining how to get involved in OpenSolaris have moved to the Project Overview Page. In its place is information about what a community is and how to create and manage one. It also points to project information as a comparison.
• The Projects Portal was updated. It includes an explanation of what a project is and how to create and manage one. It points to the community information as a comparison.
• Input about these changes and/or other aspects of the website are welcome on the website-discuss email alias.

Projects

• Distributed SCM candidates are available for evaluation. Code can be downloaded here. We are seeking input about the candidates so please share your experiences working with them. For discussion, multiple threads about the candidates, status of the evaluation so far and the proposal for source code hosting are available on the tools-discuss alias.

Marketing Status

Metrics

• Seventy new members per week joined the OpenSolaris community throughout January. By the end of January, however, the rate of people joining grew to about 100 per week. The total for the community now stands at 11,400. The number of postings to discussion groups throughout the month was around 700 messages per week. More data can be found in the marketing community.

January's Newsletter Contributors

Editor: Linda Bernel
Contributors: Bonnie Corwin, Patrick Finch, Jim Grisanzio, Cyril Plisko.
The OpenSolaris Newsletter is a community effort, and all community members are welcome to participate. Simply send news items to program-team at opensolaris dot org. The editor will keep track of contributions and list the names of participants in each issue. Also, the editorial team is looking for feedback on the content and format of the newsletter. Please feel free to suggest changes.