Lookin' back on how it was / in the year gone by / and the good times that I had / makes today seem rather special / So much has changed.
Last June 14th, we, ERI engineers was busy with preparing for the 2005 Beijing Internal Software Conference - install machines, configure Solaris 10 demos (DTrace. Container, Looking glass etc), invite speakers and so forth. In the scene of the conference, there was a huge banner "OpenSolaris Opens the New Era of Software Industry" in Chinese. We have Solaris engineers introduce Container, DTrace, OpenSolaris to about 200 audience altogether. In the booth, we have shown the OpenSolaris portal and source code to them. It's a great kick-off.
After that Si-yuan Tian initiated the opensolaris.org/os/community/chinese_users/">OpenSolaris Chinese User Community and I started the opensolaris.org/os/community/device_drivers/">Device Driver Community. Also opensolaris.org/os/community/os_user_groups/bjosug/">Beijing OpenSolaris User Group led by Victor Hu went live soon.
At meantime, we (John Jiang from SDN China, Roger Dong from DMG, Si-yuan Tian and me from OPG) initiated the proposal of integrating OpenSolaris into OS curricula in China universities. It routed to Sinyaw, Jason Tong, and finally fall into my major responsibility after I transfered to the GENO/ERI on University Program. And the China OpenSolaris University Program comes into being. The key initiatives are
:
#1. The 8th China OS Teachers’Conference
#2. Solaris internal training & Workshop
#3. Solaris/OpenSolaris Curricula
a) Plug in for lecturing
b) Lab course plug in material
c) Full feature OpenSolaris lecturing
d) Full feature OpenSolaris lab course
e) Standard Textbook
f) Lab course Textbook
g) Advanced OpenSolaris OS Course
#4. Publications
a) Source code analysis project
b) Solaris internal II translation
#5. Attraction programs & activities
a) OpenSolaris DVD packages
b) Curricula workshops at 6 cities
c) TechDays, workshop, seminar, tea talk, etc.
#6. OpenSolaris collaboration projects (TBD)
a) OpenSolaris bug fix/RFE?
b) Programming contest (leveraging "University Challenge"?)
#7. Supporting Infrastructure
a) OpenSolaris open labs;
b) Website (internal & OpenTech.org.cn);
c) Cross-department coordination mechanism;
d) Technical advisory board, etc.
Up to now, there are 27 universities are teaching Solaris curricula to about 5000 students. Besides, there are around 10,000 developers, students and professors attended our past events and got informed of OpenSolaris.
Time flies. We feel confident that OpenSolaris is making difference in China and we are grateful to those who have contributed to those changes. It's long list to name them, let's thank speakers on User Group meeting:
Sin-Yaw Wang
Erik Nordmark
Mark J. Nelson
Max Bruning
Vincent Liu
Vincent Zhang
Of course, we could be better. Wishlist for the OpenSolaris include:
- Hardware support
- The exact hardware compatibility list from Sun, 3rd party
vendors and external developers. This helps us to align efforts
throughout the world, no duplicate here and somewhere.
- The audio driver on my laptop (VGN-S48CP/B). It sucks when I need play the video ads and demos at conference and TechDays.
- More friendly Installer. No customer complaints that Solaris Installer has removed their Windows and Linux partition any more.
- Configurable Makefile which enable developers customize
OpenSolaris source code for special fields. Some trivial modules takes
up so many resources for a desktop with 512M memory.
- More popular open source applications are necessary.
- More engineering support from OPG China. After 1 year, active
OpenSolaris participants are still less. We need more engineers to
support the fast growing local communities of professors, students and
developers. The management support will activate the shy engineers.
- Mirror site of OpenSolaris.org, Blastwave, Sunfreeware and companion CD in China. The traffic cost from China is not a small number for the poor developers and students. But they will grow up to decision makers in no long future.
- Friendly desktop distribution based on OpenSolaris (x86 device
support, pupolar softwares, user experience and light load system)
- Customized distribution based on OpenSolaris for embedded
systems, and education purpose (Configurable Makefile)
- Secure distribution on OpenSolaris
- Huge OpenSolaris user community and productive developer
community
