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Hi Matt,<br>
<br>
And this is actually part of the problem for vendors. Many Oracle
engineers, including myself, have tried to get features and fixes
pushed upstream. While that may sound easy, the reality is that it
isn't! In many cases, it takes months for us to get something in or
we get shot down altogether. Here are the big issues we run into:<br>
<ul>
<li>If it's in support of Oracle specific technologies such as
Solaris, ZFS, MySQL Cluster, etc. we are often shunned away
because it's not Linux or "mainstream" enough. A great example
is how our Nova drivers for Solaris Zones, Kernel Zones, and
LDoms are turned away. So we have to spend extra cycles
maintaining our patches because they are shunned away from
getting into the gate.<br>
</li>
<li>If we release an OpenStack distribution and a year later, a
major CVE security bug comes along.. we will patch it. But is
there a way for us to push those changes back in? No, because
the branch for that release is EOL'd and burned. So we have to
maintain our own copy of the repos so we have something to work
against.<br>
</li>
<li>Taking a release and productizing it takes more than just
pulling the git repo and building packages. It requires
integrated testing on a given OS distribution, hardware, and
infrastructure. We have to test it against our own products and
handle upgrades from the previous product release. We have to
make sure it works for customers. Then we have to spin up our
distribution, documentation, etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>Lastly, just throwing resources at this isn't going to solve the
cultural or logistics problems. Everyone has to work together and
Oracle will continue to try and work with the community. If other
vendors, customers, and operators are willing to work together to
build an LTS branch and the governance around it, then Oracle will
support that effort. But to go it alone I think is risky for any
single individual or vendor. It's pretty obvious that over the
past year, a lot of vendors that were ponying up efforts have had
to pull the plug on their investments. A lot of the issues that
I've out-lined effect the bottom-line for OpenStack vendors. This
is not about which vendor does more or less or who has the bigger
budget to spend. It's about making it easier for vendors to
support and for customers to consume.<br>
</p>
Octave<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/5/2017 2:40 PM, Matt Riedemann
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:836fb1d0-79b9-1d05-8315-b63bb3b9dfd7@gmail.com"
type="cite"><br>
If you're spending exorbitant amounts of time patching in your
forks to keep up with the upstream code, then you're doing the
wrong thing. Upstream your changes, or work against the APIs, or
try to get the APIs you need upstream to build on for your
downstream features. Otherwise this is all just burden you've put
on yourself and I can't justify an LTS support model because it
might make someone's downstream fork strategy easier to manage. As
noted earlier, I don't see Oracle developers leading the way
upstream. If you want to see major changes, then contribute those
resources, get involved and make a lasting effect.
<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
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