in case you haven't heard, the oi lead resigned, prompting some discussion.

Shame that such a good OS suffers from lack of developer support.

True. I had 151 on a stick and finally reformatted it the other day.

http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/oi_15...+Release+Notes

Release Date: September 4th, 2012

Big projects like OpenIndiana need dedicated teams when it comes to maintaining packages, patching security bugs, and even then ensuring all the projects work completely.

My thoughts in this...

Downsize the project.

The entire project could be stripped down to the bare minimum for a complete working system... like a Slackware Linux approach. Bare minimums with the most functionality, commonly used build tools, and then reside everything else to community maintained build scripts.

This way fewer people are required to maintain the project and keep it working.

However, this would also mean the killing off of dependency resolution, but it wouldn't be needed anyway if everything completely optional went assigned to the community and lists of dependencies would be named. Just as Slackware has SlackBuilds, OpenIndiana could have OIBuilds.

Patrick Volkerding who maintains Slackware even quoted Lao Tzu that said, "In order to lead, one must follow."

It's a sound option if there ever was one, and it would not only help out OI with maintaining itself, but it would allow for OI to become more community involved.

Note that there are already stripped down projects concurrently to OpenIndiana, like SmartOS, EON and Omnios. They all share the same core (illumos kernel and utilities) but are targeted to specialized platforms instead of a general purpose desktop, like OpenIndiana.

I'm sorry to learn of this.

One fairly trivial thing that could have a big return is some pizazz on the OpenIndiana website. I check back every once-in-a-while and see the same intro page that's always been there. It makes it look like it's dead and no one pulled the plug yet. The July 29 news was the first difference I remember seeing in years.

Yeah, and OI is a nice UNIX alternative OS as well. Illumos is a nice kernel also with good founding that has really pushed itself to be a real competitor.

I hope they get their act together and do something good because it would be a shame to see it all fall apart.

"Release Date: October 6th, 2012

oi_151a_prestable7 AKA oi_151a7 is a bug and security fix release. This is an ISO release."