Alvaro Lopez: “I’m used to having all those facilities [of apt-get] available, and it is really hard living without it after having used it for a while. It’s like travelling in a time machine: using Slackware back in 1995. The proposal I’m about to expose tries to fill this huge usability gap. It tries to bring all those facilities to the OpenSolaris world in order to make Linux users feel at home when they switch to OpenSolaris and, at the same time, drastically improve the new users experience. My proposal is to begin a new Debian architecture based on OpenSolaris.” (Via Tim Bray.)
I would love this except that DFSG would put the OpenSolaris kernel into non-free :(
The CDDL is free according to the OSD but not the DFSG (the former has to be true, or the OSI wouldn’t have approved it)? I didn’t realize the two documents had diverged..
Well, whether it’s DFSG approved is a matter of argument … some on debian-legal say yes, some say no. From my extremely brief review, it’s got something to do with patents. And I’d say more, but I really don’t know, so check out debian-legal yourself.
There was talk of a Debian BSD at one time too, wasn’t there? Seems like the same idea, different kernel. I don’t know what happened to that project; probably something to think about for anyone going into this project.
There are two Debian GNU/BSD ports (that I know of).
http://www.us.debian.org/ports/netbsd/
and
http://www.us.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/
Alvaro links to both in the body of his blog posting. Like Debian GNU/Hurd they are Debian systems with GNU utilities and a non-linux kernel (unlike fink and Debian GNU/w32 which are Debian packages and tools augmenting some otherwise complete system).