[advocacy-discuss] OpenSolaris (TM)

[Nicolas Dorfsman]

Le 22 oct. 07 à 18:24, Stephen Lau a écrit :

> Nicolas Dorfsman wrote:
>> This is a really bad idea, IMHO.  It would be like talk about UNIX- 
>> tm  as a single OS.
>>
>> OpenSolaris is a sort of "way of life" or "way of Operating Systems".
>>
> Not to the vast majority of people who have never heard of it  
> before.  They come to opensolaris.org thinking OpenSolaris *IS* a  
> single operating system.
>> OpenSolaris community need this to compete with other "ways".
>> Today, Even my bank account manager knows a Linux distro and  
>> moreover  he knows that his distro is a Linux distro !
>>
> I don't see why OpenSolaris couldn't be competitive still...

I'm not sure we can compete (in term of visibility for non-technical  
people) if there is on one side many Linux distributions, and on the  
other side only one distro, "THE" distro.   Today a majority of  
people have heard of Linux because they have heard of Blabla distro  
which is running on their PVR or on the server which hosts their  
software.

Who knows anything about FreeBSD or NetBSD or other SCO ?

I don't think I have to make a demonstration about how important is  
to be known by many non-technical people.


>> If only one distro has the right to be called "OpenSolaris  
>> distro",  other distribution may be known only as their own name,  
>> instead as  "another OpenSolaris distro".
>>
> Arguably - they might want that anyway ;-)

maybe :)


>> In another hand, if I'm using "ls" source code in my brand new  
>> OS,  could I really call my OS an OpenSolaris distro ?
>>
>> What about a vote ? Anybody who want to use the term "OpenSolaris   
>> distribution" should post a summary of what part of his/her OS is   
>> coming from OpenSolaris projects, and then the community may vote  
>> yes  or no.
>>
> Ugh - no.  This puts a ridiculous amount of strain and burden on  
> both the OpenSolaris community AND a distribution project.  This is  
> not the right answer.  We need to develop usage terms and let  
> people have something structured they can follow.


Ok. you're certainly right.