[advocacy-discuss] The OpenSolaris "Attitude"

[Fauzia Saeed]

Typically the great brands have shaped the culture or have been seen as 
cultural icons (Coke ,Apple et al).  I would argue that they recognized 
the wave earlier than anyone else and rode on it : ).

Yes, Solaris is strong but I am ready to bet almost anything that 
Solaris & Linux do not share a single core value.  I would love to run a 
brand personality instrumentation study to get some benchline data on this.

Jim Grisanzio wrote:

> Ian Collins wrote:
>
>> Jim Grisanzio wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Yep. The Solaris brand is strong. That's the reason we used it to 
>>> name OpenSolaris. :)
>>>
>>>   
>>
>> But how about the converse? 
>
>
> Yep. There are good arguments on both sides depending on the market 
> conditions at any given time.
>
>> Part of the strength of the Linux brand is it's ubiquity.  Just about
>> every major distribution call its self "Bla [enterprise] Linux".  We
>> don't see that with OpenSolaris.  
>
>
> Linux is a decade old though. OpenSolaris is 2. That's a big 
> difference. How many Linux distros were there two years after Linux 
> started? (I have no clue, by the way :)).
>
>> Every OpenSolaris distribution has its
>> own name, even Sun's distributions use the Solaris rather than
>> OpenSolaris brand.
>
>
> So, is that the direction we should continue?
>
>> There has to be a better way of associating the brand with the
>> distributions.
>
>
> Yah, I'm no brand guru here so I don't know. But is the brand 
> necessarily tied to the community culture? I would love it if the 
> culture emerged naturally from the /bottom/, rather than being created 
> from the top (in this case by Sun with various branding efforts). It's 
> probably a combination of both. I'm not really concerned about the 
> brand, per say, but I'm more interested in the underling gut of the 
> community. When people say "OpenSolaris" ... what does that mean?
>
> Jim