[advocacy-discuss] Corporate Open Source

[Laurent Blume]

I hope my answers below make sense. This topic is not one with clear-cut
answers, and finding balance is difficult.

Jim Grisanzio a écrit :

> Well, he makes some good points, yes. But you have to dig out from under
> the sarcasm to get to them. If the points were just neutral or
> constructive criticism or offers to help, than I'd not have a problem
> with it. I'd welcome it, actually.

Hmmm, I think you're right, technically. But we should know that it's
how the OSS community, and in particular the Linux OSS community, has
been communicating for years. It's not exactly new, and if Sun is not
there, they find other targets at will, sometimes in their own ranks.
So, like it or not, we have to deal with it, and manage to reduce the
number of those comments.

> We've certainly had a lot of
> criticism on our own lists, so what's the big deal from outside. But as
> soon as someone attacks (especially if they are not involved), I stop
> listening. It's that simple. They lose their credibility. He quotes John
> Plocher at length, which is fine, but had he followed the rest of that
> thread he quoted he'd find that not everyone agrees with John. I
> certainly don't. And that's fine. That was just a discussion. And,
> actually, we've had that type of "who are we and where are we going"
> discussion many times before, and we have room here for many opinions.

Oh, I agree, we do have opinions! But how does one gets selected to
become reality?

> feel lucky to be able to express my opinion with all these smart people
> in here. But from one quote he draws a conclusion that is wrong and it
> spins around to a variety of other issues. That's my only beef, really.
> An accusatory attitude can lead to incorrect or incomplete conclusions.
> And when we try to correct at least the factual errors while we
> Ted's article is not as bad as some others, though. But it fits the pattern.

I agree, and from the comments, Ted seems to be ready to discuss it
further, so if it's really, again, a matter of miscommunication, it can
be corrected.
But I believe it's not that simple.

> I sent the links to this list because we all know our situation, and I
> wanted to engage the people who are /involved/ in a conversation about
> how we do more advocacy about the things we are doing right.

How can they be summed up? It seems to me that it's too technical and
difficult to explain to someone not already involved.

> Totally agree our communications have been poor this past year. And I
> think that is a problem across the project (Sun corporate, engineering,
> marketing, community), and some of us have been saying that for quite
> some time now. I think now we finally recognize the issue needs fixing,
> and I think we are going to make a good faith effort to start cleaning
> that up at the summit.

After the initial opening effort and enthusiasm, many people have just
reverted to their everyday work. I can understand that. Sun people work
together, inside Sun. It's where it's the easiest for them. They've been
used to shut up when they talk to an outsider, whatever their role. And
I find it natural, too.
Now, in the beginning, it was all enthusiastic talk about opening
Solaris. Now, it's the every day duties again, and making things work
with newcomers.

> Right. It has changed. We started as a community and a bunch of source
> code, some distros and people came along, and now we are adding a new
> distro from which other distros can be built.
[snip]

So, it really feels that Sun is positioning itself as *the* leader of
the OpenSolaris Community. Asserting its trademarks and all. It still
makes me uneasy. I'll wait to see if there are really new distros
successfully sprouting from it.

[snip]
>  -- but we've done a lot right when you look at it in context.
> That's all I want. To be judged in context.

And it's fair to ask, but really, it's not realistic. Come on, whenever
did that happens?

> I hope it continues to change and grow and build on what we have done in
> the past. You have to expect a project this young and big to change. In
> fact, if we are going to reach out to quite literally hundreds of
> thousands of users, the community /will/ change big time. That's good.
> Now, I get your point here that our recent changes weren't handled well.
> I agree. We live and learn and move on and apologize along the way.

It's a matter of where OpenSolaris fits in Sun offering. Because, as
nice as it is, who is supposed to use it? People ask me about it,
regular users, developers, sysadmins: who is it for?

Certainly not users, at least, since the lack of some major applications
prevent it for daily use.

Developers I know are doing HPC, so it's not for them either, since the
compilers they use, Intel, Portland, are not there.

So it leaves sysadmins around me. But they're a rather small audience,
and they usually already have a brand of *nix they like, and honestly,
OpenSolaris is not a compelling choice at this point. There isn't any
«Wow!» feature not already present somewhere else to make people switch.

[snip]
> That's all I know how to do, Laurent. One at a time. I
> appreciate your position. I really do. There are many people who were
> turned off by recent events, but I'm happy we are having this
> conversation because that means we can re-connect.

If I'm still discussing it, it's much because there are many very
valuable people in the Solaris community that I've been interacting
wxith for years, both from and outside Sun. Still, my position is only
mine, from where I stand, I don't believe I can change much.

> We start building a user community. We engage application and package
> developers. We start taking a new class of contributions. We try to
> create systems to better manager the contributions we are already
> getting. We keep adding layers of the community on top, or around, what
> we have already built. We keep upgrading the website. We get our content
> management system and wiki. We localize the site. We meet more people.
> We move more infrastructure outside and finish the scm migration. We
> solve the bug problem. Etc. Etc. Etc. We just keep going. All of these
> things -- and many more -- are absolutely perfect community building
> opportunities. All of them. I don't view any of them negatively.

They're positive, I'd like to know who's going to benefit from it.
Participating in a project with great people is a tremendous experience,
still, my time is more limited than what I'd like (too much commuting in
my current job).
And if Sun can't do all those things with their own time and money, and
need free contributions from outside, maybe some more respe

> Sorry, my friend. You are a little out of my league on the various
> products and versions and such. :) Smarter people than I would have to
> offer come context here.

Well, I'd say «more knowledgeable» rather than «smarter». But yes, I
need to hear from them. Because the complete lack of an upgrade plan to
OpenSolaris, even coming from Solaris, is quite an issue.
And of course, where is the support? Will I be able to give money to
Sun, and then call them and get answers?

The majority of people working on OpenSolaris are also Sun employees, so
for them, the choice is obvious, it's what pays their bills. But for me,
so far, it's my knowledge in Solaris that get me a salary.
OpenSolaris is a nice toy, but not one to make a living out of it.

Attracting hobbyists and developers from the FOSS world is very much
needed and useful, but in the end, since Sun has no plan to turn into
Debian AFAICT, their customers will have a say at some point.

> And, I don't know, perhaps we'll come out of this stronger
> and better able to grow.

I hope so. There is a lot of room for great achievements here, and well,
the road is not traced. About that, I'm a bit worried about those
striving to make OpenSolaris more like Linux. It shouldn't, because it's
not, in any aspect (and there, I'm disagreeing both with some people on
the Indiana m/l as well as those FOSS commentators, who find Linux is
the perfect role model in every aspect, technical as well as ideological).
I hope we'll find a way.

> You have brought up a lot of good points. I don't have all the answers
> (or necessarily good answers), but I hope you feel I'm being straight
> with you. I'm just trying to move this forward to the next step and take
> one step at a time ...

Well, answers at all are needed, even if not good. Like, for example, n
official Sun statement saying that Indiana/OpenSolaris will not be
commercially supported, or will be the way SX was, and that there is no
current roadmap, or that there is one with Solaris 11 in 2011.
I'd like to know when some bits of OpenSolaris are going into production.

Thanks for your answer, Jim.

Laurent
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