[advocacy-discuss] FW: Wider Advocacy Initiatives

[Jim Grisanzio]

Siobhan P. Lynch wrote:
>
>
> I think, as someone in the corporate and open source developer
> communities, I really didn't get almost ANY exposure to OpenSolaris
> until I was looking to do something very specific for a very specific
> project, and started looking around for tools to do the job.
>   

I'm not surprised, actually. We started the project in a rather low key 
way and have been growing slowly -- but steadily -- every since. I think 
in the last year or so we have really started growing at a much faster 
rate in terms of advocacy, though. The Starter Kits have helped a great 
deal, we finally got most of the source out there, and most recently 
Project Indiana has raised the profile of the project. We launched about 
3 years ago in a low key way because we weren't really ready to be 
aggressive in the outreach area. We had to open all this stuff in 
stages, and really, for the first two years the team internally was 
concerned with just opening source and infrastructure. User groups grew 
organically for the most part, too, with very little Sun resources 
invested. And given all that, the Advocacy CG is the largest by far of 
all the CGs on OpenSolaris. It's sort of interesting how that happened. 
I think it means we have the /potential/ to have a really cool global 
grassroots advocacy program here.

> This tells me, while all of these advocacy initiatives abroad are very
> good (and probably are just as effective as the FreeBSD advocacy
> initiatives in Japan in the early 90's), they haven't hit right where OS
> needs to be to ensure growth in the US.

I would agree. The US is a different market, I think, since Solaris had 
an installed base there from long ago, but it competes with Windows, 
Linux, and other OSs for developers and/or customers. And also, it was 
always more of a server OS, but more recently we've been moving to the 
desktop and on Intel and AMD platforms. Lots of transitions going on: 
Solaris 10 was a major system release, OpenSolaris was the opening of 
the code, and the movement to the x86 space.


> I see what you mean about
> education initiatives, but the people who are effected by that may not
> be leaders in the corporate communities for another 10-15 years, 

I agree. But although they may not be leaders in the corporate area for 
a while, they will certainly be working in the corporate space much 
sooner than a decade and will have influence as well. Edu is a long term 
play for sure, though.

> and
> meanwhile, you have the Linux and BSD people leading the way, when there
> are many OpenSolaris features that knock the socks off both Linux and
> BSD (and I'm not abandoning the BSD camp, far from it, I want to see BSD
> adopt some of the technologies, like DTrace and SMF, ZFS is already
> there...). 
>   

Well, sure, Linux is leading the way and they deserve to lead they way. 
They've been building a community for quite some time now. :) We're 
somewhat new at it, but we are catching up (and in some markets leading, 
such as the European finance market that Forrester just documented). We 
should learn from what Linux has done. It's most impressive to me. And I 
think we are learning, too. I think a lot of what Indiana tells us is to 
take the best of Linux and the best of OpenSolaris. That's quite a 
powerful combination.


> Plus they've ALL got the Sun logo on them :) Which while it gets
> students working with a "commercial OS", the Linux and BSD's have "cool
> value" :)
>
> I think what I want to see is more commercial support away from Sun
> itself. I think that Sun might be the problem, and not the solution. 

Could be. Sun has big feet for sure, but we also take criticism for not 
doing enough. It's confusing sometimes. :) We still need to find the 
right balance in advocating all this stuff. Where does Sun do using its 
corporate resources and  what does the community do using grassroots 
resources.

> The
> BSD advocacy efforts succeeded in *spite* of corporate "advocacy", not
> because of it. 
>   

I'd love to hear more about that. That would be a good lesson for us 
here, no question about it.

> And by conferences, I mean non-Open Solaris focused conferences, like
> USENIX and other non-Sun and OS sponsored conferences.
>  
>
>
>
>   
>> That's just off the top of my head. There is probably more going on.
>> Oh,
>> the contest, too ...
>>
>> You bring up good points. And we are doing many of the things you
>> suggest, but it does take time to get the word out around the world.
>> I'm
>> interested in hearing how we can do it better based on what we are
>> already doing. I'm less concerned about reaching everyone, per say,
>>     
> and
>   
>> more concerned about practical steps to ensure our growth. In other
>> words, as we grow to engage more general users, how do we manage that?
>> We are making a transition from a developer-only community to a
>> community that has many more layers. What effect will that have have
>>     
> on
>   
>> governance?
>>     
>
> I'm not sure it should, per se. I think maybe splitting the developer
> and guidance communities off from Sun, but allowing the "OpenSolaris"
> trademark to be owned by a non-profit steering group with loose ties to
> Sun might work, or Sun working out a free "licensing" of the trademark
> to this Non-Profit. I'm not really sure, I just feel that Indiana has
> turned into a project for Sun to try and grab back the trademark and the
> Open Source project for its own purposes, and it has every right to do
> so, I just think it will alienate and destroy any good will its garnered
> among the people outside the Sun camp in development right now.
>   

Well, I don't want to get into the trademark issues again and I've 
expressed my views a lot. It's been discussed at length, and I see on 
ogb-discuss that it's coming to resolution now. I'm not trying to put 
this aside, honestly, but I'd just like to focus on working from where 
we are given our circumstances. We can do a lot with what we have right 
now.


>   
>> How do we as a community do our own community building
>> without having to rely on Sun for resources all the time? I started a
>> thread a while back talking about some of these issues:
>> http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=50069&tstart=0
>>
>>     
>
> Yes, I think so, and I think that's where I was heading with my post,
> not in the direction of relying on Sun more, but by not relying on Sun,
> and forming support infrastructures without it. Inviting other corporate
> entities (I know there's not many yet) to help with the advocacy
> initiatives, etc.
>   

Cool. That's very helpful. Thanks. Also, Sun has cut deals with some 
companies lately around OpenSolaris, so I would expect some corporate 
advocacy stuff to emerge. I know the Intel guys already do some of that 
right now.

Jim

-- 
Jim Grisanzio http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris