[advocacy-discuss] Corporate Open Source

[Shawn Walker]

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 10:01 AM, Ceri Davies <ceri at submonkey.net> wrote:
> On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 02:26:57PM +0100, Ceri Davies wrote:
>  > On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 09:24:44PM +0900, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
>  > > Ceri Davies wrote:
>  > >> My point being that this is going to go down like a fart in a lift.
>  > >
>  > > Hello, Ceri. That's really an unfortunate comment given the hard work many
>  > > people have been putting into making this initial release successful. It's
>  > > obviously a work in progress, and great strides have been made in a
>  > > relatively short amount of time.
>  >
>  > I know this, the target audience do not.  It is a barrier to acceptance
>  > and adoption and this thread is all about that, as I understand it.
>
>  Allow me to expand on this, since I know at least yourself and another
>  man I respect are misinterpreting my intent.
>
>  I like the OpenSolaris community and the people in it.  I see and
>  very much appreciate the hard work that goes on, and have contributed
>  code, documentation work, time and effort everywhere from shielding folk
>  who stray into #opensolaris from hostility there to making presentations
>  and talking it up locally, and more.  Additionally, while I have no
>  intent of deploying it in my business, I also know and appreciate that a
>  large number of people have spent inhuman amounts of work on getting the
>  OpenSolaris 2008.05 release out of the door, I really do.
>
>  However, as both a long time Sun customer across two industries
>  (telecoms and FE) and a member of a reasonably large open source
>  project (FreeBSD) for many years already, I think I have some useful
>  experience.  So when you specifically asked "we are doing some great
> things here as a community, and that's not getting out nearly as much as
>  it should. Why?", I thought you might be soliciting opinion.  You asked.
>
>  Unfortunately, that opinion is that the folks being targeted either
>  a) hate Sun and all its offspring, b) won't look until everything
>  is GPL, c) certainly won't be happy that "Open"Solaris can't easily be
>  checked out, d) really don't care who worked how hard, e) only run
>  Linux, f) looked at the community and couldn't work out how to
>  contribute or g) some combination of the above.

I'm pretty sure that group being targeted is a mix of developers and
not "just GNU/Linux developers."

I think the group being targeted is the "allows me to be productive in
a way similar to other, modern platforms using the same tools and
processes while taking advantage of things special to Solaris."

>  As part of that hard work, we have to listen to things that we don't
>  like hearing, and then keep making the steps without expecting those
>  who don't know us to applaud how much has been done already.  We know,
>  we can be proud of what's been done, but working hard isn't a goal in
>  itself.

There's nothing wrong with saying things that someone needs to hear,
but those things need to be presented in a positive, encouraging
manner.

-- 
Shawn Walker

"To err is human -- and to blame it on a computer is even more so." -
Robert Orben