[advocacy-discuss] Corporate Open Source

[Simon Phipps]

On May 1, 2008, at 08:01, Ceri Davies 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.
>
> If we really want to go after those folk, we need to come up with
> responses and "fixes" to those things above that we can do something
> about.  Unfortunately, "we worked really hard" isn't a response that
> will cut it with these folk, I'm really sorry, but it isn't; see d)
> above.  If things don't work the way they expect, then they'll likely
> not stick around, it's the harsh reality and I'm only saying so  
> because
> you specifically asked.  Only the worst of friends will let you walk
> around with spinach in your teeth, after all.
>
> Now, I will continue to work on the bits that I can work on because  
> it's
> going to require a lot more work to surmount all of the above.   
> Unless,
> of course, you still think that we should just kick dissidents like  
> me out,
> in which case I won't need pushing - I have a family I could be  
> spending the
> time with, after all.
>
> 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.
>
> Ceri

Thanks, Ceri, I appreciate the explanation and I agree with the  
concern for this specific audience. I'm not sure of the extent to  
which this is actually Sun's target audience; I'll be raising the  
subject with Sun's exec liaison (Tim Cramer) at the summit thsi weekend.

S.