[indiana-discuss] Re: [indiana=discuss] Name of Distro?

[Stephen Lau]

Ian Murdock wrote:
> Stephen Lau wrote:
>> The overriding point of contention is the confusion as to what 
>> OpenSolaris is.  By naming the distribution the same as the community, 
>> we'd be overloading what "OpenSolaris" means.
> 
> Is it really that difficult to distinguish from the context, e.g.,
> 
> "I'm going to install Ubuntu on my laptop."
> 
> "We need to make sure someone from Ubuntu is at the meeting next
> week."
> 
> ?
> 
> Seems pretty clear to me. How would OpenSolaris be any different?

Hi Ian,
1. OpenSolaris Project Foo
	- Is it "Project Foo" being done in the OpenSolaris community?
	- Is it "Project Foo" that's a part of the OpenSolaris Distro?
	- It could be both, but needn't necessarily be.
	(OT musing: is "needn't" a word?)

2. OpenSolaris Governance Board
	- Is it the governance board for the community?
	- Is it the governance board for the OpenSolaris distribution?

3. "I'd like to get this fix back into OpenSolaris"
	- Is the fix going into an OpenSolaris community source base?
	- or is it a fix for the OpenSolaris Distro?

I'm sure I can come up with more contrived examples, but that's a silly 
exercise.  I appreciate that in certain cases, yes - context is enough 
to separate the two.... but I don't believe context is enough - and that 
confusion will continue to be had if the term is overloaded.

Maybe that's fine... clearly Ubuntu can survive from your examples 
above.  But In Ubuntu's case, the distro came first - and the community 
was built around the distro.  In OpenSolaris' case, the source base was 
first, the community was built around the source base, and the distro is 
coming after the fact.  Maybe we overload the term, there is confusion 
for a while, and then things sort themselves out.  I'd be entirely in 
support of that IF the community decides that Indiana should be called 
OpenSolaris.  I just don't support Sun unilaterally making that decision.

cheers,
steve

-- 
stephen lau // stevel at sun.com | 650.786.0845 | http://whacked.net
opensolaris // solaris kernel development