[indiana-discuss] [trademark-policy-dev] [advocacy-discuss] [osol-discuss] Project Indiana and the OpenSolaris name

[Joerg Schilling]

John Plocher <John.Plocher at Sun.COM> wrote:

>  >> Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >> I have problems if this was not labelled with "Sun" as this would cause
> >> harm to other existing OpenSolaris based distributions.
>
> > Shawn Walker wrote:
> > I have yet to see any qualifying statements that indicate exactly
> > *how* other distributions would be harmed.
>
>
> I *think* Joerg is referring to the classic channel partner -vs- direct
> sales problem - if the OpenSolaris Community has its own distro, where
> is there room for other distros to compete?

You make an important mistake here: Indiana is not a community initated 
distro but a _Sun_ initiated one.

SchilliX was the first community initiaded OpenSolaris distro but Sun
did not like to help with this distro.

It is most unprobable that Indiana will be _the_ OpenSolaris distribution
of the community as it was not "the community" that did decide to start the
project. We could have a real community distribution if Sun did help with 
SchilliX, but I did get the answer: "no, we definitely won't do that" from many
sites insite Sun. 

There are already several independent OpenSolaris distributions and you could 
not roll back the years.... The chance for a _single_ OpenSolaris distro as
a joint effort from Sun and the community has been missed because Sun was not
ready for this at the time when it had been possible.

Sun could have a much better stand in the OSS world if there was a clear 
commitment to community originated efforts like BerliOS, Blastvave and SchilliX.

Jörg

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