[indiana-discuss] Best summary ever: [advocacy-discuss] OpenSolaris (TM)

[Martin Bochnig]

I had missed it back then.
I think it is worth being forwared to indiana-discuss, as it is such a 
relevant, excellent, highly recommended summary.
I wished I could write in such a style.

Respect!
  +1


Brandorr wrote:
> OpenSolaris is an interesting trademark. The word Open has been
> combined with the trademark Solaris, resulting in a new wordmark.
> Ostensibly Open refers to Open Source, and open, as in "in view of
> all" IE: "an open development process".
>
> Today, for a number of reasons, Sun's OpenSolaris trademark has proven
> to be more popular than Sun's Solaris trademark. Most likely because
> people are attracted to the principles embodied in the name. But also
> because Sun executives like to talk about OpenSolaris. For me, I was
> initially attracted, because I thought it was a way to influence
> Solaris development, and more specifically to influence which 3rd
> party floss apps/libs would make it in.
>
> Let's talk about Solaris. To **me** Solaris means/meant:
> - SMP scalability.
> - Stable interfaces (of all sorts)
> - Backward binary compatibility (Theoretically back to Solaris 2.1)
> - Serious engineering foresight
> - A measured and planned development process
> - Market leading SVR4 UNIX(TM) distribution (To me SVR4 is practically
> synonymous with Sun Solaris, as Sun was the leader in developing the
> SVR4 specification/code).
> - Platform stability (These were systems that could go for years
> without reboots, and/or crashes).
> - Relative lack of bloat
>
> Some negative associations:
> - Very high cost
> - Weak x86 strategy (Slower than Linux on comparable hardware. Slowlaris)
> - Difficult to administer (Different than Linux, and hard to get open
> source software installed)
> - Tied to "crippled" Sparc architecture (This was when Power and x86
> were killing Sparc on comps).
> - Closed/Proprietary
> - Stagnant
>
> Recently some new traits have become associated with the Brand:
> - ZFS File systems (Kick ass filesystem)
> - Dtrace instrumentation (Super great debugger / application tuner)
> - Open source, community, development process, (global)
> - Optimized for AMD64 systems (Some might think that it only runs on
> AMD64 systems, and only in 64bit mode)
> - Awkward interfaces - Difficult to administer (We haven't shaken the
> difficult to admin tag)
> - Bloatware
>
> People also think Solaris 10 is based on the OpenSolaris codebase.
> When in fact Solaris 10 predates "OpenSolaris", but has code "bundles"
> (Don't know the Sun term) developed in the open Solaris development
> process fed back through Sun's firewall to enhance the current
> shipping version of Solaris.
>
> The point is "Open" was the modifier to "Solaris". Now "OpenSolaris"
> seems to have displaced "Solaris" in many people's minds.
> "OpenSolaris" refers to a community, a codebase, and more and more
> often is used to refer to various OSes. In particular Sun's SXCE/SXDE
> products, and the Belenix and Nexenta distros. (Not to leave out
> Shilix and Martux, but the attention is on actively developed x86
> distros).
>
> Recently, there was a proposal expressed by Sun marketing to brand a
> Solaris distribution currently referred to as "Project Indiana", as
> "OpenSolaris".  This proposal also indicated that as far as software
> product goes, "Indiana" would have exclusive rights to use the
> "OpenSolaris" trademark.
>
> Needless to say, this proposal has been met with mixed reviews, and is
> "somewhat" controversial. On one side there are those that want to
> rally behind one piece of software, and "unify" the "OpenSolaris"
> world behind one distro. On the other side are those that believe
> "OpenSolaris" should not be used for anything other than the
> community, and the source code base (because OpenSolaris should not be
> owned by or associated with any one thing).
>
> This leads us to a position today, where the community needs to
> develop guidelines on how the mark "OpenSolaris" should and can be
> used. (Sun of course will have final say on a community decision, but
> the indications at this point are that Sun wishes this to be a
> community developed and endorsed set of guidelines).
>
> One problem we face, when it comes to allowing anything the exclusive
> use of "OpenSolaris", is that OpenSolaris is currently the general
> term used to refer to anything associated with open sourced Solaris.
> e.g. - "I'm running OpenSolaris" refers to a number of distros, and
> can even mean Solaris 10, "I'm an OpenSolaris developer", means that
> you develop Solaris, or you develop software that runs on Solaris, "I
> developed an OpenSolaris distro" is pretty self explanatory, "I am in
> an OpenSolaris usergroup", "I am part of the OpenSolaris community"
> are two other uses that most of us understand.
>
> Now that I have given some background, I am going to propose a few
> "OpenSolaris" uses that I think we can agree on:
>
> 1) The codebase hosted in mercurial @ OpenSolaris.org. As in "the
> OpenSolaris code".
> 2) The community. Anybody who has a positive interest in current and
> future uses of anything Solaris related, and self identifies
> themselves as such. "the OpenSolaris community" IE: If you think you
> are part of the OpenSolaris community then you are. (This was limited
> to developers, but I think we can agree that the comunity has grown to
> include many other type of community member).
> 3) The core software. O/N (OS, and Networking). "The OpenSolaris
> core". Note this does not need to include packaging tools.
> 4) Miniroot. "OpenSolaris miniroot"
>
> Uses where Sun's viewpoint may differ from the community's:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 1) "an OpenSolaris distro" Sun management has indicate that they wish
> this term to be limited to binary derivatives of Indiana. I suspect
> that the community would refer to anything that is an OS running a
> source derivative of the OpenSolaris kernel as an OpenSolaris distro.
> (P.S. - adding a modifier distribution, seems to imply that there are
> more than one.)
> 2) "The OpenSolaris distro" Sun management would like to see Indiana
> have this name. The community has various viewpoints: a) there is no
> "The OpenSolaris distro", nor should there be. b) there should be a
> "The OpenSolaris distro" and Indiana is not it (those that think
> either Nexenta or SXCE should carry the label). c) there should be a
> set of bits called OpenSolaris, and I don't really care what it is, as
> long as we all can agree to the same set of bits being "OpenSolaris"
>
> Open questions (with my thoughts):
> ------------------------------------------------
> 1) Is there something smaller than O/N that can be referred to as
> OpenSolaris? (I think at the very minimum, we should be able to have
> the kernel be named OpenSolaris. As in the OpenSolaris kernel. (This
> would not be limited to source or binary, nor would it be limited to
> platform/arch.)
> 2) How do we want to phrase the "binary application compatibility"
> guarantee? (Or do we even allow this phrase.)
> 3) How does something get certified as "compatible"? (with Solaris) (I
> think we need to develop a test suite, that works by running a set of
> binaries on the distro that wishes this certification. Please note
> that this is not a Sun certification.)
> 4) Do we want to establish a certification process for use of the term
> "OpenSolaris" (IE: Whatever we decide as policy, does a group of
> people need to sign off on uses, or will we basically trust people,
> and rely on people to report perceived violations of policy.)
>
> Cheers,
> Brian
>
>