[indiana-discuss] Improve supportability though a single, unencumbered, unique release name.

[Kevin Bortis]

I agree completely with Dennis Clarke here. From my point of view
there should be a distro called OpenSolaris and no other.

I don't say it's bad that other people take the OpenSolaris codebase
and create their own distro like Belenix or Nexenta, but I think the
OpenSolaris people should consider to create a standard distro named
OpenSolaris. Like this, OpenSolaris can always improve their version
from developments made by other projects.

It's also important that I can write an application for OpenSolaris,
then install OpenSolaris and run my application on that. This is
simplicity, and that is exactly what Apple Inc. does. If that is not
possible the project will be a failure, because the people know that
SUN Solaris is a stable and usable system and I love it because the
api's are stable and if I buy a Solaris certified application I will
be able to run this application on almost any Solaris machine I can
find. This is not possible in the Linux world. I write a driver and by
the next kernel revision it will stop working. That is definitively
not simple and that is not what the people wand.

I wote for a strong Distro called OpenSolaris with a strong Community
around it and with certificate programs and test suits around it to
ensure compatibility.

Sorry for my english.

Regards Kevin

On 1/30/08, Dennis Clarke <dclarke at blastwave.org> wrote:
>
> > Dennis!
> >
> > No flames here ;-) But...
> >
> >> The name, as I see it, is OpenSolaris. Because that is what it really is.
> >
> > I must disagree. OpenSolaris is the open codebase (and associated toolset);
> > if you care to count this). It is
> > empirically _not_ a distro IMO; and thus any distro, whether "reference" or
> > otherwise, cannot/should not be called
> > "OpenSolaris".
>
> I am more interested in the overall success of the project. I joined the
> pilot back in 2005 or so and I was always under the impression that one day
> we would have something called OpenSolaris that I could install. This is the
> expectation that most people have and there has been no end of confusion in
> the user community and in the press because there really has been no such
> thing as OpenSolaris. Not by their definition of the word. Not even by ours.
>
> People talk and talk and talk about names and about rights and about the
> project constitution and at no point can an ordinary user just download
> and install OpenSolaris.
>
> This project is a failure, in my opinion, until a new user can do that
> very simple and perfectly reasonable thing. They don't want to hear
> about fooiX or about name space conflicts. The ordinary user just
> wants to install it and then work with it without confusion.
>
> I feel that trust is lost so long as the argument continues. I can not
> look a user in the face and say "no, you can not install OpenSolaris
> because that is not an operating system. That is a project name and so
> what you really want is BeleniX or SchilliX or fooiX."
>
> The knee jerk reaction, every time, out there in the real world will be
> a shrug and a walk away. Every time.  People just want to install
> OpenSolaris.
>
> > As the distro is produced by SUN, maybe it should be called "SUNOS" -
> > "SUNOpenSolaris" ;-)
>
> Maybe it should be called OpenSolaris because it will be produced by a
> community project of the same name.
>
> Dennis Clarke
>
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> indiana-discuss at opensolaris.org
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>


-- 
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Kevin Bortis, Egga, 3983 Bister, Switzerland