[ogb-discuss] What is OpenSolaris?

[Eric Boutilier]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2007, James Carlson wrote:
> Jim Grisanzio writes:
>> No one is giving us a hard time with saying that S10 is open source
>> because there is 10 million lines of OpenSolaris code to point to under
>> an OSI license. If Sun had been saying that S10 was open source without
>> a a big hairy OpenSolaris to point to and the code was under some
>> non-OSI license, then we'd get slapped big time.
>
> I'll give you a slightly hard time over it: we're seeing the start of
> a flood of S10-related support questions and issues showing up on
> opensolaris.org mailing lists because customers are confused.  They
> think S10 == OpenSolaris, and our marketing materials seem to go well
> out of their way to promote this sort of confusion.

To help straighten out the confusion, I'm not sure sales/marketing
needs to change, but I am convinced we do.  The definition of
OpenSolaris needs to be officially conveyed by us (the community) as
what it is vastly perceived to be: An operating system

Then, straightening people out (who are confused by conflation,
deliberate or otherwise) becomes a gazillion times easier: "Solaris 10
and OpenSolaris are different operating systems, just as Debian and
Ubuntu (or, depending on your audience, XP and Vista) are different
operation systems."

Eric

>
> When they show up on opensolaris.org, Sun customers get haphazard
> support at best.  The people on opensolaris.org (particularly those
> outside of Sun) aren't there to support Sun's commercial products.
> They don't have access to any of the support databases.  They don't
> know what patches are available or which ones are needed or how to
> escalate cases or what contracted support levels exist or what history
> the customer has had.
>
> Like it or not, our customers see "Sun" as "Sun."  It's all one thing.
> So, when an answer comes in from an opensolaris.org group,
> particularly if it has a "sun.com" address, it's usually seen as an
> Official Sun Answer.
>
> This makes a real hash of things.  The customers are upset because
> they don't get the support they're expecting and deserve.  Our support
> group is upset because customers get conflicting answers.  Community
> members will be upset because it looks like Sun is dumping the
> customer support burden on them.
>
> I think this needs to be detangled somehow.  I don't know how to do
> it, but it has to happen if we're going to continue to provide
> commercial support for Solaris.
>
>> Yah, I agree. Also, many people are just as confused by what "Linux" is
>> so why should we feel we need to perfectly package OpenSolaris in a nice
>> neat box. That's not possible. There are Linux distros. There is
>> kernel.org. There are binaries. There is source. There are sites all
>> over the place. The community is global and lives in /no/ single
>> location. It's such a mess. And yet, it's wildly successful.
>>
>> OpenSolaris is source code. You build things from it. No big deal ....
>
> <evil>
> We could insist that everyone use OpenSolaris only as an adjective and
> never as a noun.  It's worked so well in other contexts.
> </evil>
>
> ;-}
>
> -- 
> James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive         71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
> MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677
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