[ogb-discuss] What is OpenSolaris?

[James Carlson]

Jim Grisanzio writes:
> James Carlson wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> But it's more than our marketing materials, though. It's bigger than
> that. Go back to what Eric was saying. The darn message (like it or not)
> has resonated already.

Yes; understood.

> Regarding customers: I think customers have always been confused to a
> certain degree about OpenSolaris because we've had to open it over such
> a long period of time and for a long time many of them simply weren't
> involved. Whenever I talk to customers that's my immediate (and current)
> impression. I think Sun at all levels can do a much better job at
> explaining OpenSolaris to customers, too. Also, internal community
> building is just as important as external community building, and I
> don't think we've done nearly enough, either. For a long time,
> OpenSolaris was very much under the radar /both/ inside and outside the
> company. We are starting to do more of this now, though, because this
> very much is an issue.

I think part of the problem here is that Sun (like many other
companies) has a long history of randomly renaming products.  If I
were a Sun customer, I would certainly suspect that
s/Solaris/OpenSolaris/g is exactly analogous to all previous
renamings, such as s/GNOME/JDS/g or s/Sun Cluster/Sun Java
Availability Suite/g or other such changes.

Making it clear that it's something else can be very hard, especially
since people outside of Sun typically don't want to devote a large
amount of gray matter to understanding each vendor's story.

> But as customers come to opensolaris.org, we need to channel them to the
> proper places for support if support is what they are after. I don't
> think we can do that alone. We need the support guys directly involved
> in OpenSolaris. It seems to me that they could offer huge value here.

Indeed.  I think that would be a sea change, though.

> > 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.
> 
> 
> I've always felt that anyone at Sun who touches Solaris -- in any way
> whatsoever -- needs to be on opensolaris.org to a certain degree. Sun
> support is no exception. Marketing is no exception. Legal is no
> exception. Execs are no exception. Etc.

Seeing them on opensolaris-discuss would be interesting.  :-/

> > 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.  
> 
> 
> That support group needs to be subscribed to the aliases and grab these
> customers as they come and engage them. That will help educate the
> community and the customers and the rest of the Solaris people who are
> involved (people like me). In other words, a quick engagement and
> channel off to the proper venue. If we all see that occurring every day,
> we'd all chip in and better be able to move people along.

I agree.  I think it'll take a lot of internal work to get there.

> Would better documentation help (a little, anyway)? In other words,
> you're here at OpenSolaris, here's where you go for x, for y, for z. I
> know that the site is evolving and there have been calls to make the
> site more engaging to more levels of the community -- users, customers,
> etc. Totally support that.

Yes; that would certainly help.

Eric Boutilier writes:
> 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."

If I understand what the other Jim was saying, that ship
(distinguishing Solaris from OpenSolaris) has sailed.

Marc Hamilton writes:
> In Solaris marketing, we are being very deliberate to NOT conflate  
> OpenSolaris, Solaris 10, and Nevada, although I dare say that  
> currently even many Sun employees do not understand the differences.  

The overview on this page:

  http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/index.jsp

conflates OpenSolaris and Solaris 10 together by calling the latter
"open source" (even though it's not) and mixing terms repeatedly in
the various discussions.  (Note the use of both Solaris 10 and
OpenSolaris under the "Spotlight" section.)

> It could certainly be made more clear on the opensolaris.org home  
> page what the differences are between OpenSolaris code and Solaris  
> 10. But the opensolaris.org web site is not controlled by Sun  
> marketing, it is a community site. I would actually like to see the  

Yep; I agree that likely needs to be updated as well.

> As to the "flood of S10-related support questions", it isn't always  
> clear to me when a question is Solaris 10 related and when it is  
> related to an OpenSolaris binary distribution. I think Sun and the  

Indeed.  We're also seeing S9 and S8 as well, and most posters just
refer to "Solaris" with no clue that it's not some OpenSolaris
distribution they're talking about.

Getting that connected back with proper support is a concern.

-- 
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