[osol-mktg] Re: LinuxWorld Report

[Daniel B. Price]

> I spent some time with Ben in the booth, and I'd like
> to thank him for his participation. Ben probably spent more time
> talking OpenSolaris than any of us, and he brought his own stuff
> to demo, too.

I was in the booth on Tuesday, when things were pretty crazy-- no
DVDs, crazy people everywhere.  I've done a number of shows but
LW2005 was by far the most chaotic.  That's the nature of the trenches.
Ben did a great job, worked tirelessly, and was super cool at all times.

Thanks Ben; I was impressed by the openminded attitude (or at least
politeness) of attendees the show-- in contrast with certain executives
who gave talks.  Anyway, no one I met expressed any hostility at the
OpenSolaris project presence.  Surprise (You open sourced it?) was
probably the most common reaction.

I'd encourage the marketing community to put together an "OpenSolaris
Facts Sheet" which could be distributable at such events.  Here are the
questions I answered over and over again:

      - Yes, it is open source now.  The launch was June 14, 2005.
      - OpenSolaris is a codebase.  Similar to how the Linux kernel which Linus releases is a codebase.
      - Other people take the OpenSolaris code plus other stuff, and assemble it into distributions.
      - We made an earnest attempt to be "not broken" in our approach to open sourcing the OS.
      - The license is called "CDDL."  It's derived from the Mozilla Public License ("MPL").  It is truly Open Source (OSI approved).
      - All of the code is at www.opensolaris.org; you can get it via bittorrent, http download, or just browse online.
      - We made a really cool source code browser and search engine.
      - The OpenSolaris code is advanced *beyond* what is in Solaris 10.

Why a fact sheet?  Because people at shows are overloaded with information.  A takeaway document means that they'll revisit the information later, share it with a friend, etc.

A final thought is that opensolaris.org might consider hosting itself in the ".org" section of the conference
next year.  Things there seemed a little more chilled out, and perhaps more conducive to extended conversations.

        -dp

--
Daniel Price -- Solaris Kernel Engineering -- http://blogs.sun.com/dp
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