[cab-discuss] Re: [website-discuss] Re: [osol-mktg] OpenSolaris Anniversary activities

[Jim Grisanzio]

patrick finch wrote:

> A year ago we highlighted community.  It was about the community, the
> launch was entirely community-centric, and one of the great successes of
> the past year has been the relentless growth of a highly constructive
> community.

Correct. And let's never underestimate the power of that launch last 
year. The community-led opening of this project helped establish the 
notion that when we have stuff ready, it goes on OpenSolaris. No hype. 
It just goes.

Since we "opened" on June 14, 05 (which followed the first launch, which
was DTrace, on Jan 25, 05), we've been opening stuff pretty regularly
all along: ZFS, Storage, JDS, SFW, X11, Docs, OpenGrok, etc. In all
these instances, what have we delivered? Code.

To me, our credibility as a community in this early stage stems directly
from four closely related elements: (1) the quality of our code, (2) the
openness of the people who wrote the code and who are now engaging new
developers about the code, (3) the inventiveness of all the new
community members building new things with the code, and (4) the
palpable lack of spinning of all that code and all those people. The
stuff speaks for itself.


> Now, highlighting C-O-D-E has the advantage of taking some of the
> religious sting out "which OS" debates and highlighting the strength of
> OpenSolaris (its leadership in innovative concepts) and the code theme
> to the fan buttons and tshirts has been universally appreciated.


Yep. I think it goes beyond the religious debates and cuts right to the
core. It transcends religion, it transcends marketing, it transcends
anything competitive or corporate.


> Against that, I don't think the message that OpenSolaris is exclusively
> about code is what we want to say.  


I agree. But it doesn't have to be an *exclusive* message, does it? 
There were a half dozen or more suggestions made for this banner ad, 
many of which would also be supportive and valid. Why can't we have two 
or three of these things that rotate or something? (Maybe that's a Sara 
question)


> Litterally, if someone asked me what
> OpenSolaris is all about, my answer would not be "code".  Fundamentally,
> it's about community, a community built around a base of particularly
> special code.


There you go again, back to the damn code. :) You see? You can't
separate the two: community and code go together -- we are a source
community at this stage in our life. Sometimes I feel that the code
comes first, but then I remember that a person had to write that code,
and around I go.

Perhaps ... "OpenSolaris is all about the code and the community of
people around that code."


> Fedora and Ubuntu, to name two Linux communities, understand this very
> well.  


I'm not familiar with the details of these communities, but I think I
know what you are getting at and I generally agree: we do have a ways to
go to build out multiple levels of our community. I think this will just
take some time, that's all. It's a nice opportunity to engage people out
there and to learn from those who have gone before.


> And honestly, I'd say that OpenSolaris has walked this talk all
> year long too, so why back away from it now?
> 
> Graphically, I think the code looks cool.  In terms of a message, I
> think we should emphasise the growth, good governance and quality of the
> community.


All perfectly fine messages but the trouble is that they are a bit fuzzy 
-- which is a characteristic of a message, in my opinion. :) On the 
other hand, Sara's suggestion pops you right in the head. It's really 
rather direct, don't you think? In fact, I think the reason it works for 
me, anyway) is that it's not a message at all. The message is delivered 
as subtext -- which is the only way a message really resonates.

So, I agree with you that we ought to focus on community more, but that 
doesn't necessarily mean a good code jab shouldn't be used as well. I 
think we need both and I think we need to mix them up quite freely since 
they are so closely tied together.

Jim