[osol-mktg] Re: [ug-discuss] Re: Sponsor Project Indiana

[Keith Bierman]

On Jun 6, 2007, at 9:44 AM, Eric Boutilier wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Jun 2007, Simon Phipps wrote:
>>
>> On Jun 6, 2007, at 16:14, Stephen Lau wrote:
>>
>> Right now there exactly zero distributions developed withing the  
>> community -
>
> As I said, that's wrong. Nexenta, BeleniX and other existing  
> distros are,
> by all rights and intentions, projects of and by the OpenSolaris  
> community.

Others have already pointed out the text in the OpenSolaris charter  
which seems at variance with this position. Rather than arguing about  
how we can interpret the words to allow this reality, let's just  
adjust the words which are causing confusion.

It seems to me that there's an obviously useful set of moves to make  
things clear:

1) Create the Distro group. Invite all of the existing distros based  
on OpenSolaris to join and use it for
    interDistro discussion.

	a) Encourage intraDistro discussions to migrate to this hosting area  
as well
	b) Discourage leveraging this infrastructure for the download  
hosting of the distros themselves ;>

2) Work with the Marketing groups and/or Execs to appropriately  
license the use of the term "OpenSolaris" as a brand for
    all distros which meet some set of constraints.

3) The spark of this discussion was Project Indiana which probably  
should have a special place. Just as Debian
    is the UrDistribution for a whole raft of Linux distros, so it is  
probable that will happen to a successful
    Solaris UrDistro. Hopefully we won't have to fission as much as  
they have (viz. make and continue to evolve
    the Solaris UrDistro fast enough to satisfy the bulk of needs)  
but if architected well, those with special needs
    should be able to derive from it, rather than going back to the  
original sources. The proposal that this UrDistro
    uniquely be called OpenSolaris is probably a BadProposal. I don't  
have a good name (DebIan suggests
    names like JonIan; but there really are too many potential three  
letters to represent either Execs or Engineers
    whose blood sweat and tears should be commemorated). I doubt  
people would like to cannonize a name like UrDistro ;>



Keith H. Bierman    keith.bierman at Sun.COM   |  khbkhb at gmail.com
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