[osol-mktg] Sponsor Project Indiana

[Patrick Finch]

Jim Grisanzio wrote:
> Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>> Stephen Lau wrote:
>>
>>> Patrick Finch wrote:
>>>
>>>> Some confusion for some people perhaps, but it is possible to 
>>>> communicate a change.  For the last 2 years I have been dealing with 
>>>> the confusion that "OpenSolaris" is not a bootable OS.
>>>>
>>>> I can understand that there might be objections to naming a distro 
>>>> "OpenSolaris" for other reasons, but I don't accept that the risk of 
>>>> confusing people should disqualify the idea.
>>>
>>>
>>> Well it depends.  There seems to be a disconnect across the Sun 
>>> corporation as to *what* OpenSolaris is... 
>>
>>
>> Which is why I keep seeing banner ads that say "Solaris 10: Free and
>> Open Source" that Sun buys on various websites to add to the confusion.
> 
> 
>  From a communications perspective, explaining OpenSolaris is extremely 
> challenging when you consider all the diverse audiences around the 
> world: customers and partners, competitors, governments, press and 
> analysts, developers, administrators, users, university 
> students/professors, etc. The fact that Sun keeps saying that "Solaris" 
> is open source doesn't help, but I can really sympathize with that since 
> in some markets it actually makes good sense to position the product 
> that way.

It does, and am guilty of this sometimes, as Sun's competitors continue 
to position Solaris as entirely proprietary.

> Whenever I talk to people I always say that Solaris is Sun's supported 
> binary product. It's closed. OpenSolaris is a subset of the source code 
> for Solaris. It's open. At that level it's not confusing at all. It gets 
> confusing when we try to make it out to be more than it is and explain 
> all that across all audiences in all markets simultaneously. If Indy can 
> solve that problem, cool. I'm all for it. I doubt that it can in the 
> short term, though. I think this will take years to clear up, and I 
> don't see any problem with that whatsoever.

Yes, that is very a good way to clarify what OpenSolaris is.  Beyond the 
semantic challenge though, there are a lot of people out there who are 
interested in trying this technology out, and are looking for a 
community: if I try a Linux distro I look to its community for help.

The message we risk giving to potential users is that the OpenSolaris 
community is not the place for them.

Patrick