Miles Nordin schrieb: > one that aspires to greater openness and transparency than it > currently offers would be my perception and my vote.
"OpenSolaris. For everyone." ;) > Solaris has a terrible legacy to overcome: that of an ossified, > expensive, thorougly proprietary, awkward and AIX-y unwelcome > replacement for the much-loved Sun OS 4.x, used as an Oracle platform > and little else, at least little else by choice. IMHO it has to show that it is (still?) up for overcoming this legacy, at the very least looking at this "...as an Oracle platform" issue. ;) [...] > behind the right work. I'll advocate this and not the whole thing---I > actually don't see here a positive brand to support, but rather > something very ambivalent---so what I have to say about it is too > complicated for a sticker. Given that things indeed are ambivalent, maybe the "sticker thing" should focus first and foremost on what you actually can communicate with a sticker and symbols in a straightforward way? I think communicating actual technical content this way is pretty pointless. Sure, you can put a "D-f**king-Trace'it!" sticker somewhere, eventually all written up in some hip-hop kinda tag writing style, but it won't probably win. IMHO, stickers are worse than web sites regarding the amount of time you have to make people interested in what they see. Go community. Make an environment ready and willing to welcome and embrace a wide range of people, be them users or programmers-on-top or programmers-deep-within (i.o.w. operating system, in best case kernel, contributors) or management guys or whatever. Make an environment for those to voice their hopes and desires, to communicate, to be part of the community and also be capable of providing something back (whatever that might be). > But in any case, cargo-cult copying of ingenuine markedroid behavior > gets my -1. I see a whole load of "cult" relating Apple and the Macs, given they ship that small "bitten Apple" sticker a couple of times with virtually each device they ship so you can find it anywhere, even on devices of those who usually spend a good deal of time carefully removing all the "built-for-whichever-version-of MS WINDOWS" to be found on newly sold PC hardware. I stopped counting how often I saw Apple stickers so far, and I am starting to dislike it. Why, being an open source supporter, should I go for a company still providing locked-up proprietary software even locked to very special hardware? Why should I eventually support a manufacturer that proudly labels their devices with something like "Designed by Apple in California" just to, a few days later, figure out one of their most prominent devices (the iPod) is being manufactured in Asian sweat shops under conditions no one of these buying these devices even would think twice working in? The latter thing ain't something OpenSolaris is likely to address. But it _could_ address the first thing - provide an "easy-to-use", modern, up-to-date, inspired _and_ open source operating system, reliable and stable and ready to be used by "Joe Average" who still goes for Apple these days. Partnering with Toshiba, here, seems a first good step, more to follow this definitely wouldn't hurt. Make it "available", make it a platform that is around, and make "OpenSolaris" stickers out there not just promoting an ambivalent technical platform but an open technology, an open community, a system truly worth supporting. That definitely wouldn't be a bad thing, would it? ;) K. -- Kristian Rink http://pictorial.zimmer428.net # kawazu at jabber.org "What was once thought can never be unthought." (Duerrenmatt - 'Die Physiker')
