On 22/10/2007, John Plocher <John.Plocher at sun.com> wrote: > Martin Bochnig wrote: > > But if Sun feels they need to release "the one" OpenSolaris distro > > called "OpenSolaris", while disallowing others to use that name, how is > > > Sara and Ian in particular, > > It would help promote a less-confrontational community dialog if we > could agree (for now, at least) to NOT try and give *ANY* distro the > exclusive rights to call itself "OpenSolaris (singular, period)". > > With an extended and growing family of related technologies, distros, > recipes and repositories coming out of our OpenSolaris Community, it > seems to be in everyone's best interest to create a branding strategy > that makes room for many different OpenSolaris-Things, held together > by compatibility and a common respect for each other. > > There are many current and potential "OpenSolaris" things: > > A set of shared resources and recipes: > > The Official OpenSolaris Package Repository > The OpenSolaris Test Farm > The OpenSolaris Community websites > The Definitive OpenSolaris Compatibility Definition > The Definitive OpenSolaris Desktop Definition > > a potential /set/ of reference distros: > > The Prototype OpenSolaris X86 Laptop Distro (nee Indiana) > The OpenSolaris Laptop Distro > The OpenSolaris Laptop Distro with KDE instead of GNOME :-) > The OpenSolaris Desktop Distro with both KDE and GNOME > The OpenSolaris Webstack Distro > The OpenSolaris Backoffice Distro > The OpenSolaris Cluster Distro > > and, if it turns out that we can't work /together/ to make a > set of common things, there is still the opportunity to go > and create an affiliated thing: > > Schillix, based on OpenSolaris with schilly tools added > Nextenta, Debian packages on an OpenSolaris base > The Nexenta Repository of Debian packages for OpenSolaris > Belinix, Based on OpenSolaris, with a great masala sauce on top > Bejingix, based on OpenSolaris, ????? > Solaris11, based on OpenSolaris > Jericho, based on OpenSolaris > Indiana, based on OpenSolaris
Unfortunately John, I can't agree with that. The problem is that users already have the expectation that clicking the "Download" button on OpenSolaris.org will let them download "OpenSolaris." I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation either. I also don't think that *more* choices or making lots of choices prominent on the download page is a good thing either. Every time there is a new SXDE/SXCE release, and the news gets posted to somewhere like OSNews, there are always a handful of comments from folks confused by the number of download choices, the differences between them, and why they can't download something that's called "OpenSolaris." User education is not the answer here; meeting user expectations is. Despite our best efforts over the last few years it has become clear that users have made their choice about what they expect. -- Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst binarycrusader at gmail.com - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. " --Donald Knuth
