Sriram Narayanan wrote: > I quite agree on this article being low on some (but not all ) of the > facts, and that the author seems hell bent on criticizing Solaris. > > However, these sites have high user ratings, these articles are > submitted to digg and such, and these are the links that are quoted > when people what to criticize opensolaris in future. > > One way to bring down the credibility of such articles is to highlight > the real facts by way of responses, and to give up only if the author > is still hell bent on criticizing. This happened with one of the > Thougthworks products some weeks ago. > > Another thing that we very definitely can do is to publicly invite > such authors to review our work, and to establish publicly viewable > information that we are open to constructive criticism and that it is > the author who is insisting on being a negativist. > > To that end, I feel it is useful to establish contact with such authors. >
I think we've been really good lately at ignoring the attacks and just responding to (and even acknowledging) the genuine shortcomings of OpenSolaris. We are still very much a work in progress, after all. And by the way, the Indian community has been one of the leaders in this area in that this list is very positive. Actually, now that I think about it, all of the UG lists are good in this respect. I only mention this because I've brought this issue up a great deal in the past on advocacy-discuss and most people are not supportive of responding in an organized way. I think people are worried we'll get negative in the process (which has happened in the past). Perhaps I've not done a good job at framing the argument. :) However, I do find value when knowledgeable people respond in an understated, respectful way to correct information that is wrong. Rarely will the writer's mind be changed, but at least it's an opportunity to correct the record. I think people get frustrated when their corrections have little effect on the original article (or blog or whatever). I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, but just offering some perspective. :) Jim -- http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/
