On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 03:42:49PM -0400, Brian Gupta wrote: > Can we agreed that the current consumer of the work done through > OpenSolaris.org is Sun Microsystems? (Through Solaris, and Sun's > downstream customers)
I could not possibly disagree with this more. However, as thoroughly wrong as this is conceptually, it's very close to being correct textually: all you need to do is change "the current consumer" to "a current consumer" and you'll be fine. But that's a giant shift in worldview for a three-character change. > The weekly builds are after all called Solaris Express, not > OpenSolaris express. Those are builds of Sun's distribution. It is not the only possible distribution, nor the only extant one. If other distributors choose not to offer biweekly builds, that's a management choice they have made. The materials they need to do so are available to them, often in real time. > That said, a Sun employee is by fact a representative of Sun, as their No. Sun, like all corporations, hires mouthpieces of one sort or another to represent it - to investors, to customers, to the public at large. There are limited circumstances in which I wear a "Sun representative hat" - specifically when talking with Solaris customers about how Solaris relates to their business problems. Here, I'm an engineer, just like anyone else, and while Sun can tell me what to work on 40 hours a week, they can't tell me what to think, what not to work in in my own time, nor (subject to confidentiality agreements) what to say here or anywhere else. The sooner you start seeing us as individuals rather than Sun's tentacles, the sooner OpenSolaris will make sense. The belief that anyone who works for Sun is necessarily here, interacting with those who do not, as corporate representatives of any kind is one of the most toxic possible assumptions anyone can make. Sun has its own set of interests around Solaris, which it looks after by managing its own distribution and by directing its employees to make certain contributions to OpenSolaris. The engineering community itself has a related, but not always identical, set of interests around where OpenSolaris goes and how it gets there. If you believe that everyone is just here to serve Sun's interests, why on earth would you stay? > involvement in OpenSolaris is paid for by Sun. I don't think there is Actually, it's not. Sun pays me to do certain things; participating in OpenSolaris development is only a small (and largely incidental) part of it. Different people here may have greater or lesser job-related responsibilities to this community, but at the end of the day, Sun is paying most of its employees you see here primarily to make Solaris. OpenSolaris happens to be the mechanism by which that's accomplished. > a need to make a distinction between Solaris and OpenSolaris at this > time. Then we have failed, and should all pack up and go home. -- Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!" FishWorks "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"
