On Fri, Apr 21, 2006 at 02:53:12PM -0700, Philip Brown wrote: > If "everyone is the same", then there would be no point in having > "discussions with the community", becuase sun would already know everything > that everyone wants. because "everyone is the same."
1. Let's not conflate 'everyone has the same interests' with 'everyone should have equal opportunity to contribute in a uniform way.' The first statement is obviously false. But Open Source allows people with differing interests to cooperate where those interests align, and gives them the freedom to pursue their own way where they do not. That only works, of course, if the second statement is true. 2. You also seem to be conflating the "Sun Product Known As The Solaris Software Companion" and the "OpenSolaris codebase containing arbitrary third-party software." Sun is free, as is anyone else, to pick and choose from among the contents of the latter in a way that supports our (and hopefully our customers') business needs. Because we believe Solaris customers form an important subset of Companion consumers, we'd like to make sure their interests can be represented. That does not mean those are the only valid interests or that Sun can justifiably dictate what goes into the latter codebase. 3. I can't repeat this often enough to people at Sun: Each and every one of us is a part of the community. Please do not use 'the community' to mean 'people who do not work for Sun.' The dichotomy is symptomatic of brokenness in the OpenSolaris community model. So this is not Sun coming down from the mountain to poll the peons in "the community" but rather one collection of community members seeking consensus among a larger group of people. > The whole point of having these mailing lists here on opensolaris.org, is > because people inside sun are not seeing what "the community" outside > sun needs and wants. Nor would they be expected to. I suppose that's one benefit of OpenSolaris as a whole, but Sun has other processes for gathering the Voice of the Customer. This is more about collaborative development among equals. > Everyone is NOT the same. Everone will never be the same. > A full-time sun employee is not, and will never be, the same as someone > who works full-time outside sun. Failing to recognize that, is a fatal > logical flaw. It's like falling victim to the PC (politically correct) > police, and claiming "men and woman are the same!" > All the political warm fuzzies and sheepleading in the world, will not > change the real-life fact that they are not the same. It's more about giving people the same opportunity to contribute as a given individual's skill level, time, and desire permit. The differences between Sun engineers and outside newcomers are in level of familiarity with the code and the time they can dedicate. That does not mean we should discourage non-Sun contributors by creating a distinction based on employer rather than those lower-level characteristics. To draw what will I'm sure be a controversial analogy, it's unreasonable to discriminate against someone for having gone to school in a country that provides notoriously poor education, when what we really want to use as a basis for discrimination is the *result* of the education. The latter can be corrected or compensated for by a motivated individual; the former cannot. -- Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!" Solaris Kernel Team "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"
