> Given the schedule for 2008.11 and current Live CD > space situation, we > may have to consider your proposal > (which will be discussed further to make a decision) > of putting SCIM to > Live CD for 2009.04 release. > > Regards, > Suresh
I have been thinking about this issue the entire weekend. What's troubling me the most was a reply from Joey Guo to the original post (made almost six months after the thread traffic had died) in which he seconded Yong's proposal, and commented that "it is EXTREMELY CRITICAL for Chinese users" (emphasis added): http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/message.jspa?messageID=159150#159150 I don't know whether any of the decision makers has been at the front line promoting OpenSolaris, but Joey and I both have. At the time Joey's comment was made, he was Sun's university program manager, preaching Solaris and OpenSolaris to students and teachers in China. I don't think Joey or I can tell OpenSolaris developers what will sell, but from our constant contacts I believe we do know what will drive potential users away. Thus, it runs deeply against my conscience to see a product being produced and distributed--with so much time, effort, dedication (& money & future expectations) that will have gone into it--knowing fully aware that, in at least certain parts of the world, no one will seriously look at it. Furthermore, in my previous reply I mentioned that replacing the current IIIMF with SCIM in the LiveCD may only benefit Chinese speakers. This analysis was flawed b/c one of the major problems with IIIMF is its lack of stability. The handful times that I used it (when I didn't want to boot into SuSE), I always ended up losing (crashing) it. On the one hand, I don't know how we could in good conscience ask our users to use such a sad product to do "the" most important task in computing (i.e., entering inputs). On the other hand, by sticking to a product that has been considered dead for at least four to five years (except wrt Sun), we are giving our foes unnecessary honors when they said we are on our death beds. The six months delay b/t 2008.11 and 2009.05 unfortunately encompasses the month-long lunar New Year holidays in China. Typically this is the most important period of time when computer savvy students and developers can finally find time to try a new application or a new OS (from my experience with Linux). Thus, we will be losing one full year and not just six months. This delay is probably inconsequential for Sun, but some outsiders (myself included) may not be willing to stick around that much longer. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ indiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss
