> The manner by which Sun made its decision was a > violation of the spirit of the > OpenSolaris community's principles: the decision was > made without consultation > with the OpenSolaris community, nor its elected > representatives, the OGB. > Despite subsequent negotiations between Sun and the > OGB, Sun's decision remains > unchanged. >
To be fair, as I will briefly discuss below, Sun was/is in a very awkward position of being expected to explain its position. If the board members were able to exercise a better business sense, I believe this unpleasant conflict should have never happened, or at least it would not have developed into such an outwardly ugly disposition. To be honest, to this day, I am still holding this belief that the xwindow developers (of Sun) are boycotting the Indiana project. Someone may try to convince me otherwise, but it will be very difficult. Again, the problem is, AFAIC, some of the ogb members tried very hard to insert a position they had strong reasons to believe is right, but, in doing so, they failed to foresee the damages that their unswerving and self-righteous attitude (justified or not) has inflicted on at least the portion(s) of the community that the Solaris elders (not in terms of age but in years of experience) "should" strive to attract, if they care about the welfare of Solaris at all. How much is the trademark "Solaris" worth? Probably in the billions. This is not something that Java-san (Java ??, Mr. Jonathan Schwartz) or even the Board (Sun's Board of Directors) can negotiate. I invite you into my house, and I tell you to make yourself "at home". That does not mean that you can go to my bedroom to snoop around or even open my refrigerator in the kitchen. These are those things that should not have to be said. They are based on well-acknowledged societal understandings as well as a minimum level of (business) common sense and customs of trade. I doubt anyone at Sun will feel comfortable to make a public and explicit explanation that because the Solaris tradename is worth billions, they are really not in a position to __pretend__ to negotiate whether or not they could use it in certain product. We certainly don't expect every "community member" to be aware of these niceties. But I fully expect at least the ogb board members should have at least certain minimum business acumen. Unfortunately, this is not so. With respect to the "certain prominent community member", I believe this is also the person who asked the ogb board to vote to disband the desktop community, because it sponsored the Indiana Project (and the ogb obliged). What irked the most is that the ogb board treated certain member(s) more seriously than others, and some, especially those of us new immigrants, are treated like dirt. At one time, one ogb board member even asked me to get lost (quit the OpenSolaris membership), because I complained about a certain thing. If there are classes among OpenSolaris members, perhaps the Constitution should be amended to expressly say so. -- This message was posted from opensolaris.org
