John Sonnenschein wrote: > On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:06 PM, W. Wayne Liauh <wp at hawaiilinux.us> wrote: > >> Many of us came to Solaris because of Sun. In our drive to promote a >> lower-entry-cost, more secure, more-or-less-open, alternative to the Windows >> OS (we have been doing this for over a decade now), we have recently been >> surprised to find Sun's name as our best selling point (vis-a-vis the >> various strains of Linux) to draw interests to Solaris, or even to Linux. >> To our corporate audiences, we have also found out that Solaris is also very >> closely interwound with Sun's hardware (both Sparc and x86-based). Most >> CIOs are wellread--it's a cutthroat market if you know what's going on; and >> their obligation to explore energy efficient servers also prompts them to >> pay attention to Solaris. >> >> In the long run (say, 5-10 years from now), of course, we (or should I say, >> "I", as it is only MHO) would like to see the OpenSolaris community attains >> a separate identity from Sun. But b/f Solaris, OpenSolaris, and OpenSolaris >> derivatives--hopefully there will be many--acquire a substantial market >> share, I believe we should exercise prudence and patience. The most >> important business right now is to work together to find ways to expand the >> market share. >> > > > But at what cost? > > I don't want to be free labour for Sun. But you are happy for Sun's employees to be free labour for you? > But if it's just going to be "do what sun wants" out of convenience > and the community isn't going to assert it's independence at all, > what's the point in calling it an "Open Source" community? It is then > no more open source than OSX. Bi-weekly code drops come over the wall > and we can all "ooh" and "ahh" over the new features that Sun's giving > us. > > Until the number of active contributors outside of Sun approaches those in, what else do you expect? I don't see the situation changing until more third parties pay people to work on OpenSolaris code. Anyone is free to push OpenSolaris in a direction that supports their business needs. At present, Sun is the one pushing hardest.
Ian
