John Sonnenschein wrote:
> And with Sun doing it's own thing in spite of the community, I fear
> that this will never change ( after all, why would you join an
> open-source project if your concerns just going to be ignored by the
> company that "really owns" the community ? )
>
Okay, this is exactly the kind of comment that is *not* helpful. It
doesn't convey any new information, and it just further bloodies a horse
that has long since expired.
Sun "owns" the trademark, and is either unable or unwilling to cede
control over it. However, nearly *everything* else has been or is in
the process of being, given over to the community.
As far as I know, there has been *one* decision, involving a Sun
trademark, that some people are not happy with. To be quite honest, I've
been both inside and outside Sun, and I can tell you that I resent the
coloring of the entire company that the above excerpt seems to make.
One of the reasons I was so happy to come back to work for Sun is what I
perceive to be the company's strong commitment to open source and open
communities. Even in light of the whole naming/T&B snafu, I don't think
that has changed. Yes, there are still things that need to progress,
such as getting an open RTI process, but that is evolving, and I don't
think anyone at the company is actively attempting to prevent or hinder
that work (rather the opposite is true).
IMO, Sun is probably "the" model company for open source participation
and leadership -- there may be companies that are "more open", but I
suspect that few if any of them even come *close* to Sun in open source
contribution and participation (taken as either numbers of lines of
code, dollars invested, numbers of projects, historical contributions,
or pretty much any other reasonable benchmark.) What would be *really*
refreshing, would be if instead of incessantly berating Sun over *one*
decision, the community took a moment to say "thanks Sun, for your past,
present, and continuing contributions to the open source world!" I know
that's just a bit of altruism on my part, but hey, I can dream, can't
I? (And yes, I know Sun had something to gain by doing all this, but
does that make the gift any less valuable?)
Again, I point out, if you don't like Sun's leadership in this
community, you are free to take the source code and start your own
community using whatever governance rules you like. Have fun! And yes,
at this point, I am actively interested in silencing this "debate",
because at the end of the day, I believe it is at best totally pointless
(nothing good can come of it), and at worst very destructive to the
community.
Please stop beating dead horses.
-- Garrett
