Simon Phipps wrote:
>
> On Nov 14, 2007, at 17:50, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
>
>> IF we want to exist as a community *independent* from Sun, then we
>> *must* have control over our own identity, and ultimately also things
>> like resources, etc. An entity (non-profit or otherwise) becomes
>> necessary. (I think there are other third party non-profits that can
>> act as an "umbrella placeholder" as well, if we don't want to start our
>> own. I have no experience there.)
>>
>> IF we do NOT want to be truly independent of Sun (and that may not be
>> such a terrible thing... Sun is after all the largest contributor to
>> this project by several orders of magnitude) then we don't need to go
>> down that path, but we need to stop complaining when Sun uses the
>> OpenSolaris name however they see fit.
>
> This is a false dichotomy. It is reasonable to expect Sun's
> fiduciaries and their spokespeople to treat us with respect,
> regardless of our incorporated status, and I will continue to call for
> it regardless.
Actually, that's a non-sequiter. The issue I was pointing out had
nothing to do with how Sun treats us (which I think for the most part
has indeed been respectful), but rather what level of administrative
independence (including little details like our core identity) the
community wants to have from Sun.
Put another way, shall the community exist at Sun's pleasure alone, or
do we exist as an entity in our own right, not subservient to Sun? I
will point out that Sun has demonstrated that it believes its in Sun's
best interest to continue to invest in this community that it created,
and that if Sun changed its mind about that, the community would
probably shrivel up and die regardless of whether a separate non-profit
were created or not.
I guess where my thinking is going is that maybe its time to abandon the
fallacy that we can exist as anything other than an "external
subdivision" of Sun... albeit one where the rules of fair play are
openly stated and external participation is actively encouraged.
And if we do abandon that fallacy, then the whole argument about Indiana
being named OpenSolaris seems rather pointless.
The problem right now is that I think some external people are
maintaining a fantasy promulgated by the OpenSolaris Constitution that
Sun is an equal partner in this community. It may be that some of the
people at Sun, including the Constitution authors, believe that. But I
am not entirely certain that the rest of the company leadership has
bought into it... their insistence on having the one-true OpenSolaris
(and control over that name) certainly suggests that this is the case.
In any case, I don't know what the right answer is. I only know that
there are two major conflicting views here, and I believe that we (both
the community and Sun) need to reconcile them before we do anything else
that is drastic.
-- Garrett
