James Carlson wrote: > Jim Grisanzio writes: >>No one is giving us a hard time with saying that S10 is open source >>because there is 10 million lines of OpenSolaris code to point to under >>an OSI license. If Sun had been saying that S10 was open source without >>a a big hairy OpenSolaris to point to and the code was under some >>non-OSI license, then we'd get slapped big time.
Well, I was thinking more in the sense of how the open source community and OSI and competitors see us. But you bring up a very good point, and I'd like to understand this further. > I'll give you a slightly hard time over it: we're seeing the start of > a flood of S10-related support questions and issues showing up on > opensolaris.org mailing lists because customers are confused. They > think S10 == OpenSolaris, and our marketing materials seem to go well > out of their way to promote this sort of confusion. But it's more than our marketing materials, though. It's bigger than that. Go back to what Eric was saying. The darn message (like it or not) has resonated already. Back when I realized that Sun was blending OpenSolaris and Solaris (intentionally and inadvertently) I raised the issue constantly internally and externally. I couldn't find anyone who cared. Now, granted, my circle is somewhat limited, but whatever. :) Press and analysts certainly ran with it, virtually all of our external communications as a company consistently blended the two, a cycle was created, it fed on itself, and it worked. It resonated. I would argued that this was not planned, and that's why it's so powerful. We will not be able to "correct" it; we will only be able to gently nudge into other directions. Regarding customers: I think customers have always been confused to a certain degree about OpenSolaris because we've had to open it over such a long period of time and for a long time many of them simply weren't involved. Whenever I talk to customers that's my immediate (and current) impression. I think Sun at all levels can do a much better job at explaining OpenSolaris to customers, too. Also, internal community building is just as important as external community building, and I don't think we've done nearly enough, either. For a long time, OpenSolaris was very much under the radar /both/ inside and outside the company. We are starting to do more of this now, though, because this very much is an issue. But as customers come to opensolaris.org, we need to channel them to the proper places for support if support is what they are after. I don't think we can do that alone. We need the support guys directly involved in OpenSolaris. It seems to me that they could offer huge value here. > When they show up on opensolaris.org, Sun customers get haphazard > support at best. The people on opensolaris.org (particularly those > outside of Sun) aren't there to support Sun's commercial products. I've always felt that anyone at Sun who touches Solaris -- in any way whatsoever -- needs to be on opensolaris.org to a certain degree. Sun support is no exception. Marketing is no exception. Legal is no exception. Execs are no exception. Etc. > They don't have access to any of the support databases. They don't > know what patches are available or which ones are needed or how to > escalate cases or what contracted support levels exist or what history > the customer has had. > > Like it or not, our customers see "Sun" as "Sun." Absolutely. > It's all one thing. > So, when an answer comes in from an opensolaris.org group, > particularly if it has a "sun.com" address, it's usually seen as an > Official Sun Answer. > > This makes a real hash of things. The customers are upset because > they don't get the support they're expecting and deserve. Our support > group is upset because customers get conflicting answers. That support group needs to be subscribed to the aliases and grab these customers as they come and engage them. That will help educate the community and the customers and the rest of the Solaris people who are involved (people like me). In other words, a quick engagement and channel off to the proper venue. If we all see that occurring every day, we'd all chip in and better be able to move people along. Would better documentation help (a little, anyway)? In other words, you're here at OpenSolaris, here's where you go for x, for y, for z. I know that the site is evolving and there have been calls to make the site more engaging to more levels of the community -- users, customers, etc. Totally support that. > Community > members will be upset because it looks like Sun is dumping the > customer support burden on them. > > I think this needs to be detangled somehow. I don't know how to do > it, but it has to happen if we're going to continue to provide > commercial support for Solaris. Jim -- http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris
