Stephen Lau wrote:
> Sure - but this isn't an issue of competing distros. This is an issue
> of one project choosing to overload a name/term that has already been
> used to mean something else.
At the root of all this angst is the MISUSE of the word "OpenSolaris"
as a noun.
It isn't a noun, it is an adjective. "The OpenSolaris ____" is the
proper usage. As in
The OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB)
The OpenSolaris Community
The OpenSolaris Nevada (aka ON) Community
The OpenSolaris Advocacy Community
The OpenSolaris Indiana Project
The OpenSolaris ON Consolidation
... etc ...
When someone say "OpenSolaris is ___", without being clear what
their implied context is, they cause confusion. One could almost
accuse them of trolling :-)
> I think that is dangerously destructive itself to the community IF the
> community decides so.
How can anything be destructive if *the community* decides to do
so? It seems it would be *more* destructive if some outsiders
forced the community do do something against its will.
> I for one would not like *any one person, or board* (whether that's the
> OGB, Jonathan Schwartz, or Ian Murdock) unilaterally make that
> decision. This is a significantly-impacting decision that I feel it
> should be a community vote.
The OpenSolaris trademark is owned (for better or worse) by Sun.
The brand owners and decision makers at Sun (aka PR/Marketing)
are also among the core contributers in the advocacy community.
While they have chosen to develop their branding in the open,
they have not delegated their ownership rights to anyone else.
They are currently working on branding guidelines for use of the
OpenSolaris trademark - things like "OpenSolaris Compatible",
"Built with OpenSolaris", "The OpenSolaris Appliance Distro",
and so on.
If you wish to influence this discussion, then y'all need to
become a contributer in that community as they address these
marketing activities.
It may even be a great idea for the entire OpenSolaris mega-
community to ratify those branding guidelines once the Advocacy
Community finishes developing them. Be sure to raise the
question as part of your involvement there; doing it /here/
isn't reaching the right audience.
From Sara's branding discussion at the OpenSolaris Developers
Summit this weekend, it seems that Indiana is working with
the advocacy community (or maybe the other way around) towards
the goal of being able to brand Indiana as something like:
"The OpenSolaris Laptop Reference Distro"
or
"The Definitive OpenSolaris Core Reference Implementation"
or maybe even
"Sun's OpenSolaris Operating System"
Today, none of the distros out there can label themselves
with the OpenSolaris brand (even though the downloads page
does so :-) One of the outcomes of the advocacy community's
brand guidelines effort is to allow them to be branded as
"built with OpenSolaris Components", OpenSolaris Compatible"
or somesuch. Just like Indiana will be able to do.
The elephant in this room is that people seem to fear that
Sun will usurp the OpenSolaris brand and call their Solaris10
follow-on product simply "OpenSolaris" (the noun). IMO, the
place to raise those concerns is not to the OGB (it is rather
premature at this point), but to the advocacy community where
those discussions and decisions are being made.
At some point we need to ask if it really matters. If the
OpenSolaris Distro Community (TBD...) were to come up with
a set of reference distro "recipes" for appliances, laptops,
web servers, enterprise servers and the like, and someone
took one of those recipes and made a product out of it, why
wouldn't we expect it to be called "OpenSolaris"? Wouldn't
this be a /good/ thing?
-John
