UNIX admin wrote On 02/02/07 01:31,:
I was on that team back then, and I don't see those
guys involved in
this discussion on this list right now. If you knew
the context, you may
be less critical, actually. But it's ok to disagree
with any given
marketing strategy, even though that one pre-dates
OpenSolaris and has
no place here at this point.
It has place here more than one might at first realize: what would GPLing Solaris be, if
not an attempt at endearing Solaris to the "GPL community" (Linux folks really,
let's be honest). Is that also not a form of marketing?
Well, I think Harpster is being clear that one possible advantage of a
dual approach would be to engage more developers. That's a valid
viewpoint. Other views have been expressed as well. The OpenSolaris
community is having a conversation about licensing. How is that marketing?
While GPLing Linux might have been an ideological thing, GPLing Solaris is an
obvious move to win more political points with the Linux community and the
press at large. And that alone is already the wrong reason, in my firmest
belief.
I do actually think the move would be popular with the press. But that
would be meaningless if it were simultaneously unpopular with
OpenSolaris developers. That's why we are having this discussion.
So we want to market this thing. OK. But causing publicity stunts and trying to
suck up to somebody that doesn't really want/care/like Solaris in the first
place might not exactly be what you intend.
It's true that Sun does publicity stunts from time to time. The company
has done them from the very beginning. I don't like them, and I always
say so internally. So, thanks for not liking them, too. :) I don't have
much visibility among the executive ranks anymore since I started this
job 3 years ago, but I used to be around them a great deal and I never
had the impression that they needed to "suck up" to anyone, to be
perfectly honest. Regardless, Harpster's starting this conversation is
not a publicity stunt. He's running a large engineering project and he's
exploring licensing issues openly. Not a big deal, really. If you want
to talk about marketing, you can talk to the marketing people. They are
a nice bunch and would be happy to chat. In fact, there are many
marketing needs on OpenSolaris and so perhaps you could get involved.
However, one other thing is also true, and that is that most of those people
don't really *know* the product. For if they did, they would have long ditched
the whole pointless GPL/GNU/Linux thing and switched over.
I'm not sure I agree with the "pointless GPL/GNU/Linux thing" since that
community has already demonstrated its value and success for quite some
time. In fact, we can learned a great deal from those guys. I'm
extremely impressed with what they have accomplished. And they were
actually very kind to me when I accidently flamed their main list when
OpenSolaris opened last year. (so embarrassing)
And that Jim is something that *good* marketing *can* change. Show them the
good stuff Solaris already has; and the rest of us should also ditch this
debate and concentrate on making Solaris even better.
I think our marketing should focus on OpenSolaris to help build the
OpenSolaris community. That's it. No need to show any other community we
are better than they are. We're not better, by the way. We're just
different.
Jim
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
