Alan DuBoff wrote:
On Fri, 18 May 2007, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
Sun is actually a massive a minority in the community at this point.
There are 51,179 people registered on the site right now, and only
about 2,000 of those have Sun badges.
So, where are all those other people? I don't see them participating on
the mailing lists.
Some have been signing up all along, of course, but some have registered
due to the Starter Kit program (a lot, actually) recently, and many are
now coming to OpenSolaris via conferences.
Just in the last year or so OpenSolaris community members have been to
Tech Days (about 12 cities globally), ApacheCon, OSCON, EuroOSCON, Japan
Open Source Conf, Germany OpenSolaris Conf, FOSDEM, Colorado Tech/Ed
Conf, China Software Summit, LinuxWorld, JavaOne ... and probably a few
others I can't think of. Not to mention the UG out there, too.
Now that we are going out and talking, people are starting to come to
us. This is hugely positive. The next step is to help them get more
directly involved in the community. And they are, actually. Mail list
activity and web forum hits have grown consistently since we launched,
and the rate of grow is increasing. We are starting to put some pretty
big numbers on the board, actually. There are about 200 lists now, so
you may not see all the increase in activity on this list since it's
widely distributed now.
Also keep in mind that there are language and culture barriers we need
to overcome as we grow outside the west. That remains an untapped
opportunity, and one that is very exciting. It's been great to see the
UG lists diversify into various languages as communities develop in far
away places -- but they /are/ connected to opensolaris.org and they
/want to be/ connected to opensolaris.org. We have to accept the fact
that all the growth in the community will not take place on
opensolaris-discuss, or in California, or even in the U.S. for that
matter. The community will look different in different regions. I
actually think the real challenge we have is not in building one
monolithic OpenSolaris community but in connecting many (sometimes
disparate) OpenSolaris communities.
Those are marketing numbers, they mean nothing to what is done.
They are opensolaris.org registration numbers and they supported by
OpenSolaris engineering, OpenSolaris marketing, and other groups that
are participating in promoting OpenSolaris around the world. They
represent the good work of many people who are part of this community.
This is no different than how Sun counts the downloads.
Sure, the OGB is primarily Sun people, but that's who we elected. I
doubt that situation will be the same in the future, but ultimately,
it's up to community members to get involved and participate.
Absolutely, and I agree it will change in the future. But until then the
communities are dominated with Sun people and it's hard for anyone to
have a pulse on each community without being subscribed.
But you can't get to the "until then" without taking some steps first.
After all, you construct a building by digging a hole first. We are
building all the necessary things a community would need to function --
code, tools, infrastructure, governance, process, people, promotion,
whatever. Buildings don't go up over night, and communities are not
built over night, either.
We need to understand that it exists how it is today. It is a fact that
Sun has the largest influence with OpenSolaris as it is today. They will
also continue to have a large influence for the future as well.
When you say "Sun" what do you mean?
Just because there are many Sun employees involved in certain aspects of
the project is not a problem. Actually, we need /more/ Sun people
involved as the core SCM infrastructure migrates external.
From an engineering standpoint, this is good. From other areas of Sun,
I don't know.
I'm confused. Sun should control some parts but not others?
OpenSolaris should be about open development (engineering) and
community building (like what you are doing with the SVOSUG), not
about products and services and competitive issues with other
companies and communities.
I agree with this statement, but let me explain something to you about
SVOSUG and how I run it. There is very little input from Sun on what I
should present, or how it should be presented. To date, I have looked at
technologies that are happening in Solaris and lined up speakers to talk
about them. I have not asked Sun for much in the way of funding, other
than meeting space. Flip Russell provides drinks which are funded by
Sun, but that is minimal.
And I think that's great. I also think your group is one of the most
successful.
I have run many user groups, and been involved in many more. What I have
learned is that these user groups are best grown out of grass roots,
because it's the people who show up and are there to meet and talk with
others that make up the group.
Sure, we could get Sun to pay for food, pelt out more SWAG, and try to
buy ourselves a user group. In the end that doesn't tend to work, IME,
and would leave us with a Sun user group. I'm not saying we haven't had
food or SWAG in the past, I just try to be selective, and not let it be
overwhelming.
Cool. But I think the company can do more to help the User Groups
without necessarily running them and controlling them. So far Sun has
basically kept a hands-off approach to the user groups. But if we
/could/ provide some resources, would that interest you? And what would
those resources be?
Jim
--
Jim Grisanzio, Sr. Program Manager, OpenSolaris Engineering
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris
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