On 10/26/07, Shawn Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 26/10/2007, Brandorr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 10/26/07, John Plocher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Brandorr wrote: > > > > It seems this discussion is not leading anywhere. And Sun is doing > > > > what Sun is going to do. > > > > > > So, lead it where you want it to go. Make a proposal! > > > > > > Don't just sit there and complain. > > > > > > > I'll tell you why. It's a falicy, OpenSolaris is actually the more > > > > valuable brand at this point. > > > > > > Glad you think so. And, maybe to you, it is. All the more reason for > > > you to suggest how you think we should use it! > > > > > > You obviously don't like my suggestions: > > > > > > 1) Don't wish to use the name /.*OpenSolaris.*/ ? > > > no problem, do what you want... > > > > > > 2) Wish to use it, and are "compatible"? > > > Use "___, an OpenSolaris Operating System" or > > > "Compatible with OpenSolaris" > > > > > > 3) Wish to use it, and aren't "compatible"? > > > Use "Built on OpenSolaris" or > > > "Built with OpenSolaris Technology" or > > > other phrases that don't imply compatibility. > > > > > > so again I ask you - please make a counter proposal. Be part of > > > the solution! > > > > Proposal: No distro will be named OpenSolaris. The definition of > > OpenSolaris will not be changed just to suit Sun's marketing needs. I > > First of all, this isn't about suiting "Sun's marketing needs." This > is about meeting user expectations and the needs of the OpenSolaris > community. Having a reference distribution is about meeting user > expectations. Having it named OpenSolaris is about meeting user > expectations.
It is 100% about Sun's marketing needs. To think otherwise is completely naive > > know this isn't a discussion of what is and isn't Sun's prerogative, > > but you asked for a proposal, and I am asking Sun *NOT* to do > > something, and I feel that a counterproposal should have a viable > > alternative. Part of that counterprosal is a name that works. > > Sun is not involved here other than being owner of a trademark and > asking the community to help define the usage guidelines. Really? Sun is basically trying to figure out how to call their distro OpenSolaris. When I say Sun's distro, I mean the distro that was speced out, prototyped and developed (for most of it's life at this point) behind Sun firewalls. This distro does have proprietary closed source bits. (Last I checked they haven't been removed yet). Sun has made no indication that "Open"Solaris will be 100% open source, even though article II of the constitution states that any OpenSolaris software must be 100% opensource. It's as much a Sun distro as SXCE is. It's also just as much OpenSolaris as SXCE is. > > How about naming Sun's new distro "SolarisNG"? > > Sun doesn't have a distro; the community has a distro. What Sun distro > are you talking about? Project Indiana is a *proposed* distribution by > members of the OpenSolaris community, many of which happen to work for > Sun. > > > > > Why doesn't someone > > > > > > Why don't *you*? What do *you* want? Not, what do you think someone > > > else might want... > > > > I want what everyone else wants. I want to belong to an inclusive open > > source community, where decisions aren't driven by Sun's undisclosed > > business needs. > > > John's proposal, as I understand, is that only people/teams that can > > use the OpenSolaris trademark as a standalone brand, are people/teams > > that make a product that only consists of Sun's binaries. > > Wrong. You need to get this idea that Sun is the one behind this; > they're not. It's just saying that only the distribution designated as > the reference distribution *by the OpenSolaris community* would be > called OpenSolaris. Huh? If not Sun and Sun management, then whom? > The community has the ability to through communities to get a vote to > happen to change what the reference distribution is. In addition, > there is nothing that says Sun has to be the one to produce the > binaries. > > > If the decision to use OpenSolaris as a distro name is for Sun or > > noone, then I'd rather no one use it. So I guess I don't want > > OpenSolaris to be the name of any distro. > > It isn't for Sun or noone. It is for the community's reference > distribution that best represents OpenSolaris. No it isn't. How can it be the community's reference distro if no one has had a chance to evaluate it against other candidates? > > > Martin has jumped in and said > > > > I identify the term "OpenSolaris" with OS/Net > > > > > > as well as > > > > > > > I can better understand you now, with taking your message from above > > > > into account. > > > > ... > > > > Maybe we can find some compromise (what a bad word) : A reference > > > > thing one level higher than the basic kernel+libs OS/Net stuff. > > > > You can have that called "Sun $NAME OpenSolaris", rather than > > > > "$NAME OpenSolaris". > > > > > > so I wouldn'd write him off as "...doesn't seem to approve of the plan". > > > > Ah, but there is a difference. From what I understand, Martin is > > proposing something along the lines of: Sun Indiana OpenSolaris > > [distro/OS], where the key brand is Indiana. This is not the same > > thing as the "OpenSolaris laptop distro" (Which inevitably would be > > labeled as "OpenSolaris" in big letters, and laptop distro in tiny, > > tiny letters.) > > Which is wrong. Indiana is not a Sun distribution. Indiana is a > distribution proposed by a member of the OpenSolaris community that > works for Sun. If someone from Intel had proposed Indiana would you > then want to call it the "Intel Indiana OpenSolaris Distro"? "This is wrong". On what basis are you making that claim? If the distro in question was a) proposed by intel, b) mostly developed behind Intel firewalls, and c) designed behind Intel firewalls and/or d) included prprietary Intel source code, I'd have to say it can be "Intel Indiana OpenSolaris distro" (I don't think it's a good name though).. > > I want the following distros to coexist: > > > > SolarisNG, OpenSolaris Distro - Indiana > > Belenix, OpenSolaris Distro - SolarisNG with KDE (or whatever Moinak > > and team want to do) > > Nexenta, OpenSolaris Distro - A backwards compatible Solaris distro > > that supports both SYSV and Debian packages, as well as SYSV/Solaris > > and GNU commands. > > MartUX, OpenSolaris Distro > > Shillix, OpenSolaris Distro > > Which is going to be incredibly confusing to users. I think it's pretty clear. I have faith in our users.. > When I go to Ubuntu.com, I expect to download something called Ubuntu. > > When I go to FreeBSD.org, I expect to download something called FreeBSD. > > ...the list goes on. When you go to Linux.org and BSD.org, do you expect to be able to download something called Linux or BSD? > > > If you are so dead set against actually contributing a counter proposal, > > > and would rather rail against everything and anything that Sun employees > > > attempt to do, there is probably nothing I can do to make you happy. > > > > The problem is that your current proposal makes a major assumption > > that basically states that Sun's Indiana project/distro will be known > > as ****OpenSolaris**** blah blah, come hell or high water. Everything > > else in the propasal is predicated on that assumption. Thus, a point > > by point is pretty useless, until that assumption can be agreed upon, > > or is removed from the proposal. > > The problem with this, again, is that you are portraying the proposed > reference distribution as a Sun product; it is not. It is a product of > the OpenSolaris community. At this point, the majority of the > OpenSolaris community happens to work for Sun. Well, it seems Sun marketing has at least one person fooled. > > It seems that many in the community seem to feel that the OpenSolaris > > name should not be bestowed to a [proprietary, closed source] Sun > > distro. > > Where has it ever been said that a proprietary, closed source Sun > distro would receive the OpenSolaris name? Go talk to the Indiana developers. > > It also seems that many feel that the current definition of > > OpenSolaris shouldn't change. Currently no distro can use the > > OpenSolaris trademark as part of their name. I am starting to see the > > wisdom of that decision by the founders of the community. > > Experience has proven that users expect otherwise. Experience has shown that Sun executives are actively muddying the water, by making naming promises before they have been agreed to by the community. For that matter the whole Indiana as OpenSolaris thing was told to the press before being raised with the community. Not only that, since then, the press have been repeatedly told that Indiana will be "OpenSolaris". I don't know how you can look at Indiana as anything other than Sun's distro. > > My proposal boils down to not allowing distros to call themselves > > OpenSolaris. (At least at this point in time). This obviously would > > require Sun to name Indiana something other than OpenSolaris. Perhaps > > SolarisNG? > > A proposal to throw away the proposal isn't much of a proposal. > > Even if you don't want to allow anyone to use OpenSolaris as their > name you still have not properly addressed what you think should be > *all of the allowed possible usages* of the trademark and what the > possible restrictions might be. I have, and the discussions were all "tabled" or "parking lotted". Take compatibility for example. The proposal states that we follow the Sun recipe.(I mean "community recipe"). Currently the recipe, is a file list of binaries to download from Sun's servers. Someone can't compile their own distro from source, and make a "compatible distro". A compatibility test, that says, "verify that this is the same exact set of bits" is an audit, not a compatibility test. You are defining compatibility in such a way that only the thing being tested against can be considered compatible. Take for example x86. Intel defined x86, and AMD made a compatible implementation, that was not neccesarily the same set of bits. It is still binary compatible. Compaq, made an IBM PC compatible machine. As an example of real world Solaris compatibility look at Transient's work making Sparc Solaris binaries run on Linux. (I haven't looked too closely, but I think we might be able to declare this is binary compatible.) Currently I can take Blastwave packages compiled for Solaris 8, and install and run them on Solaris 8, Solaris 9, Solaris 10, SX[CD]E b1-75, Nexenta, Martux, etc. Are these distros incompatible or compatible? A compatibility test might consist of a installing and running a given set of SYSV packages, plus running a slew of OS commands to verify that the behavior came out as expected. (There are 1500+ packages in Blastwave, maybe we can somehow leverage their packages to build a compatibility suite). Before you say there is no way to guarantee compatibility between different Solaris builds, I'd say that it depends on what you mean by guarantee. But then again this whole compatibility discussion, predicates that as a community we have consensus on a need for an OpenSolaris reference distro. I don't recall any community vote saying that need exists. How can we write guidelines, presuming the existence of such a beast? -Brian > -- > Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst > [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ > > "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not > tried it. " --Donald Knuth > -- - Brian Gupta http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nycosug/ _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
