>>>> I think it makes a lot of sense, by analogy to Linux. You can't >>>> "install Linux" -- without getting an immediate "which one?" question. >>> >>> You see this as a feature? Spend any time trying to build products >>> for or around "Linux", and you'll quickly start to see it as a bug. >> >> Solaris is a UNIX(tm) system. >> >> Solaris is Solaris which is UNIX(tm). >> >> If you want UNIX then you can go looking for AIX or HPUX or SCO(?) or >> Solaris. I was always under the impression that OpenSolaris was the >> community project that worked with and dealt with the source code to >> Solaris. >> >> Its confusing to everyone .. sales people, engineers, people on the street >> and people I talk to on the phone and even me. >> >> So why not just create something that runs and call it OpenSolaris and >> then >> we are done with the confusion. There are bigger battles to fight than >> word >> games. > > But the problem with a one-word name like "OpenSolaris" is that it's > not future proof.
Solaris made open source. Works just fine. > What happens when you decide, a year from now, that > you want a different "flavor" of OpenSolaris targeted at a different > end-user community or targeted at a different problem space? > > There is no such thing as a universal OS that is the solution to every > problem space or the distribution of choice for every end-user > community. > > In the real world, we know, intuitively, that there is no such thing > as a universal screw-driver. We know that every toolbox contains many > screwdrivers and we give them different broad-based names to corral > them into general categories... like "philips screwdriver", > "flat-blade screwdriver".. blah, blah. > > And we can see other existing OS naming conventions that work in the > real world (like I wrote earlier): > > Ubuntu Desktop Edition > Ubuntu Server Edition OpenSolaris Desktop Edition OpenSolaris Server Edition OpenSolaris Core Edition Works for me. I added the last one because of my interest in small appliance devices. > So I would like to propose a naming convention that is future-proof, > that shares a "family" of well known operational characteristics and > that the first member of that family be known as: > > OpenSolaris Indiana Pretty arbitrary. Indiana is a State. Are there 51 others ? Is there a license consideration per State? Ask the questions that a complete outsider would ask. I was on the phone today with a man that administers ( and has buying power ) for 150 public libraries up here. I logged into his V880 and it was running Solaris 9. I proposed an upgrade to Solaris 10 and after some discussion about stability etc etc he agreed. During the discussion I pointed him to the OpenSolaris site. He asked rela questions that real people ask who are not developers and not programmers. If you want to grow the userbase then make it digestable to the user. > I'll try to hash out a more complete proposal tomorrow and post it on > tm-policy-dev.... Al, I look forward to it. Dennis _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
