Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Stephen Lau]

Korey Peters wrote:
> To Ian Murdoch and the Open Solaris Community,
  ^^^

nit: it's Murdock.

cheers,
steve

-- 
stephen lau // [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://whacked.net
opensolaris // solaris kernel development
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Anil Gulecha]

Hi Korey,

On 7/30/07, Korey Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The frustrating part is that it doesn't need to be this way.  We now have the 
> technology to make the command line obsolete.  Combo boxes and check marks 
> and tool tips could open up a world of features to the general user.  Simple, 
> intuitive interfaces would also allow the best tool for the job to be chosen, 
> instead of the most familiar.  Making it simple enough for the non-Technical 
> Elite makes it simple enough for all.

FWIW, I agree with you, but this is where I would expect a lot in this
community to disagree with you..

Cheers
Anil
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Artem Kachitchkine]

> Solaris is uniquely situated to make this dream a reality.
 > With the support of Sun Microsystems, resources

Solaris is not very well positioned in the UI competition. Sun, it 
appears, has consciously chosen not to actively develop a desktop, but 
to patiently swallow whatever gnome.org is producing. Hire a few more 
GNOME polishers - and you get another Ubuntu, why bother. That's the 
real frustrating part: most people see the problems (except those in 
denial), yet very little can be done about that. Cheerleading only makes 
it more bitter.

-Artem
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[James Carlson]

Anil Gulecha writes:
> Hi Korey,
> 
> On 7/30/07, Korey Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > The frustrating part is that it doesn't need to be this way.  We now have 
> > the technology to make the command line obsolete.  Combo boxes and check 
> > marks and tool tips could open up a world of features to the general user.  
> > Simple, intuitive interfaces would also allow the best tool for the job to 
> > be chosen, instead of the most familiar.  Making it simple enough for the 
> > non-Technical Elite makes it simple enough for all.
> 
> FWIW, I agree with you, but this is where I would expect a lot in this
> community to disagree with you..

Except for a few outliers, I doubt that.

I think I'm one of the command-line geeks this message refers to
somewhat indirectly.  My idea of a "GUI" is still twm with xterms and
emacs windows, and I wouldn't really want to have it any other way.

Just the same, I think having an environment available that can hide
all of that away and that is robust enough that it's able to do so
when things are going wrong would be great.  I just suspect that it's
far harder (read: expensive) to make that work in any reliable way
than most would suppose.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Gupta]

>
> Just the same, I think having an environment available that can hide
> all of that away and that is robust enough that it's able to do so
> when things are going wrong would be great.  I just suspect that it's
> far harder (read: expensive) to make that work in any reliable way
> than most would suppose.
>

Microsoft has already proven that it doesn't have to be done in a reliable
way.

-Brian
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Mike DeMarco]

> To Ian Murdoch and the Open Solaris Community,
> 
> As a long-time follower of the open source community,
> I stumbled across this forum a week ago and was
> intrigued by the activity taking place on Open
> Solaris.  I spent some time reading posts, and over
> the day some concerns became clear to me; concerns
> that I felt compelled to write about.  I have written
> a letter that I hope will encourage discussion and
> bring about positive results.  I thank you for your
> interest.
> 
> [b]Gaining a significant market share will attract
> developers. [/b]
> 
> Imagine with me that Solaris was the OS on 40% of all
> computers.  Do you believe that it would have a large
> and vibrant developer community?  Most certainly.
> Developers would miss out on 40% of the market if
> they ignored Solaris.  Getting Solaris installed on
> as many computers as possible should be the first
>  and main concern.
> 
> It is true that users alone will not make Open
> Solaris into a great product, but they are the final
> judge of its success.  The Open Solaris community
> must remember who will use their software when the
> development is done: the user.
> 
> If a large number of desktop users should be the
> first priority, targeting the Linux developer’s
> community is a poor strategy.  These developers are
> already a small subset of all developers, and
> hundreds of Linux distros compete for their limited
> time.  In targeting them, Solaris has chosen the
> hardest possible target when much easier targets
> exist.
> 
> Where, then, will this imaginary 40% of users come
> from?  From Windows, of course.  Windows is where it
> must come from.  Solaris [i]must [/i]take a large
> share from Windows, not Linux, to be successful.
> 
> Fortunately…
> 
> [b]There is a large group of Windows users who would
> use a FOSS alternative if it existed.[/b]
> 
> Wait.  What about Linux?  We already have an open
> source alternative.  Not really.  There are two kinds
> of people who currently use Linux.  There are those
> who are good at programming, who understand computers
> and software at a deep level.  These people enjoy the
> command prompt, know what “Vi” is and usually work in
> network administrator or other IT positions.  I shall
> refer to these people as the Technical Elite.  The
> Technical Elite use Linux.
> 
> The second group is the friends and relatives of this
> Technical Elite.  Their moms and dads and roommates.
> These people rely upon the Technical Elite to help
> them get Beryl working, to figure out Grub, to
> re-compile the kernel to make their wireless card
> work.  They are not power users, and use their
>  computers to simply surf the web and write email.
> 
> The only reason this second group can even consider
> Linux is because it has become much easier to use.  A
> lot of work has been done to hide the power, so that
> an average Joe can do most average things.  But
> should something go wrong, should something advanced
> need to be done, anyone not a Technical Elite must
> seek the aid of one.  There is no middle ground.  The
> arcane syntax of the command prompt ensures this.  In
> fact, I predict that Linux will continue to grow
> until the Technical Elite can “support” no more.
> Linux is too hard for the average user to fix or
> update on their own.  There are too many gotchas,
> too many places where special knowledge is required.
> If any one doubts this, a simple visit to the
> Ubuntu support forum will confirm it.  Post after
> post documents the trials and tribulations of
> average users wrestling with even the (seemingly)
>  simplest of tasks.
> 
> Most people use Linux for a single reason.  They use
> it because, at some level, they agree with the
> principles of Open Source.  They take the time and
> energy required to learn Linux because of the
> strength of that belief.  They are like people who
> have a dream of climbing Mt. Everest.  They train and
> practice and spend a lot of money to fly to Asia and
> risk their lives to realize this dream.  It is an
> expensive and dangerous process, but the view from
> the top makes it all worthwhile.
> 
> However, for every person who has the time and money
> to spend making their dream come true, there are
> hundreds of others who share the same dream, but lack
> the time and money.  Climbing Mt. Everest will always
> remain a dream for millions.
> 
> It is the same with Linux and Solaris.  It is a
> wonderful dream that thousands like myself have, but
> we lack the time and money to invest in the learning
> required to make it happen.  I want the freedom that
> climbing Mt. Solaris offers, but I have a job and a
> wife and debts and not enough free time to spend
> years figuring out sudo or XFS or D-Trace.  A truly
> Free operating system will always remain just a dream
> for me.  I, and thousands like me, use Windows
> because we want more power than a neutered Linux, but
> we lack the knowledge of the Technical Elite to make
> Linux work.
> 
> It

Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Edward McAuley]

Uh, let's see.  Beautiful interface (as attractive as the Mac or Vista), 
intuitively laid out, ease of use, UNIX (like), open source...it's already 
here.  You can download it or buy it.

Suse 10.2

Please look at this latest version, it is stunning.  The beautifully designed 
and intuitive layout of its desktop is very difficult to communicate until you 
spin it up and use it for a while.

Give it a look; the price is certainly right.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[andrewk9]

I agree entirely with this post. My thoughts:

1. We in the community should not be expecting Sun to be addressing all of the 
shortcomings in OpenSolaris. The community needs to be involved in a meaningful 
way in improving it. A first step to improving collaboration might be to add a 
wiki to OpenSolaris.org .

2. Sun's lack of presence in the consumer market (as distinct from the business 
market) is one of the reasons Solaris is not as user friendly as alternatives 
(as a Windows user, naturally Windows springs to my mind here). One way of 
improving usability might be to create a distro focussed solely on the consumer 
space, where we can pretty much assume that the user has no previous technical 
knowledge at all.

3. Your point about command line versus GUI is an excellent point. In my view, 
this is the single biggest shortcoming of most Unix-based operating systems 
(OS-X excepted). One way to improve this in Solaris would be to develop GUI 
equivalents to all of those really useful command line tools we use to 
administer (Open)Solaris.

Cheers

Andrew.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Sean Sprague]

Hey andrewk9,

I shall reply to you, but my 2 cents applies to other comments in this thread; 
so apols if I bang on about stuff that 
you have not directly or indirectly commented on.

> 1. We in the community should not be expecting Sun to be addressing all of 
> the shortcomings in OpenSolaris. The community needs to be involved in a 
> meaningful way in improving it. A first step to improving collaboration might 
> be to add a wiki to OpenSolaris.org .

OpenSolaris _empirically_ has no shortcomings. Well, the major shortcoming 
(which is being constantly and actively 
addressed) is that not 100% of it is open; but that is largely out of the 
control of Sun (hardware support/crypto/export 
restrictions). The remainder of it is open, accessible, and modifiable to your 
own requirements; and if you think to the 
benefit of others, then there is a mechanism (ia a Sun sponsor) whereby you can 
submit such personal modifications to 
Sun for assessment for potential inclusion into future releases. Thus the 
community is as "involved" as it chooses to be.

> 2. Sun's lack of presence in the consumer market (as distinct from the 
> business market) is one of the reasons Solaris is not as user friendly as 
> alternatives (as a Windows user, naturally Windows springs to my mind here). 
> One way of improving usability might be to create a distro focussed solely on 
> the consumer space, where we can pretty much assume that the user has no 
> previous technical knowledge at all.

This is a comment on Solaris and not OpenSolaris. Solaris is indeed focused on 
the business community; and quite rightly 
so. It is an operating environment that is deployed in many mission-critical 
environments around the world; and it 
performs admirably in such environments. The lack of a "pretty" GUI front-end 
in such environments is absolutely 
inconsequential.

I agree that the lack of pretty user interface will stop Solaris becoming part 
of the consumer-user space. This again is 
quite correct and apt. OpenSolaris is available to be "interesting" to 
developers; including GUI developers. Prettied-up 
OpenSolaris distros will become available over time (if they do not already 
exist). Solaris will maintain a marginally 
pretty GUI at best IMO.

> 3. Your point about command line versus GUI is an excellent point. In my 
> view, this is the single biggest shortcoming of most Unix-based operating 
> systems (OS-X excepted). One way to improve this in Solaris would be to 
> develop GUI equivalents to all of those really useful command line tools we 
> use to administer (Open)Solaris.

UNIX-based operating environments should have GUI's, but not for 
administration. To be an administrator of a UNIX-based 
system mandates that you understand the underlying commands (and potentially 
what underlies them); thus the command line 
is absolutely sufficient.

Regards... Sean.
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Cameron]

>> Solaris is uniquely situated to make this dream a reality.
>  > With the support of Sun Microsystems, resources
> 
> Solaris is not very well positioned in the UI competition. Sun, it 
> appears, has consciously chosen not to actively develop a desktop, but 
> to patiently swallow whatever gnome.org is producing. Hire a few more 
> GNOME polishers - and you get another Ubuntu, why bother. That's the 
> real frustrating part: most people see the problems (except those in 
> denial), yet very little can be done about that. Cheerleading only makes 
> it more bitter.

Artem:

This is hugely unfair.  Sun created the accessibility infrastructure that
is used in GNOME based (and compatible with) the accessibility infrastructure
used by Java.  Sun has contributed a great deal back to the GNOME community
and delivers well received value add products on top of GNOME including Trusted
JDS and APOC.

Korey:

Considering Section 508 government requirements that all U.S. government
funded agencies (including schools, libraries, etc.) must purchase accessible
software solutions, distros that use GNOME are well poised to compete with
Windows in these markets.  Sun is probably better poised due to its already
established customer base in the U.S. government and the fact that Sun
dedicates more engineering effort towards supporting accessibility than
other distros.  Overall accessibility works better on Solaris (with one
important exception...).  At the moment, Ubuntu does have a slight lead in
the accessibility market since their installer is accessible.  I don't think
that Sun would require a great deal of effort to catch up in this area
especially since we are already working on a GTK+ based installer (though
accessibility support is not currently planned for the initial release
unfortunately).

Having said that, I think there are a few things that would be good to get
done before trying to compete with Windows and other Linux vendors in the
desktop arena.

- Finish the port from Xsun to Xorg Xserver, including on Sparc.
- Virtual Terminals support which is in the works
- Complete the SunAudio to OSS migration.
- Make further progress with Project Indiana (e.g. provide the sorts
   of tools that Linux users expect like autoconf, automake, libtool,
   etc.).  This is also in the works, obviously.
- Media codec support (MPEG, encrypted DVD, WindowsMedia, etc.).  If
   not directly in the OS, at least users should be able to buy and
   download plugins from somewhere (e.g. Fluendo).

I think it would be great if Sun gave these sorts of tasks a bit more
priority and started to seriously consider the desktop market.  It's not
high margin like selling mainframes, but I'd think Sun could make a serious
competitor to Microsoft and Apple if we wanted to.

Just my opinion...

Brian
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[John Martinez]

On Jul 30, 2007, at 12:49 PM, andrewk9 wrote:

> I agree entirely with this post. My thoughts:
>
> 1. We in the community should not be expecting Sun to be addressing  
> all of the shortcomings in OpenSolaris. The community needs to be  
> involved in a meaningful way in improving it. A first step to  
> improving collaboration might be to add a wiki to OpenSolaris.org .
>
> 2. Sun's lack of presence in the consumer market (as distinct from  
> the business market) is one of the reasons Solaris is not as user  
> friendly as alternatives (as a Windows user, naturally Windows  
> springs to my mind here). One way of improving usability might be  
> to create a distro focussed solely on the consumer space, where we  
> can pretty much assume that the user has no previous technical  
> knowledge at all.
>
> 3. Your point about command line versus GUI is an excellent point.  
> In my view, this is the single biggest shortcoming of most Unix- 
> based operating systems (OS-X excepted). One way to improve this in  
> Solaris would be to develop GUI equivalents to all of those really  
> useful command line tools we use to administer (Open)Solaris.

I think a lot of people keep missing the point that Solaris' bread  
and butter is the enterprise server market. I don't know what the  
ratio of server to desktop installations is, but I'd guess that it's  
very tilted in one direction. Solaris shines on the server. Solaris  
can shine on the desktop, but that isn't its main focus.

Solaris would have to break into a very crowded market and make a  
better GUI.

Competition:

Microsoft
Apple
Ubuntu
SuSE
others?

You'd have to convince Sun that the desktop market is as, or more  
important than the server market that makes them their revenues.

I love my Macs, but I'd rather have Solaris when I launch the  
Terminal application...

-john
(written on a Mac)
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Artem Kachitchkine]

> This is hugely unfair.  Sun created the accessibility infrastructure that
> is used in GNOME based (and compatible with) the accessibility infrastructure
> used by Java.  Sun has contributed a great deal back to the GNOME community
> and delivers well received value add products on top of GNOME including 
> Trusted
> JDS and APOC.

I have nothing but admiration for Sun's desktop developers, but it's 
hard to care for Sun's desktop strategy. The fearless leadership is just 
not serious about it. If it was, HCI designers would be revered and 
given as much credit as kernel hackers; instead they are exposed to a 
huge cultural dissonance from engineering community and little support 
from management. If it was, the more aggressive, result-oriented steps 
would be taken (don't ask me what... bribe key gnome developers? license 
aqua? dance around the fire naked? half of the answers lie within 
correctly asked questions).

-Artem (the kernel guy who loves his xterms)
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Dick Davies]

On 30/07/07, Korey Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> It is true that users alone will not make Open Solaris into a great product, 
> but they are the final judge of its success.  The Open Solaris community must 
> remember who will use their software when the development is done: the user.

Is Solaris really trying to be the best desktop OS? That seems a
*really* odd direction to
push in, given its obvious superiority on the server end.

> If a large number of desktop users should be the first priority, targeting 
> the Linux developer's community is a poor strategy.  These developers are 
> already a small subset of all developers, and hundreds of Linux distros 
> compete for their limited time.  In targeting them, Solaris has chosen the 
> hardest possible target when much easier targets exist.

Developers matter because they write/port the software sysadmins need.

Most people use Windows because it came with their PC, not for any
technical reason.
I don't see any mileage in trying to out windows windows. OSX has
already done that, anyway :)

-- 
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns
http://number9.hellooperator.net/
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[MC]

> Most people use Windows because it came with their PC, not for any
technical reason.

It comes with their PCs because it is technically the best desktop OS.  Dell 
doesn't sell Windows PCs instead of OS/2 Warp PCs because of a coin flip.  
Windows is simply the best.  (Better than all the rest!)

Being ignorant or dismissive of the market leaders is a great way to fail in 
the market.  Living in your own world feels great until the real world comes 
crashing through.


> I don't see any mileage in trying to out windows windows. OSX has
already done that, anyway :)

That's kind of backwards historically. In any case, OSX is far less popular 
with users and developers than Windows, so you'd have a hard time convincing 
anyone in their right mind that OSX has out-Windows'd Windows.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Richard L. Hamilton]

> I think a lot of people keep missing the point that
> Solaris' bread  
> and butter is the enterprise server market. I don't
> know what the  
> ratio of server to desktop installations is, but I'd
> guess that it's  
> very tilted in one direction. Solaris shines on the
> server. Solaris  
> can shine on the desktop, but that isn't its main
> focus.
> 
> Solaris would have to break into a very crowded
> market and make a  
> better GUI.
> 
> Competition:
> 
> Microsoft
> Apple
> Ubuntu
> SuSE
> others?
> 
> You'd have to convince Sun that the desktop market is
> as, or more  
> important than the server market that makes them
> their revenues.
> 
> I love my Macs, but I'd rather have Solaris when I
> launch the  
> Terminal application...

While I don't much like the notion of point-and-click (if it's not hard,
then you're not _learning_ anything, so why bother using up oxygen?),
there's a balance: today's desktop users are tomorrow's mindshare for
making purchasing decisions on more profitable systems.  The desktop
may of itself barely be a break-even proposition, but to concede the
desktop today may be to concede ground on more profitable areas
tomorrow.

And there may be some overlap: multimedia servers may need codecs,
visualization servers and render farms may need graphics routines,
simplified administration may be useful for any sort of system, and
so on.  Insofar as problems solved for the desktop can be used to increase
the value of servers, not only is taking the desktop seriously an investment
in the future, it may turn out to be a more near-term investment as well.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Dick Davies]

On 31/07/07, MC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Most people use Windows because it came with their PC, not for any
> technical reason.
>
> It comes with their PCs because it is technically the best desktop OS.  Dell 
> doesn't sell Windows PCs instead of OS/2 Warp PCs because of a coin flip.  
> Windows is simply the best.  (Better than all the rest!)

At what?

-- 
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns
http://number9.hellooperator.net/
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Edward McAuley]

The argument I hear -and have sometimes made is:

"Microsoft got into the back office -with a very lame server operating system, 
because it was "ubiquitous" and perceived as "easy" to use, versus Novell, 
Banyan, UNIX, MVS, VMS, etc., at the time."

Microsoft became ubiquitous because IBM was ubiquitous.  IBM was the micro 
"business machine," because they "opened" their platform to developers.  It was 
ubiquitous on the home desktop and in the workplace not necessarily because it 
offered a broad selection of software ideas and because it was accessible for 
profit to the programmers.

If we go back in time for a minute, and remember that Novell pinned its 
development to DOS and even though it was better at the time (NDS, etc.), it 
was very obvious that all Microsoft had to do was throw money and talent at the 
Novell problem, which they did successfully.

Windows "Server," regardless of its weaknesses at the time had meaning.  For 
those hoping to enter that market as Systems "Engineers," that perception of 
"easy" meant they had hope and salvation, or at least an entry-level place to 
start.  For corporations, it meant they would soon have a "commodity" work 
force, who was "just happy to be there."  What congress could not do with the 
tax laws, Microsoft did with its servers; and recruiting firms, through the 
establishment of the NACCB did the rest with their lobbying efforts (“But I 
thought talent agents were only allowed to charge 10%, Mom.”  “Yes, that’s 
right Johnny, unless they’re computer talent agents, because we need a cheap 
computer workforce for the next several generations”  “But is that really fair, 
Mom?  Isn’t that illegal?  Aren’t the companies’ paying the same amount or more 
anyway?  Isn’t it anti-competitive to single-out one group of entrepreneurs, 
force them into a special set of rules and disallow them from taking part in 
the dream of owning an independent business, just because they are in demand?”  
“No Johnny, it isn’t, if you make it legal by enacting a law.”  “Now, go to 
your room Johnny, you’re making the nice CEO and the Senator nervous”).

People and companies deployed Windows servers not because it was "better" but 
because it was "easier."  No one trusted their mission critical applications to 
it, for a long time, and in many areas of the enterprise they still do not, 
with good reason.  It was deployed because held lots of promises for lots of 
constituencies.  Microsoft knew that and they are excellent sales people.

And, it kept most of those promises.

However, in thinking through this and in reading some of these posts, I truly 
do think that the time, and that opportunity for ubiquity on the desktop, has 
past -for several reasons:

1.  No one is going allow themselves to be held hostage to a single vendor 
any longer.  That may not be the impetus for the origin of the open source 
projects, but that desire for autonomy, ultimately became the largest driving 
force.
2.  There is significant competition among many flavors of the same thing 
(i.e. 'NIX) and all of it connects well to its competitors.
3.  The competition for the server market will force Microsoft to become a 
commodity product who offers professional services...just like everyone else.  
Microsoft had barely begun to be taken seriously in 1997 when Linux had already 
garnered 17% of the new server market.  Remember, Win2000 Adv. Svr. (arguably 
their first decent offering) did not arrive until 2001.  I don't know much 
about about Svr 2K8 but 2K3 is a very large, heavy OS, that literally pleads 
and begs its admins. NOT to do certain things, that could take out the entire 
server base, in a given forest if executed properly ("improperly," is a more 
accurate word).  It is an unwieldy, heavy, high flying, complex, web of 
administration and replication connectivity, that could crash at any moment if 
treated with malicious intent.  It's not unlike the Winchester Mystery house in 
some ways.
4.  Many things will force MS to try to merge/buy a 'NIX vendor but the 
computing and business worlds will NOT allow it -and regulators will not allow 
it.  If they are not allowed, due to the potential anti-trust or monopolistic 
implications, they'll make sweet-heart deals to stay alive and viable, using 
their power in the marketplace to pit one vendor against another, etc. (I mean 
offer incentives that are beneficial to vendors at different "levels"  ;) ).
5.  The competition for the desktop mind-share has already begun to erode 
Microsoft's hold.  When considering the ease of connectivity of the front-end 
clients with the back-end server base, and their ability to replicate highly 
customized "Standard Desktops," the 'NIXs have established a well-defended and 
significant beachhead.  Corporations are deploying ‘NIX standard desktops in 
the hundreds of thousands and the only thing keeping the numbers from growing 
exponentially faster, are the astronomical fees the Vendors and 

Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[MC]

rlhamil said:
> While I don't much like the notion of point-and-click (if it's not hard,
then you're not _learning_ anything, so why bother using up oxygen?)

mdemarco said:
> Leave the point and clickers behind.
> Command line is where we live! It is not dead and never will be. This is 
> where the future brain trust is and this is where we gather into our 
> communities. I like solving the difficult problems and don't want someone 
> giving me the "EASY BUTTON". Solaris should stay ahead of the crowd. Not in 
> the 40% But more in the 10%. 


You guys are in a serious minority that Project Indiana is not being made for.  
:)  And I believe the root post is addressing Project Indiana.

Most people don't care about what you care about.  The computer system is a 
means to a goal.  Literally and exactly like a toaster or microwave.  And their 
system need not step on your system's toes, because there can be an unlimited 
number of OpenSolaris distros.

You can have one distro that has no GUI for you guys, and another that is easy 
to use for other people.  Project Indiana is the latter.  You shouldn't need to 
feel and reply defensively to Indiana-related stuff IMHO.  You should be 
focusing on whatever project that has goals that you support.  If you want 
Solaris 11 to be a certain way, maybe post on the Solaris forum?

The "easy to use versus hard to use" or "CLI versus GUI" or "mainstream user 
versus minority hacker" or "10% vs 40%" posts shouldn't need to happen anymore 
IMHO.  Pick a project that fits you and leave alone the projects that don't fit 
you.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[MC]

> At what?

Little old me probably can't help you if you are oblivious to why Windows is 
the most successful personal computer software system of all time.  You might 
want to start looking at developer community and support, user community and 
support, usability, system compatibility, and hardware support.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Jim Walker]

> On 30/07/07, Korey Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>> It is true that users alone will not make Open
>> Solaris into a great product, but they are the final
>> judge of its success.  The Open Solaris community
>> must remember who will use their software when the
>> development is done: the user.
> 
> Is Solaris really trying to be the best desktop OS?
> That seems a *really* odd direction to  push in,
> given its obvious superiority on the server end.
>

I remember in my OS class at Purdue University, as we worked
with the XINU [1] operating system,  that my professor, Douglas
Comer, challenged us to think bigger, by thinking smaller. 
When asked on a test, if we thought XINU would be suitable for a
single user, few of us answered yes. We couldn't imagine one of
our computers supporting anything less than 20 or more people.

We were wrong. 

There is no reason why a good OS can't be used everywhere. I
use Solaris on my desktop everyday. I think 40% is too small. We
should shoot for 100% of the desktop market.

Cheers,
Jim

[1] - Ironically, Sun also helped sponsor the XINU project.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Ian Collins]

Dick Davies wrote:
> On 30/07/07, Korey Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>   
>> It is true that users alone will not make Open Solaris into a great product, 
>> but they are the final judge of its success.  The Open Solaris community 
>> must remember who will use their software when the development is done: the 
>> user.
>> 
>
> Is Solaris really trying to be the best desktop OS? That seems a
> *really* odd direction to
> push in, given its obvious superiority on the server end.
>
>   
Best is hard to define, is it the crappy OS that every software vendor
targets their application at, or the perfect OS that they ignore?

Success on the desktop is more down to marketing and spin than technical
merit.

It's unfortunate to see the same trend emerging in the server room.
 
Ian

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Jim Grisanzio]

Jim Walker wrote:
>> On 30/07/07, Korey Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>> It is true that users alone will not make Open
>>> Solaris into a great product, but they are the final
>>> judge of its success.  The Open Solaris community
>>> must remember who will use their software when the
>>> development is done: the user.
>> Is Solaris really trying to be the best desktop OS?
>> That seems a *really* odd direction to  push in,
>> given its obvious superiority on the server end.
>>
> 
> I remember in my OS class at Purdue University, as we worked
> with the XINU [1] operating system,  that my professor, Douglas
> Comer, challenged us to think bigger, by thinking smaller. 
> When asked on a test, if we thought XINU would be suitable for a
> single user, few of us answered yes. We couldn't imagine one of
> our computers supporting anything less than 20 or more people.
> 
> We were wrong. 
> 
> There is no reason why a good OS can't be used everywhere. I
> use Solaris on my desktop everyday. I think 40% is too small. We
> should shoot for 100% of the desktop market.


Now there's some thinking I can get behind! :) Totally agree.

Jim
-- 
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[S h i v]

On 7/31/07, Jim Grisanzio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Jim Walker wrote:
> > There is no reason why a good OS can't be used everywhere. I
> > use Solaris on my desktop everyday. I think 40% is too small. We
> > should shoot for 100% of the desktop market.
>
>
> Now there's some thinking I can get behind! :) Totally agree.
>

Am glad there are some who share my thoughts :-)

Whenever the group *for*  "Solaris==Server==Xterm==Niche_product"
becomes very vocal it concerns me.

(Solaris != OpenSolaris). Points made about Solaris are not relevant
in their entirety in opensolaris.org
OpenSolaris has inherited the technology, but it need not inherit the
strategy *as is*. The approaches for the two must feed each other
(Solaris <-> OpenSolaris), but need not be identical or driven by one
another.

It is **not**
- GUI instead of CLI.
- Desktop instead of a Server
- Dumbed down interfaces instead of hackery
- End-user-friendly instead of stability

I am glad Indiana is happening.

~Shiv
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 11:29 -0700, Artem Kachitchkine wrote:
> > Solaris is uniquely situated to make this dream a reality.
>  > With the support of Sun Microsystems, resources
> 
> Solaris is not very well positioned in the UI competition. Sun, it 
> appears, has consciously chosen not to actively develop a desktop,
> but 
> to patiently swallow whatever gnome.org is producing. Hire a few more 
> GNOME polishers - and you get another Ubuntu, why bother. That's the 
> real frustrating part: most people see the problems (except those in 
> denial), yet very little can be done about that. Cheerleading only
> makes 
> it more bitter.
> 

Well positioned is a bit of a subjective statement. Having used the
current GNOME bundled with Solaris, I certainly don't see anything major
with it - I can load my StarOffice, surf the net. About the only axe to
grind is getting bugs fixed. But most of the problems end users will
face will have more to do with hardware support than whether the GUI is
'oooh shiney!'.

As for what Sun can do - possibly work with GNOME developers but one
thing wouldn't want to see is pointless 'branding' simply to keep those
jusifying their existance, through paper shuffling, happy. More features
aren't needed - working on making sure that nautilus doesn't crash when
an ipod is loaded or when a device like a flash mp3 player with two
flash chips - which should result in two drives appearing on the
desktop. Adding support for more CODECs out of the box - I'd be more
than happy to pay Sun $20 per month for a copy of Solaris which included
the latest GNOME and extensive CODEC support out of the box.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 11:52 -0700, Mike DeMarco wrote:
> > To Ian Murdoch and the Open Solaris Community,
> > 
> > As a long-time follower of the open source community,
> > I stumbled across this forum a week ago and was
> > intrigued by the activity taking place on Open
> > Solaris.  I spent some time reading posts, and over
> > the day some concerns became clear to me; concerns
> > that I felt compelled to write about.  I have written
> > a letter that I hope will encourage discussion and
> > bring about positive results.  I thank you for your
> > interest.
> > 
> > [b]Gaining a significant market share will attract
> > developers. [/b]
> > 
> > Imagine with me that Solaris was the OS on 40% of all
> > computers.  Do you believe that it would have a large
> > and vibrant developer community?  Most certainly.
> > Developers would miss out on 40% of the market if
> > they ignored Solaris.  Getting Solaris installed on
> > as many computers as possible should be the first
> >  and main concern.
> > 
> > It is true that users alone will not make Open
> > Solaris into a great product, but they are the final
> > judge of its success.  The Open Solaris community
> > must remember who will use their software when the
> > development is done: the user.
> > 
> > If a large number of desktop users should be the
> > first priority, targeting the Linux developer’s
> > community is a poor strategy.  These developers are
> > already a small subset of all developers, and
> > hundreds of Linux distros compete for their limited
> > time.  In targeting them, Solaris has chosen the
> > hardest possible target when much easier targets
> > exist.
> > 
> > Where, then, will this imaginary 40% of users come
> > from?  From Windows, of course.  Windows is where it
> > must come from.  Solaris [i]must [/i]take a large
> > share from Windows, not Linux, to be successful.
> > 
> > Fortunately…
> > 
> > [b]There is a large group of Windows users who would
> > use a FOSS alternative if it existed.[/b]
> > 
> > Wait.  What about Linux?  We already have an open
> > source alternative.  Not really.  There are two kinds
> > of people who currently use Linux.  There are those
> > who are good at programming, who understand computers
> > and software at a deep level.  These people enjoy the
> > command prompt, know what “Vi” is and usually work in
> > network administrator or other IT positions.  I shall
> > refer to these people as the Technical Elite.  The
> > Technical Elite use Linux.
> > 
> > The second group is the friends and relatives of this
> > Technical Elite.  Their moms and dads and roommates.
> > These people rely upon the Technical Elite to help
> > them get Beryl working, to figure out Grub, to
> > re-compile the kernel to make their wireless card
> > work.  They are not power users, and use their
> >  computers to simply surf the web and write email.
> > 
> > The only reason this second group can even consider
> > Linux is because it has become much easier to use.  A
> > lot of work has been done to hide the power, so that
> > an average Joe can do most average things.  But
> > should something go wrong, should something advanced
> > need to be done, anyone not a Technical Elite must
> > seek the aid of one.  There is no middle ground.  The
> > arcane syntax of the command prompt ensures this.  In
> > fact, I predict that Linux will continue to grow
> > until the Technical Elite can “support” no more.
> > Linux is too hard for the average user to fix or
> > update on their own.  There are too many gotchas,
> > too many places where special knowledge is required.
> > If any one doubts this, a simple visit to the
> > Ubuntu support forum will confirm it.  Post after
> > post documents the trials and tribulations of
> > average users wrestling with even the (seemingly)
> >  simplest of tasks.
> > 
> > Most people use Linux for a single reason.  They use
> > it because, at some level, they agree with the
> > principles of Open Source.  They take the time and
> > energy required to learn Linux because of the
> > strength of that belief.  They are like people who
> > have a dream of climbing Mt. Everest.  They train and
> > practice and spend a lot of money to fly to Asia and
> > risk their lives to realize this dream.  It is an
> > expensive and dangerous process, but the view from
> > the top makes it all worthwhile.
> > 
> > However, for every person who has the time and money
> > to spend making their dream come true, there are
> > hundreds of others who share the same dream, but lack
> > the time and money.  Climbing Mt. Everest will always
> > remain a dream for millions.
> > 
> > It is the same with Linux and Solaris.  It is a
> > wonderful dream that thousands like myself have, but
> > we lack the time and money to invest in the learning
> > required to make it happen.  I want the freedom that
> > climbing Mt. Solaris offers, but I have a job and a
> > wife and debts and not enough free time to spend
> > year

Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 12:11 -0700, Edward McAuley wrote:
> Uh, let's see.  Beautiful interface (as attractive as the Mac or Vista), 
> intuitively laid out, ease of use, UNIX (like), open source...it's already 
> here.  You can download it or buy it.
> 
> Suse 10.2
> 
> Please look at this latest version, it is stunning.  The beautifully designed 
> and intuitive layout of its desktop is very difficult to communicate until 
> you spin it up and use it for a while.
> 
> Give it a look; the price is certainly right.
>  

I've used SuSE 10.2 - if you're happy to avoid the bugs that you can fly
a 747 through. Beta quality compilers, drivers and libraries. Crappy
KDE/OpenOffice.org integration (specifically kslaves/openoffice.org) -
its horrific - "ship first, hide bugs hopeing they won't get found".

Lord knows I don't want to see Solaris turn into a dumping site for bad
code.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 12:49 -0700, andrewk9 wrote:
> I agree entirely with this post. My thoughts:
> 
> 1. We in the community should not be expecting Sun to be addressing
> all of the shortcomings in OpenSolaris. The community needs to be
> involved in a meaningful way in improving it. A first step to
> improving collaboration might be to add a wiki to OpenSolaris.org .
> 
> 2. Sun's lack of presence in the consumer market (as distinct from the
> business market) is one of the reasons Solaris is not as user friendly
> as alternatives (as a Windows user, naturally Windows springs to my
> mind here). One way of improving usability might be to create a distro
> focussed solely on the consumer space, where we can pretty much assume
> that the user has no previous technical knowledge at all.
> 
> 3. Your point about command line versus GUI is an excellent point. In
> my view, this is the single biggest shortcoming of most Unix-based
> operating systems (OS-X excepted). One way to improve this in Solaris
> would be to develop GUI equivalents to all of those really useful
> command line tools we use to administer (Open)Solaris.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Andrew.

One could argue that Indiana is designed to address these short comings.
If there is a 'nice price' for the support and a willingness on Sun's
part to address the short comings of those who pay for support, momentum
could pick up.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

> - Finish the port from Xsun to Xorg Xserver, including on Sparc.
> - Virtual Terminals support which is in the works
> - Complete the SunAudio to OSS migration.
> - Make further progress with Project Indiana (e.g. provide the sorts
>of tools that Linux users expect like autoconf, automake, libtool,
>etc.).  This is also in the works, obviously.
> - Media codec support (MPEG, encrypted DVD, WindowsMedia, etc.).  If
>not directly in the OS, at least users should be able to buy and
>download plugins from somewhere (e.g. Fluendo).
> 
> I think it would be great if Sun gave these sorts of tasks a bit more
> priority and started to seriously consider the desktop market.  It's
> not
> high margin like selling mainframes, but I'd think Sun could make a
> serious
> competitor to Microsoft and Apple if we wanted to.

I'm surprised that Sun can't get access to those windows codecs under
the agreement which Sun and Microsoft signed.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 14:46 -0700, John Martinez wrote:
> On Jul 30, 2007, at 12:49 PM, andrewk9 wrote:
> 
> > I agree entirely with this post. My thoughts:
> >
> > 1. We in the community should not be expecting Sun to be
> addressing  
> > all of the shortcomings in OpenSolaris. The community needs to be  
> > involved in a meaningful way in improving it. A first step to  
> > improving collaboration might be to add a wiki to OpenSolaris.org .
> >
> > 2. Sun's lack of presence in the consumer market (as distinct from  
> > the business market) is one of the reasons Solaris is not as user  
> > friendly as alternatives (as a Windows user, naturally Windows  
> > springs to my mind here). One way of improving usability might be  
> > to create a distro focussed solely on the consumer space, where we  
> > can pretty much assume that the user has no previous technical  
> > knowledge at all.
> >
> > 3. Your point about command line versus GUI is an excellent point.  
> > In my view, this is the single biggest shortcoming of most Unix- 
> > based operating systems (OS-X excepted). One way to improve this
> in  
> > Solaris would be to develop GUI equivalents to all of those really  
> > useful command line tools we use to administer (Open)Solaris.
> 
> I think a lot of people keep missing the point that Solaris' bread  
> and butter is the enterprise server market. I don't know what the  
> ratio of server to desktop installations is, but I'd guess that it's  
> very tilted in one direction. Solaris shines on the server. Solaris  
> can shine on the desktop, but that isn't its main focus.
> 
> Solaris would have to break into a very crowded market and make a  
> better GUI.
> 
> Competition:
> 
> Microsoft
> Apple
> Ubuntu
> SuSE
> others?
> 
> You'd have to convince Sun that the desktop market is as, or more  
> important than the server market that makes them their revenues.
> 
> I love my Macs, but I'd rather have Solaris when I launch the  
> Terminal application...

Question: if Solaris runs on a server but is accessed by end users on a
Sun Ray - is it a desktop operating system for the end user?

Thats what annoys me, people who throw in the towel, throw up their
hands as if to say, "I give up!" when it comes to Solaris on the
desktop.

The desktop isn't one big giant monolythic beast.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[John Martinez]

On Jul 30, 2007, at 7:50 PM, Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:

> On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 14:46 -0700, John Martinez wrote:
>>
>> I think a lot of people keep missing the point that Solaris' bread
>> and butter is the enterprise server market. I don't know what the
>> ratio of server to desktop installations is, but I'd guess that it's
>> very tilted in one direction. Solaris shines on the server. Solaris
>> can shine on the desktop, but that isn't its main focus.
>>
>> Solaris would have to break into a very crowded market and make a
>> better GUI.
>>
>> Competition:
>>
>> Microsoft
>> Apple
>> Ubuntu
>> SuSE
>> others?
>>
>> You'd have to convince Sun that the desktop market is as, or more
>> important than the server market that makes them their revenues.
>>
>> I love my Macs, but I'd rather have Solaris when I launch the
>> Terminal application...
>
> Question: if Solaris runs on a server but is accessed by end users  
> on a
> Sun Ray - is it a desktop operating system for the end user?

I think so. But again, what is the install base of Sun Rays?

> Thats what annoys me, people who throw in the towel, throw up their
> hands as if to say, "I give up!" when it comes to Solaris on the
> desktop.
>
> The desktop isn't one big giant monolythic beast.

Who's throwing in the towel? Between Windows, Mac OS X and the Linux  
distros, Solaris has got some tough competition. That is the reality  
that I'm stating.

-john

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Gupta]

>
> One could argue that not only does Solaris need more users, but its
> quality rather than quantity. If the vast majority of the 40% are penny
> pinching, proprietary software hating, thick-rim-glasses wearing, hunch
> back coding geeks - it certainly won't attract vendors such as Adobe or
> MYOB who don't target that crowd.


Penny pinching = intelligent
proprietary software hating = trend setter
thick-rim-glasses wearing = hip
hunch back =  bad and inaccurate stereotype
coding geek = backbone of the technology industry

All I want is all the coding geeks running Solaris on their
laptops/desktops. (Especially University coding geeks... That is where
people generally develop their OS preferences). Remember people deploy what
they are familiar with. Also, they tend to deploy to the OS they develop
with. (But this is less set in stone).

Also, don't you get it? Proprietary apps are just a side show now... The
real is action is in open source web development frameworks... (How many
Linux users buy desktop  applications!??!? Also it would be interesting to
see of all the installed Linux servers what percentage are running shrink
wrapped apps. I'd venture it is actually a small percentage.)

-Brian
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 23:43 -0400, Brian Gupta wrote:
> One could argue that not only does Solaris need more users,
> but its
> quality rather than quantity. If the vast majority of the 40%
> are penny 
> pinching, proprietary software hating, thick-rim-glasses
> wearing, hunch
> back coding geeks - it certainly won't attract vendors such as
> Adobe or
> MYOB who don't target that crowd.
> 
> Penny pinching = intelligent 
> proprietary software hating = trend setter
> thick-rim-glasses wearing = hip
> hunch back =  bad and inaccurate stereotype 
> coding geek = backbone of the technology industry
> 
> All I want is all the coding geeks running Solaris on their
> laptops/desktops. (Especially University coding geeks... That is where
> people generally develop their OS preferences). Remember people deploy
> what they are familiar with. Also, they tend to deploy to the OS they
> develop with. (But this is less set in stone).
> 
> Also, don't you get it? Proprietary apps are just a side show now...
> The real is action is in open source web development frameworks...
> (How many Linux users buy desktop  applications!??!? Also it would be
> interesting to see of all the installed Linux servers what percentage
> are running shrink wrapped apps. I'd venture it is actually a small
> percentage.) 

A trend setter to nowhere - the vast majority of applications are closed
source - until the day I see opensource programmers argue over code
quality, asking for feed back from end users and actually taking on
board that feedback and dropping the licencing jihad, that'll be when
opensource takes over the desktop.

Apart from a few token applications, it makes up a microscopic number
out there.

Wake me up when there is an opensource equvilant of Creative Suite,
Photoshop Elements, Homesite, MYOB, Quicken etc. etc. - then we can
start to talk about opensource taking over the desktop.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 20:29 -0700, John Martinez wrote:
> On Jul 30, 2007, at 7:50 PM, Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 14:46 -0700, John Martinez wrote:
> >>
> >> I think a lot of people keep missing the point that Solaris' bread
> >> and butter is the enterprise server market. I don't know what the
> >> ratio of server to desktop installations is, but I'd guess that it's
> >> very tilted in one direction. Solaris shines on the server. Solaris
> >> can shine on the desktop, but that isn't its main focus.
> >>
> >> Solaris would have to break into a very crowded market and make a
> >> better GUI.
> >>
> >> Competition:
> >>
> >> Microsoft
> >> Apple
> >> Ubuntu
> >> SuSE
> >> others?
> >>
> >> You'd have to convince Sun that the desktop market is as, or more
> >> important than the server market that makes them their revenues.
> >>
> >> I love my Macs, but I'd rather have Solaris when I launch the
> >> Terminal application...
> >
> > Question: if Solaris runs on a server but is accessed by end users  
> > on a
> > Sun Ray - is it a desktop operating system for the end user?
> 
> I think so. But again, what is the install base of Sun Rays?

I'm saying to simply put it at the back and say, "server only" ignores
the fact that Solaris isn't a server only operating system.

> > Thats what annoys me, people who throw in the towel, throw up their
> > hands as if to say, "I give up!" when it comes to Solaris on the
> > desktop.
> >
> > The desktop isn't one big giant monolythic beast.
> 
> Who's throwing in the towel? Between Windows, Mac OS X and the Linux  
> distros, Solaris has got some tough competition. That is the reality  
> that I'm stating.

Assuming you don't look at the specifics. Stable driver API/ABI, a
compiler that doesn't royally suck and change C++ ABI every release. An
IDE which actually works out of the box with drag and drop development
rather than the mess there is with Glade which is a usability nightmare.

It is the little things when added up make for a big improvement over
Linux - like I said, are people so defeatist that they're going to throw
in the towel and say "I give up?" - is there some passion in his
discussion list?

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Korey Peters]

> I enjoy Solaris, Always have. Do I want it to become
> another Windows? NO. 
> Leave the point and clickers behind. We in the Open
> source community need to be able to 
> give all people the choice and flexibility to be
> independent. To have the freedom to develop 
> the next evolutionary step in computers. Command line
> is where we live! It is not dead and
> never will be. This is where the future brain trust
> is and this is where we gather into our
> communities. I like solving the difficult problems
> and don't want someone giving me the 
> "EASY BUTTON". Solaris should stay ahead of the
> crowd. Not in the 40% But more in the
> 10%. 
> 
>   My 2 cents.

This post sums up quite perfectly everything I'm arguing against.  Developers 
may have this attitude (and it's a fine one to have, mdemarco), but they must 
see past it if they want normal people to use their software.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Korey Peters]

> 
> I think the "40%" was a rectum pluck rather than it
> being a fixed number
> on which OpenSolaris should aim. I mean, if you look
> at Mac, their
> marketshare is below 10% and yet has a bigger
> selection of software than
> Solaris.
> 
> One could argue that not only does Solaris need more
> users, but its
> quality rather than quantity. If the vast majority of
> the 40% are penny
> pinching, proprietary software hating,
> thick-rim-glasses wearing, hunch
> back coding geeks - it certainly won't attract
> vendors such as Adobe or
> MYOB who don't target that crowd.
> 
> Matthew
> 
> ___
> opensolaris-discuss mailing list
> opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org

The 40% certainly was a "rectum-pluck".  I was thinking about a goal for 
Solaris on the desktop, and 40% seemed so startling that I thought I'd better 
use it.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Korey Peters]

>All
> I want is all the coding geeks running Solaris on
> their laptops/desktops. (Especially University
> coding geeks... That is where people generally
> develop their OS
> preferences). Remember people deploy what they are
> familiar with. Also, they tend to deploy to the OS
> they develop with. (But this is less set in
> stone).Also, don't you get it?
> Proprietary apps are just a side show now... The real
> is action is in open source web development
> frameworks... (How many Linux users buy desktop 
> applications!??!? Also it would be interesting to see
> of all the installed Linux servers what percentage
> are running shrink wrapped apps. I'd venture it
> is actually a small percentage.)
> -Brian

I disagree, Brian.  Developers tend to deploy to the OS they develop with?  If 
that's so, there must be a helluva lot of developers working on Windows.  They 
will develop to where the market is.

You're right in saying that Linux users don't buy commercial apps.  This is 
because:

- There aren't any to buy.
- There are FOSS equivalents to most commercial apps (of wildly varying 
quality).
- Few users who would be inclined to buy a commercial app (home users, artists, 
photographers) use Linux.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Korey Peters]

> I agree that the lack of pretty user interface will
> stop Solaris becoming part of the consumer-user
> space. This again is 
> quite correct and apt. OpenSolaris is available to be
> "interesting" to developers; including GUI
> developers. Prettied-up 
> OpenSolaris distros will become available over time
> (if they do not already exist). 

I think you misunderstand average users.  Pretty is nice, but not necessary.  
We require our computers to work easily.  We would like to be able to fix them 
if they break.

You assumption that prettied-up distros will become available over time is 
incredibly risky.  Your plan for popular success for Solaris involves hoping 
that somewhere out there is a group of individuals who will spend years of 
their life making a pretty GUI for an OS with an insignificant market share.  I 
wouldn't take that wager.  Would you?

On the other hand, how many developers will develop a pretty GUI for an OS with 
a 10% market share?  This is the heart of the problem.  If people are using it, 
the developers will come.  You're going about it backwards.  The lack of a 
pretty GUI isn't keeping people away from Solaris.  It's because installing it 
and using it (for an average user) is technically impossible.  That's the 
problem.  Work on that one.

> 
> UNIX-based operating environments should have GUI's,
> but not for administration. To be an administrator of
> a UNIX-based 
> system mandates that you understand the underlying
> commands (and potentially what underlies them); thus
> the command line 
> is absolutely sufficient.
> 
> Regards... Sean.
>

I disagree, Sean.  I seem to be perfectly capable of administering my Windows 
system, and yet the command line keeps me from even [i]using [/i]Linux (let 
alone administering it).  This technical elitism is frustrating and 
self-limiting.  As long as people deliberately keep the power out of the users 
hands, you will stifle adoption.  Why would you forbid me to have the power 
that you enjoy?
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Korey Peters]

> Best is hard to define, is it the crappy OS that
> every software vendor
> targets their application at, or the perfect OS that
> they ignore?
> 
> Success on the desktop is more down to marketing and
> spin than technical
> merit.
> 
> It's unfortunate to see the same trend emerging in
> the server room.
>  
> an

Vendors will target their application at the largest market.  End of story.  
Therefore, success for Project Indiana should (and whether we like it or not, 
will) be measured ONLY in how many desktop installations it gets.  If it makes 
the world's most perfect OS and no one uses it, it has failed.

But, of course, that won't happen.  If it is perfect, everyone will use it.  
Even if it's just "pretty good", people will use it.  Windows success is 
certainly bolstered by marketing, but there is no viable alternative for 95% of 
the population.  They use it because they can.  My goal here is to try and push 
Open Solaris and Project Indiana into embracing the user, to make a viable 
alternative to Windows for the average user.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> But, of course, that won't happen.  If it is perfect,
> everyone will use it.  Even if it's just "pretty
> good", people will use it.

It is the availability of software that makes or breaks a platform. Not 
hardware, not OS technical superiority, not OS security, not ease of use.

Only software decides who lives or dies. The majority of people out there 
couldn't care less about the technical superiority of an OS or even security.

People "just want the computer to do what they want to do". It's the software 
that enables them to do that, not the hardware, not the OS. Proof: Windows on 
(up until recently) crappy PC-bucket hardware. Nobody cared. But the software 
was there enabling people to get something done with that "computer thing".

That's it. Availability of software makes or breaks a platform.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 22:38 -0700, Korey Peters wrote:
> > 
> > I think the "40%" was a rectum pluck rather than it
> > being a fixed number
> > on which OpenSolaris should aim. I mean, if you look
> > at Mac, their
> > marketshare is below 10% and yet has a bigger
> > selection of software than
> > Solaris.
> > 
> > One could argue that not only does Solaris need more
> > users, but its
> > quality rather than quantity. If the vast majority of
> > the 40% are penny
> > pinching, proprietary software hating,
> > thick-rim-glasses wearing, hunch
> > back coding geeks - it certainly won't attract
> > vendors such as Adobe or
> > MYOB who don't target that crowd.
> > 
> > Matthew
> > 
> > ___
> > opensolaris-discuss mailing list
> > opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
> 
> The 40% certainly was a "rectum-pluck".  I was thinking about a goal for 
> Solaris on the desktop, and 40% seemed so startling that I thought I'd better 
> use it.

40% is definately achievable. Now, if Sun can get their marketing
departments act together, things would improve even more.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 22:42 -0700, Korey Peters wrote:
> >All
> > I want is all the coding geeks running Solaris on
> > their laptops/desktops. (Especially University
> > coding geeks... That is where people generally
> > develop their OS
> > preferences). Remember people deploy what they are
> > familiar with. Also, they tend to deploy to the OS
> > they develop with. (But this is less set in
> > stone).Also, don't you get it?
> > Proprietary apps are just a side show now... The real
> > is action is in open source web development
> > frameworks... (How many Linux users buy desktop 
> > applications!??!? Also it would be interesting to see
> > of all the installed Linux servers what percentage
> > are running shrink wrapped apps. I'd venture it
> > is actually a small percentage.)
> > -Brian
> 
> I disagree, Brian.  Developers tend to deploy to the OS they develop
> with?  If that's so, there must be a helluva lot of developers working
> on Windows.  They will develop to where the market is.
> 
> You're right in saying that Linux users don't buy commercial apps.
> This is because:
> 
> - There aren't any to buy.
> - There are FOSS equivalents to most commercial apps (of wildly
> varying quality).
> - Few users who would be inclined to buy a commercial app (home users,
> artists, photographers) use Linux.

One can also argue that by going byt he number who have bought Crossover
Office, there definately is a market out there. It would be nice if
there was Crossover Office for Solaris x86. It would address the lack of
Photoshop.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Korey Peters]

> It is the availability of software that makes or
> breaks a platform. Not hardware, not OS technical
> superiority, not OS security, not ease of use.
> 
> Only software decides who lives or dies. The majority
> of people out there couldn't care less about the
> technical superiority of an OS or even security.
> 
> People "just want the computer to do what they want
> to do". It's the software that enables them to do
> that, not the hardware, not the OS. Proof: Windows on
> (up until recently) crappy PC-bucket hardware. Nobody
> cared. But the software was there enabling people to
> get something done with that "computer thing".
> 
> That's it. Availability of software makes or breaks a
> platform.

If that's so, ux-admin, why does anyone care about Project Indiana?  The amount 
of software it offers is a mere shadow to what Windows offers.  Yet people do 
care, so Open Solaris must offer something else to those people.

The ideas behind Open Solaris and FOSS in general are extremely powerful, and 
people do care about them.  If you presented two versions of an OS that were 
identical in every aspect, except one was free both as in Freedom and as in 
beer, which do you think people would choose?  They will take the Free one.  
Every time.  The fact that they don't now means that the FOSS versions are 
inferior technically (while being superior ideologically).

So, while I agree that software is important to a platform, [i]it can only come 
as a result of many people using the platform[/i].  No one develops for a 
platform that no one uses.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Patrick Finch]

Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 22:38 -0700, Korey Peters wrote:
>>> I think the "40%" was a rectum pluck rather than it
>>> being a fixed number
>>> on which OpenSolaris should aim. I mean, if you look
>>> at Mac, their
>>> marketshare is below 10% and yet has a bigger
>>> selection of software than
>>> Solaris.
>>>
>>> One could argue that not only does Solaris need more
>>> users, but its
>>> quality rather than quantity. If the vast majority of
>>> the 40% are penny
>>> pinching, proprietary software hating,
>>> thick-rim-glasses wearing, hunch
>>> back coding geeks - it certainly won't attract
>>> vendors such as Adobe or
>>> MYOB who don't target that crowd.
>>>
>>> Matthew
>>>
>>> ___
>>> opensolaris-discuss mailing list
>>> opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
>> The 40% certainly was a "rectum-pluck".  I was thinking about a goal for 
>> Solaris on the desktop, and 40% seemed so startling that I thought I'd 
>> better use it.
> 
> 40% is definately achievable. Now, if Sun can get their marketing
> departments act together, things would improve even more.

Care to elaborate on that, Matthew?


Patrick
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 10:45 +0200, Patrick Finch wrote:
> Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 22:38 -0700, Korey Peters wrote:
> >>> I think the "40%" was a rectum pluck rather than it
> >>> being a fixed number
> >>> on which OpenSolaris should aim. I mean, if you look
> >>> at Mac, their
> >>> marketshare is below 10% and yet has a bigger
> >>> selection of software than
> >>> Solaris.
> >>>
> >>> One could argue that not only does Solaris need more
> >>> users, but its
> >>> quality rather than quantity. If the vast majority of
> >>> the 40% are penny
> >>> pinching, proprietary software hating,
> >>> thick-rim-glasses wearing, hunch
> >>> back coding geeks - it certainly won't attract
> >>> vendors such as Adobe or
> >>> MYOB who don't target that crowd.
> >>>
> >>> Matthew
> >>>
> >>> ___
> >>> opensolaris-discuss mailing list
> >>> opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
> >> The 40% certainly was a "rectum-pluck".  I was thinking about a goal for 
> >> Solaris on the desktop, and 40% seemed so startling that I thought I'd 
> >> better use it.
> > 
> > 40% is definately achievable. Now, if Sun can get their marketing
> > departments act together, things would improve even more.
> 
> Care to elaborate on that, Matthew?

Ok, where are the Sun advertisements in magazines read by decision
makers? I open up the NZ Management magazine (from the NZIM - most
managers/excutives in NZ are members) - not a single advertisement, and
yet, I see IBM splattered from cover to cover. I look through the
business paper that comes out, again, no advertisements.

I then click on slashdot.org and find advertisements for Sun - why
advertise on slashdot.org? teeny bobby kiddies sitting around whinging
and whining about the world who have absolutely NO influence over
decisions made in large corporations. Its the equivilant of marketing
dog food to the yapping dog when in reality you want to aim the
marketing at the owner.

Lets not get started on the marketing outside of the print -
advertisements on television, evagelising java as *the* technology to
demand on mobile phones, where is the attempt to get developers but
technical and artistic (aka Adobe people) excited about JavaFX? where
are the easy to use tools that allow people to make rich content using
JavaFX as easily as it is with Flash and Shockwave?

It just goes on and on and on. Quite frankly I'm wasting my time even
explaining it given that Sun employ's people based on whether they have
a degree rather than whether thay have the know how to take Sun
products, market their to buggery and evangelise technology in practical
applications to those who make decisions.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> If that's so, ux-admin, why does anyone care about
> Project Indiana?  The amount of software it offers is
> a mere shadow to what Windows offers.  Yet people do
> care, so Open Solaris must offer something else to
> those people.

When you wrote your original essay, you wrote that Solaris should be targeted 
at masses, GUIs and all, not at people who care about technical things and code 
named projects.

Those that "Indiana" means something to are computer enthusiasts in one form or 
another. The majority doesn't even know what it is, doesn't care and never 
will. In the best possible outcome scenario, they will be vaguely aware that 
their computer runs something called "Solaris" and that will be it.

Except for us computer enthusiasts, an average person wants as little to do 
with a computer as possible; outside of practical needs and entertainment.
Unfortunately, an average person views an inherently complex device such as a 
computer as nothing more than another washing machine or toaster-like appliance 
and they expect it to behave that way.
That is something that is currently technically impossible and absurd since our 
computing model isn't capable of it, yet, it is taken for granted and readily 
expected by billions of people.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Patrick Finch]

Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 10:45 +0200, Patrick Finch wrote:
>> Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 22:38 -0700, Korey Peters wrote:
> I think the "40%" was a rectum pluck rather than it
> being a fixed number
> on which OpenSolaris should aim. I mean, if you look
> at Mac, their
> marketshare is below 10% and yet has a bigger
> selection of software than
> Solaris.
>
> One could argue that not only does Solaris need more
> users, but its
> quality rather than quantity. If the vast majority of
> the 40% are penny
> pinching, proprietary software hating,
> thick-rim-glasses wearing, hunch
> back coding geeks - it certainly won't attract
> vendors such as Adobe or
> MYOB who don't target that crowd.
>
> Matthew
>
> ___
> opensolaris-discuss mailing list
> opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
 The 40% certainly was a "rectum-pluck".  I was thinking about a goal for 
 Solaris on the desktop, and 40% seemed so startling that I thought I'd 
 better use it.
>>> 40% is definately achievable. Now, if Sun can get their marketing
>>> departments act together, things would improve even more.
>> Care to elaborate on that, Matthew?
> 
> Ok, where are the Sun advertisements in magazines read by decision
> makers? I open up the NZ Management magazine (from the NZIM - most
> managers/excutives in NZ are members) - not a single advertisement, and
> yet, I see IBM splattered from cover to cover. I look through the
> business paper that comes out, again, no advertisements.
> 
> I then click on slashdot.org and find advertisements for Sun - why
> advertise on slashdot.org? teeny bobby kiddies sitting around whinging
> and whining about the world who have absolutely NO influence over
> decisions made in large corporations. Its the equivilant of marketing
> dog food to the yapping dog when in reality you want to aim the
> marketing at the owner.

I dislike argument by analogy, (something about apples and pears), but 
isn't a reasonable counter-argument that it is the equivalent of 
marketing toys or breakfast cereals to children even though their 
parents will be the ones paying for them?

I think that you are addressing an important point for OpenSolaris.  Who 
is more target for the project, IT executives or developers?  I think 
it's the latter.  Of course the executive is an important constituency, 
but wouldn't a wise executive listen to their developers?


> Lets not get started on the marketing outside of the print -
> advertisements on television, evagelising java as *the* technology to
> demand on mobile phones, where is the attempt to get developers but
> technical and artistic (aka Adobe people) excited about JavaFX? where
> are the easy to use tools that allow people to make rich content using
> JavaFX as easily as it is with Flash and Shockwave?
> 
> It just goes on and on and on. Quite frankly I'm wasting my time even
> explaining it given that Sun employ's people based on whether they have
> a degree rather than whether thay have the know how to take Sun
> products, market their to buggery and evangelise technology in practical
> applications to those who make decisions.


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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[andrewk9]

Comments inline: 

> I shall reply to you, but my 2 cents applies to other
> comments in this thread; so apols if I bang on about
> stuff that 
> you have not directly or indirectly commented on.
> 
> > 1. We in the community should not be expecting Sun
> to be addressing all of the shortcomings in
> OpenSolaris. The community needs to be involved in a
> meaningful way in improving it. A first step to
> improving collaboration might be to add a wiki to
> OpenSolaris.org .
> 
> OpenSolaris _empirically_ has no shortcomings. Well,
> the major shortcoming (which is being constantly and
> actively 
> addressed) is that not 100% of it is open; but that
> is largely out of the control of Sun (hardware
> support/crypto/export 
> restrictions). The remainder of it is open,
> accessible, and modifiable to your own requirements;
> and if you think to the 
> benefit of others, then there is a mechanism (ia a
> Sun sponsor) whereby you can submit such personal
> modifications to 
> Sun for assessment for potential inclusion into
> future releases. Thus the community is as "involved"
> as it chooses to be.

No software is perfect, as I think you acknowledge. I totally that it is up to 
the community to engage itself in the process.

> 
> > 2. Sun's lack of presence in the consumer market
> (as distinct from the business market) is one of the
> reasons Solaris is not as user friendly as
> alternatives (as a Windows user, naturally Windows
> springs to my mind here). One way of improving
> usability might be to create a distro focussed solely
> on the consumer space, where we can pretty much
> assume that the user has no previous technical
> knowledge at all.
> 
> This is a comment on Solaris and not OpenSolaris.
> Solaris is indeed focused on the business community;
> and quite rightly 
> so. It is an operating environment that is deployed
> in many mission-critical environments around the
> world; and it 
> performs admirably in such environments. The lack of
> a "pretty" GUI front-end in such environments is
> absolutely 
> inconsequential.
> 
> I agree that the lack of pretty user interface will
> stop Solaris becoming part of the consumer-user
> space. This again is 
> quite correct and apt. OpenSolaris is available to be
> "interesting" to developers; including GUI
> developers. Prettied-up 
> OpenSolaris distros will become available over time
> (if they do not already exist). Solaris will maintain
> a marginally 
> pretty GUI at best IMO.

Apologies, I meant to say that, because OpenSolaris was originally derived from 
Solaris, that this naturally means that it is focussed on large business users. 
As you say, it is not Sun's problem if consumers don't like it.
> 
> > 3. Your point about command line versus GUI is an
> excellent point. In my view, this is the single
> biggest shortcoming of most Unix-based operating
> systems (OS-X excepted). One way to improve this in
> Solaris would be to develop GUI equivalents to all of
> those really useful command line tools we use to
> administer (Open)Solaris.
> 
> UNIX-based operating environments should have GUI's,
> but not for administration. To be an administrator of
> a UNIX-based 
> system mandates that you understand the underlying
> commands (and potentially what underlies them); thus
> the command line 
> is absolutely sufficient.

I disagree completely. For technical users the command line is probably their 
tool of choice, but for non-technical users a GUI equivalent is generally 
required.

Cheers

Andrew.

> 
> Regards... Sean.
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[James Carlson]

Kaiwai Gardiner writes:
> > I think it would be great if Sun gave these sorts of tasks a bit more
> > priority and started to seriously consider the desktop market.  It's
> > not
> > high margin like selling mainframes, but I'd think Sun could make a
> > serious
> > competitor to Microsoft and Apple if we wanted to.
> 
> I'm surprised that Sun can't get access to those windows codecs under
> the agreement which Sun and Microsoft signed.

I'm not surprised.  Access isn't the problem -- licensing is.
Licensing is a tricky business in the best of cases, because it's
entirely possible to have products that you can legally ship on one OS
but that you cannot sell the rights to or ship with some other OS.

I think it's a great idea to ask those involved with MS (whoever they
are ;-}) to investigate some sort of porting effort like this, but
don't be surprised if the answer is a fairly opaque "no."

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Sean Sprague]

Hi andrewk9,

> Comments inline: 

Ditto (as they should be ;-) ) with snippages...

> No software is perfect, as I think you acknowledge. I totally that it is up 
> to the community to engage itself in the process.

I remember a piece of software 25 years ago called "The Last One". I think that 
its successor might have been called 
"The Next One" ;-) Indeed no software can be "perfect"; which always makes me 
nervous about the stuff running embedded 
code in "life-support" systems ;-)

The OpenSolaris community is growing, and growing in a well-ordered manner, 
thanks mainly to the colossal efforts of Jim 
Grisanzio; who deserves great and continuing praise. Engagement will always be 
hit-and-miss; but if the infrastructure 
is there, easily accessible, and thus easy to latch on to; then the community 
will continue to engage and grow.

> Apologies, I meant to say that, because OpenSolaris was originally derived 
> from Solaris, that this naturally means that it is focussed on large business 
> users. As you say, it is not Sun's problem if consumers don't like it.

Yup. Sun must make some money from somewhere; and this will not be from 
OpenSolaris; it will be from large Solaris 
Support contracts (and stuff like training, and clever marketing campaigns). On 
a single-consumer level, Sun will make 
no dosh; but a single OpenSolaris  developer writing a driver for a new piece 
of hardware which in the future could make 
its way into the official HCL, and into Solaris, could make "money" for Sun, 
and achieve some notable Kudos for the 
developer. Masayuki Muryama has achieved this to great extent, and to the great 
relief of many people using unsupported 
network hardware.

> I disagree completely. For technical users the command line is probably their 
> tool of choice, but for non-technical users a GUI equivalent is generally 
> required.

OK, we will have to agree to disagree on this point. But my premise was that 
anyone who is being paid to administer a 
system needs to understand the administration tasks at at least the command 
line level, if not lower. Obviously this 
does not include singleton consumers who will cry initially, then reinstall if 
the working environment that they 
"administer" ceases to work.

Regards... Sean.
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Joerg Schilling]

Kaiwai Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I've used SuSE 10.2 - if you're happy to avoid the bugs that you can fly
> a 747 through. Beta quality compilers, drivers and libraries. Crappy
> KDE/OpenOffice.org integration (specifically kslaves/openoffice.org) -
> its horrific - "ship first, hide bugs hopeing they won't get found".

Suse is really funny. They claim that they need to "enhance" cdrecord in order
to get the quality level they intend for Suse.

I've seen Suse-10.2 on a IBM notebook, it was impossible to make their
cdrecord clone even see the CD/DVD drive of the notebook. A vanilla cdrecord
on the other side works out of the box even without the need to specify a 
dev= parameter.

Linux distributions got into trouble because more and more Linux users did no 
longer buy Linux distributions but downloaded them from the network. This 
caused pressure on the commercial Linux distributors. As commercial Linux 
distributions are interested in revenue, they need "arguments" they can print 
on glossy paper... 

In order to get these arguments, they are no longer interested in code 
quality. Instead they are interested in marketing "facts". 

I am in hope this will not happen to Solaris.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
   [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni)  
   [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 08:06 -0400, James Carlson wrote:
> Kaiwai Gardiner writes:
> > > I think it would be great if Sun gave these sorts of tasks a bit
> more
> > > priority and started to seriously consider the desktop market.
> It's
> > > not
> > > high margin like selling mainframes, but I'd think Sun could make
> a
> > > serious
> > > competitor to Microsoft and Apple if we wanted to.
> > 
> > I'm surprised that Sun can't get access to those windows codecs
> under
> > the agreement which Sun and Microsoft signed.
> 
> I'm not surprised.  Access isn't the problem -- licensing is.
> Licensing is a tricky business in the best of cases, because it's
> entirely possible to have products that you can legally ship on one OS
> but that you cannot sell the rights to or ship with some other OS.
> 
> I think it's a great idea to ask those involved with MS (whoever they
> are ;-}) to investigate some sort of porting effort like this, but
> don't be surprised if the answer is a fairly opaque "no."

Well, they need to have something there to justify people paying for a
subscription to Indiana once released - if they offered out of the box
support for mp3, wmv, wma, asf (encoding and decoding) I'd be more than
happy to shell out the money for a subscription - if they don't, why the
heck would I want yet another operating system that offers me nothing
different over Linux or FreeBSD?

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 14:58 +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Kaiwai Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > I've used SuSE 10.2 - if you're happy to avoid the bugs that you can fly
> > a 747 through. Beta quality compilers, drivers and libraries. Crappy
> > KDE/OpenOffice.org integration (specifically kslaves/openoffice.org) -
> > its horrific - "ship first, hide bugs hopeing they won't get found".
> 
> Suse is really funny. They claim that they need to "enhance" cdrecord in order
> to get the quality level they intend for Suse.
> 
> I've seen Suse-10.2 on a IBM notebook, it was impossible to make their
> cdrecord clone even see the CD/DVD drive of the notebook. A vanilla cdrecord
> on the other side works out of the box even without the need to specify a 
> dev= parameter.
> 
> Linux distributions got into trouble because more and more Linux users did no 
> longer buy Linux distributions but downloaded them from the network. This 
> caused pressure on the commercial Linux distributors. As commercial Linux 
> distributions are interested in revenue, they need "arguments" they can print 
> on glossy paper... 
> 
> In order to get these arguments, they are no longer interested in code 
> quality. Instead they are interested in marketing "facts". 
> 
> I am in hope this will not happen to Solaris.

*shrugs* I hope it doesn't turn that way.

I doubt it will, however. There isn't this drive by Sun to 'take over
the world' as there is with distributors, which is derived from the
grass roots hatred of Microsoft.

For Sun, Indana will go out there, people will use it, but I don't think
you'll see Sun spend millions on marketing it to the great unwashed
masses.

You will be surprised, however, the number who don't want the latest and
greatest bleeding edge - my mum is very happy with her SLED 10 SP1 - it
isn't bleeding edge, but she can use it.

As long as Indana focus's on stability and reliability instead of
worrying if it has the 'latest' thing going for it, it'll hold its own -
the problem will only occur if Sun thinks it can turn it into a mega
money generating machines. So far, from what I see it, it will be part
of a bigger programme. It'll be a customer winner/trojan horse rather
than it being a money generator in itself.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Giles Turner]

> It is the availability of software that makes or breaks a platform. Not 
> hardware, not OS technical superiority, not OS security, not ease of use.

Good one. If you are going to target the desktop, games is a must
since OpenSolaris already offers enough to cover mundane users like
word processing, Internet browsing and email.
Maybe a new and separate set of stable interfaces for a desktop target
will ease the development of software for OpenSolaris desktops after
OpenSolaris gets a proper package management solution to handle
updates from a repository. Given a set of stable desktop interfaces,
Apple's download a file and that is also the process of installation
would make it really easy for 'normal' users to install software.
Right now Mac OS X has a stable interface which allows people to
create software for Mac OS X without worrying at all about
dependencies.
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Gupta]

On 7/31/07, Kaiwai Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 23:43 -0400, Brian Gupta wrote:
> > One could argue that not only does Solaris need more users,
> > but its
> > quality rather than quantity. If the vast majority of the 40%
> > are penny
> > pinching, proprietary software hating, thick-rim-glasses
> > wearing, hunch
> > back coding geeks - it certainly won't attract vendors such as
> > Adobe or
> > MYOB who don't target that crowd.
> >
> > Penny pinching = intelligent
> > proprietary software hating = trend setter
> > thick-rim-glasses wearing = hip
> > hunch back =  bad and inaccurate stereotype
> > coding geek = backbone of the technology industry
> >
> > All I want is all the coding geeks running Solaris on their
> > laptops/desktops. (Especially University coding geeks... That is where
> > people generally develop their OS preferences). Remember people deploy
> > what they are familiar with. Also, they tend to deploy to the OS they
> > develop with. (But this is less set in stone).
> >
> > Also, don't you get it? Proprietary apps are just a side show now...
> > The real is action is in open source web development frameworks...
> > (How many Linux users buy desktop  applications!??!? Also it would be
> > interesting to see of all the installed Linux servers what percentage
> > are running shrink wrapped apps. I'd venture it is actually a small
> > percentage.)




A trend setter to nowhere - the vast majority of applications are closed
> source - until the day I see opensource programmers argue over code


As we move to service based computing models, (WebApps 2.0) we are seeing
the majority of these applications being built using FLOSS (Free/Libre Open
Source Software). They are being developed in PHP, Python, Ruby/Rails and
Perl, generally they use MySQL and Postgres databases on the backend (Which
both now support clustered databases). The predominant OS choice is Linux.

quality,


Why would they argue about code quality. Isn't the best way to have good
code quality is to implement it, and let the code speak for itself? (See
that's the thing, you can look at the source yourself. With proprietary
solutions you have no idea what the quality of the code is.

asking for feed back from end users and actually taking on
> board that feedback and dropping the licencing jihad, that'll be when
> opensource takes over the desktop.


While there is a small but vocal minority of "free" software activists, the
majority of "open source" advocates are focused on the practical benefits of
distributed and open development models. They believe they gain a) faster
development cycles, b) quicker bug fixes, c) addition programmer resources,
d) visibility into the functioning of the code e) and the ability to not
have to reinvent the wheel (build on top of other open source projects).
There are more, but you get the idea.

As far as I know, most OpenSource developers are glad for any feedback that
they can get. (Particularly developers of user facing applications) I'd also
say this is true for most developers, FLOSS or proprietary. (I know, because
I often submit feedback, and have seen many of my suggestions implemented)

Apart from a few token applications, it makes up a microscopic number
> out there.


I think at last count there are somewhere between 20,000-50,000 open source
applications.

Wake me up when there is an opensource equvilant of Creative Suite,
> Photoshop Elements, Homesite, MYOB, Quicken etc. etc. - then we can
> start to talk about opensource taking over the desktop.
>

Adobe alternatives:
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/contentcreation/0,101068,39286832,00.htm
Homesite: http://www.osalt.com/nvu
MYOB: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboCASH
Quicken: http://www.linux.com/articles/49400

Interestingly enough, many of the most popular video games today have been
ported to Linux.

-brian

P.S. - In many ways I find the Ubuntu desktop much easier to use than
Windows. If I run into a unrecognized file format, it just goes out to the
network and learns about it.  Although Windows tries to do the same thing,
it results in failure many times. (Generally you need to be using Microsoft
File Formats to get this to work properly).
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Richard L. Hamilton]

> > At what?
> 
> Little old me probably can't help you if you are
> oblivious to why Windows is the most successful
> personal computer software system of all time.  You
> might want to start looking at developer community
> and support, user community and support, usability,
> system compatibility, and hardware support.

Windows ease of use is lame compared to OS X, and not much better than
Solaris or Linux.  Community is mostly a bunch of clueless MCSEs and such.
The big points are: preinstalled to the point that one has to go to some
trouble to get a system where one isn't paying for Windows being preinstalled,
more apps (mostly commercial, but shareware, freeware, and open source
too) than anything else, and certainly runs on most reasonably modern
x86 systems (and just about every device vendor for same either uses
chipsets supported by a generic driver or provides a Windows driver).
Windows is neither particularly reliable, nor particularly well designed for
ease of use, nor does it excel at anything else technical.  What it has is the
result of MS's aggressive business practices, far more than of their developers.

Go back as far as DOS, which didn't originate with MS; they bought it off
of SCP after Digital Research blew off IBM.  They've invented a few things
(assuming Bill didn't rip off the core of MBASIC from someone else), but
they've been sharp and aggressive businessmen with a ferocious approach
tolerated in the new guy but hardly welcome for a near-monopolist, _far_
more than they've been any sort of innovator (except in dirty tricks, like
their embrace-and-extend of Kerberos, so that MS authentication servers
could serve non-MS systems, but not vice versa).

I don't say they haven't contributed anything, nor (give or take the results
of various lawsuits), that their practices have necessarily been illegal;
but don't look to them for leadership in innovation, excellence, or
good citizenship.

OTOH, they (or indeed almost anyone) could probably teach Sun something
about marketing - as long as the wrong lesson (i.e. not repeating their
arrogance: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Korn#Korn_shell_and_Microsoft
for a minor example that nevertheless typifies the attitude) isn't learned.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Jim Grisanzio]

Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:

> I think the "40%" was a rectum pluck 

Rectum pluck? Charming.

Jim
--
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> I think you misunderstand average users.  Pretty is
> nice, but not necessary.  We require our computers to
> work easily.  We would like to be able to fix them if
> they break.

Let us, for the purpose of making a point, assume that you are 100% correct in 
your statements.

Following from those, how will persons you write about be able to fix something 
they know nothing about and aren't able/willing to learn it?

How can any person fix something if they do not know and/or understand what is 
broken? That would mean they understand how a computer works, which is contrary 
to your premise that average users do not have any such understanding.

In plain English: both conditions aren't possible. If you want to be able to 
fix your computer, you will have to understand how it functions and what is 
broken and how to fix it.

There is currently no way around that. Can't have your cake and it it too.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> Whenever the group *for*
>  "Solaris==Server==Xterm==Niche_product"
> ecomes very vocal it concerns me.

Why? Are you afraid of the command line? If you are (note the IF), don't reject 
an opportunity to learn something. Learn, be enlightened, and be a better 
person for it.

If your concern is lack of Solaris acceptance because of *perceived* (and it 
really is *perceived*) ease of use:

"build it an they will come".

Enough of the right software that people want and need and they will use the OS 
(not that they will really care which OS runs their software), no matter what.

Software drives adotion. Adoption drives software. It's a catch-22 situation.
The focus should be on breaking out of that catch-22 state. And that's with 
writing or bringing more software to the platform you want the majority to 
adopt.

They will adopt it only when it runs the software that enables them to do what 
they want to do... and for most people, that's the internet and entertainment, 
not system administration GUIs.

So you want to drive adotion of Solaris on a grand scale? Make it the top-notch 
multimedia OS. That would be a start. One doesn't need fancy/simple/pretty 
system administration GUIs for that, but software, slick, fast, easy to use 
multimedia software, and games of course.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 21:30 +0800, Giles Turner wrote:
> > It is the availability of software that makes or breaks a platform. Not 
> > hardware, not OS technical superiority, not OS security, not ease of use.
> 
> Good one. If you are going to target the desktop, games is a must
> since OpenSolaris already offers enough to cover mundane users like
> word processing, Internet browsing and email.
> Maybe a new and separate set of stable interfaces for a desktop target
> will ease the development of software for OpenSolaris desktops after
> OpenSolaris gets a proper package management solution to handle
> updates from a repository. Given a set of stable desktop interfaces,
> Apple's download a file and that is also the process of installation
> would make it really easy for 'normal' users to install software.
> Right now Mac OS X has a stable interface which allows people to
> create software for Mac OS X without worrying at all about
> dependencies.

Regarding Photo Editing for end users, 2.4 apparently fixes up the
current pig-ugly GUI with something that resembles sanity in regards to
ease of use.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 06:31 -0700, Richard L. Hamilton wrote:
> > > At what?
> > 
> > Little old me probably can't help you if you are
> > oblivious to why Windows is the most successful
> > personal computer software system of all time.  You
> > might want to start looking at developer community
> > and support, user community and support, usability,
> > system compatibility, and hardware support.
> 
> Windows ease of use is lame compared to OS X, and not much better than
> Solaris or Linux.  Community is mostly a bunch of clueless MCSEs and such.
> The big points are: preinstalled to the point that one has to go to some
> trouble to get a system where one isn't paying for Windows being preinstalled,
> more apps (mostly commercial, but shareware, freeware, and open source
> too) than anything else, and certainly runs on most reasonably modern
> x86 systems (and just about every device vendor for same either uses
> chipsets supported by a generic driver or provides a Windows driver).
> Windows is neither particularly reliable, nor particularly well designed for
> ease of use, nor does it excel at anything else technical.  What it has is the
> result of MS's aggressive business practices, far more than of their 
> developers.
> 
> Go back as far as DOS, which didn't originate with MS; they bought it off
> of SCP after Digital Research blew off IBM.  They've invented a few things
> (assuming Bill didn't rip off the core of MBASIC from someone else), but
> they've been sharp and aggressive businessmen with a ferocious approach
> tolerated in the new guy but hardly welcome for a near-monopolist, _far_
> more than they've been any sort of innovator (except in dirty tricks, like
> their embrace-and-extend of Kerberos, so that MS authentication servers
> could serve non-MS systems, but not vice versa).
> 
> I don't say they haven't contributed anything, nor (give or take the results
> of various lawsuits), that their practices have necessarily been illegal;
> but don't look to them for leadership in innovation, excellence, or
> good citizenship.
> 
> OTOH, they (or indeed almost anyone) could probably teach Sun something
> about marketing - as long as the wrong lesson (i.e. not repeating their
> arrogance: see 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Korn#Korn_shell_and_Microsoft
> for a minor example that nevertheless typifies the attitude) isn't learned.

Basically Windows maintains its share through superior hardware support
and software availability - unless Sun is willign to splash around money
to software vendors to get them to port their software, its going to
remain in the same state for ever and ever.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 23:19 +0900, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
> Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
> 
> > I think the "40%" was a rectum pluck 
> 
> Rectum pluck? Charming.
> 
> Jim
> --
> http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris

Call a spade a spade.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Jim Grisanzio]

Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:

> Basically Windows maintains its share through superior hardware support
> and software availability - unless Sun is willign to splash around money
> to software vendors to get them to port their software, its going to
> remain in the same state for ever and ever.

That's a really long time. Are you sure you can substantiate that?

Jim
--
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris


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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Jim Grisanzio]

Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:

> Ok, where are the Sun advertisements in magazines read by decision
> makers? I open up the NZ Management magazine (from the NZIM - most
> managers/executives in NZ are members) - not a single advertisement, and
> yet, I see IBM splattered from cover to cover. I look through the
> business paper that comes out, again, no advertisements.


Traditionally Sun has never been a strong advertising company. It's just 
part of the company's culture going way back. We've always focused more 
on PR. And our PR/AR teams have documented -- for years, actually -- 
that Sun's press/analyst coverage competes very well and in many cases 
vastly exceeds that of IBM, MS, HP, Dell etc -- companies with marketing 
and advertising and PR budgets several times larger than ours. But just 
in straight print and broadcast advertising, sure, we are not as 
pervasive as our competitors. But we are also increasing our coverage, 
and that's very clear. I see Sun ads all over the place now, whereas I 
didn't see as many years ago. We will never be IBM or MS in terms of 
scale, but I think our stuff is quite good. I sure as heck couldn't do 
what our ad guys do.

Also, what's the value of blogs.sun.com? I'd argue it's huge. There are 
almost 4,000 Sun bloggers now, and we are simply the #1 blogging company 
in the world by a number of metrics. Now add to that all the dozens of 
open source communities we participate in and fund and contribute to -- 
what's the marketing value of all those thousands of employees having 
open conversations with tens of thousands of developers around the 
world? I'd much rather we do that than print ads in magazines. But a 
little of both is good. :)


> I then click on slashdot.org and find advertisements for Sun - why
> advertise on slashdot.org? teeny bobby kiddies sitting around whinging
> and whining about the world who have absolutely NO influence over
> decisions made in large corporations. Its the equivilant of marketing
> dog food to the yapping dog when in reality you want to aim the
> marketing at the owner.


We can't advertise on /. but we can in a magazine?


> Lets not get started on the marketing outside of the print -
> advertisements on television, evagelising java as *the* technology to
> demand on mobile phones, where is the attempt to get developers but
> technical and artistic (aka Adobe people) excited about JavaFX? where
> are the easy to use tools that allow people to make rich content using
> JavaFX as easily as it is with Flash and Shockwave?


I don't watch enough TV and I don't know the demographics well enough to 
comment here. What programs do developers watch these days? And what 
markets should we focus on? US? UK? Poland? Korea? China? India? Canada? 
Seems like a pretty expensive deal to me. I'm quite happy we are not on 
TV that much, and during the years when we were turning the boat around 
I'm really impressed we didn't waste money on TV. I have to give Sun 
management a lot of credit in this area.


> It just goes on and on and on. 

Actually, it doesn't. You've made your point and I reject it. But tell 
me, why should Sun do all of what you say? This is a community here, 
right? Shouldn't we -- the community -- do these things for ourselves 
now? Instead of giving Sun suggestions, let's talk about what the 
community can do for the community.


> Quite frankly I'm wasting my time  even
> explaining it given that Sun employ's people based on whether they have
> a degree rather than whether thay have the know how to take Sun
> products, market their to buggery and evangelise technology in practical
> applications to those who make decisions.

Sorry. All of that is just wrong.

Do you give Sun /any/ credit at all? Have you noticed the serious 
focusing of brands at Sun in the last few years? Have you noticed the 
turn around in the company's finances? Have you noticed the increases in 
market share? Have you noticed the significant increase in press/analyst 
coverage and positive coverage on top of that? Have you noticed the new 
partnerships? Have you noticed all the new products we've released and 
opened and are selling? Have you noticed all the conferences Sun 
participates in and sponsors around the world?

Marketing is only part of an overall business strategy, as is 
engineering and sales and services and operations all the rest. And so 
is this community and all the other communities.

Jim
--
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris






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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 00:21 +0900, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
> Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
> 
> > Ok, where are the Sun advertisements in magazines read by decision
> > makers? I open up the NZ Management magazine (from the NZIM - most
> > managers/executives in NZ are members) - not a single advertisement,
> and
> > yet, I see IBM splattered from cover to cover. I look through the
> > business paper that comes out, again, no advertisements.
> 
> 
> Traditionally Sun has never been a strong advertising company. It's
> just 
> part of the company's culture going way back. We've always focused
> more 
> on PR. And our PR/AR teams have documented -- for years, actually -- 
> that Sun's press/analyst coverage competes very well and in many
> cases 
> vastly exceeds that of IBM, MS, HP, Dell etc -- companies with
> marketing 
> and advertising and PR budgets several times larger than ours. But
> just 
> in straight print and broadcast advertising, sure, we are not as 
> pervasive as our competitors. But we are also increasing our
> coverage, 
> and that's very clear. I see Sun ads all over the place now, whereas
> I 
> didn't see as many years ago. We will never be IBM or MS in terms of 
> scale, but I think our stuff is quite good. I sure as heck couldn't
> do 
> what our ad guys do.
> 
> Also, what's the value of blogs.sun.com? I'd argue it's huge. There
> are 
> almost 4,000 Sun bloggers now, and we are simply the #1 blogging
> company 
> in the world by a number of metrics. Now add to that all the dozens
> of 
> open source communities we participate in and fund and contribute to
> -- 
> what's the marketing value of all those thousands of employees having 
> open conversations with tens of thousands of developers around the 
> world? I'd much rather we do that than print ads in magazines. But a 
> little of both is good. :)

Blogs are good for technical people. Managers aren't technical people.
They make decisions, they absorb information - its up to your
organisations to cram the managements head full of information from you,
partners and 'analysts' so that its so compellign they don't need to go
out searching for an alternative.

> > I then click on slashdot.org and find advertisements for Sun - why
> > advertise on slashdot.org? teeny bobby kiddies sitting around
> whinging
> > and whining about the world who have absolutely NO influence over
> > decisions made in large corporations. Its the equivilant of
> marketing
> > dog food to the yapping dog when in reality you want to aim the
> > marketing at the owner.
> 
> We can't advertise on /. but we can in a magazine?

A magazine that is focused on those who make decisions - yes, market on
sites that get developers, but to get the 'big contracts' the big
companies, you need to market to those in those organisations through
the mediams they read.

> > Lets not get started on the marketing outside of the print -
> > advertisements on television, evagelising java as *the* technology
> to
> > demand on mobile phones, where is the attempt to get developers but
> > technical and artistic (aka Adobe people) excited about JavaFX?
> where
> > are the easy to use tools that allow people to make rich content
> using
> > JavaFX as easily as it is with Flash and Shockwave?
> 
> 
> I don't watch enough TV and I don't know the demographics well enough
> to 
> comment here. What programs do developers watch these days? And what 
> markets should we focus on? US? UK? Poland? Korea? China? India?
> Canada? 
> Seems like a pretty expensive deal to me. I'm quite happy we are not
> on 
> TV that much, and during the years when we were turning the boat
> around 
> I'm really impressed we didn't waste money on TV. I have to give Sun 
> management a lot of credit in this area.

No, it is about getting customers to demand technology from their
telecoms vendors; getting them going in and saying, "I want a mobile
phone, and I want these features on it" if enough people demand, the
telecoms will make sure that their products have the features that they
want.

It is about driving consumer demand - they don't know nor need to know
what Java is, but if they know they *need* it to access what they want
or their mobile to do what they want, they'll simply refuse to purchase
something that doesn't - it cretes a culture of 'java demand' before
Microsoft can get a hold with their .NET framework and mobile operating
system.

> > It just goes on and on and on. 
> 
> Actually, it doesn't. You've made your point and I reject it. But
> tell 
> me, why should Sun do all of what you say? This is a community here, 
> right? Shouldn't we -- the community -- do these things for ourselves 
> now? Instead of giving Sun suggestions, let's talk about what the 
> community can do for the community.

The community can first be alot more open - and Sun needs to be alot
more open about what is being developed. Stop the quite frankly, BS
regarding people signing 1/2 dozen NDA's and just damn well say, "this
is what we'

Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Darren J Moffat]

Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
>> what's the marketing value of all those thousands of employees having 
>> open conversations with tens of thousands of developers around the 
>> world? I'd much rather we do that than print ads in magazines. But a 
>> little of both is good. :)
> 
> Blogs are good for technical people. Managers aren't technical people.
> They make decisions, they absorb information - its up to your
> organisations to cram the managements head full of information from you,
> partners and 'analysts' so that its so compellign they don't need to go
> out searching for an alternative.

Hmn what about Jonathan Schwartz blog ? and about Sun releasing its 
earnings information via RSS *before* releasing it via the traditional 
methods.

Managers read RSS feeds too :-)

-- 
Darren J Moffat
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 00:50 +0900, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
> 
> Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
> 
> > Basically Windows maintains its share through superior hardware support
> > and software availability - unless Sun is willign to splash around money
> > to software vendors to get them to port their software, its going to
> > remain in the same state for ever and ever.
> 
> That's a really long time. Are you sure you can substantiate that?

Me: "hello Adobe, could you port Creative suite to Solaris?"
Adobe: "Piss off"

Thats how it is going right now. Linux has had a viable environment - no
software. Solaris has a viable environment, no software.

Hardware - ATI drivers anyone? drivers for webcams, flash card readers,
sound cards out of the box etc. etc. again, 2 years of opensolaris, even
more since Solaris x86 support came back and there are still major
issues.

What can the opensolaris community do? nothing, it has no money. What
can Sun do? it has $4billion, you can do alot with $4billion.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 16:59 +0100, Darren J Moffat wrote:
> Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
> >> what's the marketing value of all those thousands of employees having 
> >> open conversations with tens of thousands of developers around the 
> >> world? I'd much rather we do that than print ads in magazines. But a 
> >> little of both is good. :)
> > 
> > Blogs are good for technical people. Managers aren't technical people.
> > They make decisions, they absorb information - its up to your
> > organisations to cram the managements head full of information from you,
> > partners and 'analysts' so that its so compellign they don't need to go
> > out searching for an alternative.
> 
> Hmn what about Jonathan Schwartz blog ? and about Sun releasing its 
> earnings information via RSS *before* releasing it via the traditional 
> methods.
> 
> Managers read RSS feeds too :-)
> 

Lets be honest - how many managers out there jump off the train,
purchase a copy of the "Business Review" plus a cup of coffee, jump on
their computer to load up a CEO's blog? the first two might happen, but
the final I doubt very much.

Again, look at the number of managers who still think that Sun only does
SPARC.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 09:21 -0700, Christopher Mahan wrote:
> Slightly off-thread since now deep in marketing voodoo.
> 
> I agree with both Jim Grisanzio and Matthew:
> 
> There are different messages that need to go to different people.
> Each type of person out there responds better to a different kind of
> marketing message.
> 
> Let's not forget that marketing does include informational marketing.

But at the same time, you need managers who are confident about what
they're saying. I've seen webcasts in the past, who, bless their cotton
socks, knew what they were talking about but lacked confidence and
presence when delivering the message of the company. It came accross as
being unsure and lacking confidence in the message being put out there.

What you need are spokespeople who can get up, hold the audience on
every word being spoken, the confidence and charasma to put out a vision
and bring the industry and customers with you to reading that point. An
attitude which oozes confidence in the future of the company and the
products being put out there on the market.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Christopher Mahan]

Slightly off-thread since now deep in marketing voodoo.

I agree with both Jim Grisanzio and Matthew:

There are different messages that need to go to different people.
Each type of person out there responds better to a different kind of
marketing message.

Let's not forget that marketing does include informational marketing.




Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.christophermahan.com/


   

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[John Martinez]

On Jul 31, 2007, at 8:32 AM, Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:

>> Good one. If you are going to target the desktop, games is a must
>> since OpenSolaris already offers enough to cover mundane users like
>> word processing, Internet browsing and email.
>> Maybe a new and separate set of stable interfaces for a desktop  
>> target
>> will ease the development of software for OpenSolaris desktops after
>> OpenSolaris gets a proper package management solution to handle
>> updates from a repository. Given a set of stable desktop interfaces,
>> Apple's download a file and that is also the process of installation
>> would make it really easy for 'normal' users to install software.
>> Right now Mac OS X has a stable interface which allows people to
>> create software for Mac OS X without worrying at all about
>> dependencies.
>
> Regarding Photo Editing for end users, 2.4 apparently fixes up the
> current pig-ugly GUI with something that resembles sanity in  
> regards to
> ease of use.

Version 2.4 of what?

-john

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Edward McAuley]

> On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 12:11 -0700, Edward McAuley
> wrote:
> > Uh, let's see.  Beautiful interface (as attractive
> as the Mac or Vista), intuitively laid out, ease of
> use, UNIX (like), open source...it's already here.
>  You can download it or buy it.
>  
>  Suse 10.2
>  
> Please look at this latest version, it is stunning.
> The beautifully designed and intuitive layout of
> its desktop is very difficult to communicate until
>  you spin it up and use it for a while.
>  
>  Give it a look; the price is certainly right.
>   
> 've used SuSE 10.2 - if you're happy to avoid the
> bugs that you can fly
> a 747 through. Beta quality compilers, drivers and
> libraries. Crappy
> KDE/OpenOffice.org integration (specifically
> kslaves/openoffice.org) -
> its horrific - "ship first, hide bugs hopeing they
> won't get found".
> 
> Lord knows I don't want to see Solaris turn into a
> dumping site for bad
> code.
> 
> Matthew
> 
> ___
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> opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org

Well Matthew, you seem like a thoughtful guy.

Here's my take:

SuSE Linux installed perfectly on this HP dv4217cl (dv4000) notebook, requiring 
only that I install an RPM for the wireless network card that was supplied on 
the non-oss cd.  It works flawlessly, after two days of fairly intense use.  
I'll be happy to report back over the next couple of weeks, if you like.  No 
problems with CD-ROMS or anything else.  It has a beautiful and very intuitive 
user interface and I like it.

I had one OpenOffice crash the second time I executed Writer, but in fairness, 
it recovered within about 2 seconds and I haven't had the problem since.  The 
drivers have worked flawlessly on all of my SuSE installations, so maybe I am 
not using the same hardware you are deploying; but my H/W is pretty diverse and 
I am not experiencing the problems you've mentioned with 10.2.

If one wants compilers, that's fine.  There are about a "go-zillion" sources 
for free and/or commercial compilers.  One may take aim at some and pull the 
trigger.  My point is about the base system: it works and it is intuitive.

When I installed FreeBSD 6.2 on this notebook, the installation was excellent!  
The OS worked fine, and while having FreeBSD on my notebook was kind of fun (in 
a geek way...you know how it is), its functionality is not well integrated 
enough for common daily use; that's okay because it is not intended for common, 
daily use, just as Solaris is not intended for common use -though FreeBSD did 
pretty well.  I do know I could get it to work much better, if I took the time, 
but I did not like its style of interaction, on a notebook.  I have it running 
on a couple of other boxes, so I continue to work with it on those boxes.  But 
make no mistake about it, FreeBSD worked flawlessly and its install (text 
based) was quite aggressive in making the proper suggestions and selections 
(which is a refreshing change for FreeBSD).  And, even with its becoming better 
and more user friendly, I doubt anyone would say that it is now, somehow, less 
robust.

So, I gave Solaris 10 (11/06) a shot.  Solaris barfed all over me; like a 
girlfriend you love but who just can't get it together, it wouldn't get past 
the initial display probe and gave me an unintelligible (read bank) GUI screen. 
 So it was a text based install, which I don't mind, as with FreeBSD, it was 
like the good old days! So I fired up the games PacMan and Tetris on a crappy 
Windows 3.1 box and drank a New York Seltzer (Root Beer, of course) and watched 
"Back to the Future" -which also seems oddly antiquated these days (go figure), 
while it installed.  Then however, I began experiencing other issues with 
Solaris on this notebook, that were not trivial, so I tossed Solaris, Matthew, 
it just didn't work.  

Now, I like Solaris and I run it on several boxes but the mission of the 
notebook (in keeping with the mission of the IBM notebook to which you refer) 
is to "work," so I won't be using it as a lab rat (though if I had another, 
additional notebook, that's exactly what I'd do).

I'd give Solaris another run but this SuSE interface is so good, I don't know 
what my reasoning would have to be, in order to waste my time on that pursuit, 
again.

And, I am sure I do not understand the logic in your point, from the outset.  
Is your point that an OS that works flawlessly on some systems but not on 
others, is inferior?  If that's your point, you'll need to look at Solaris with 
the same prejudice you're using when looking at SuSE.  Or, are you just 
defending the Solaris turf?  Because I am a huge fan of Solaris, but no matter 
how many times I repeated my undying affection during the installation, it did 
not work on this notebook, for more significant reasons than a failure to 
recognize a CD Writer.

I think that is the point of this whole thread, right?  People are hoping to 
make a more usable Solaris, in order to gain a 

Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Christopher Mahan]

--- Kaiwai Gardiner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> But at the same time, you need managers who are confident about
> what
> they're saying. I've seen webcasts in the past, who, bless their
> cotton
> socks, knew what they were talking about but lacked confidence and
> presence when delivering the message of the company. It came
> accross as
> being unsure and lacking confidence in the message being put out
> there.
> 
> What you need are spokespeople who can get up, hold the audience on
> every word being spoken, the confidence and charasma to put out a
> vision
> and bring the industry and customers with you to reading that
> point. An
> attitude which oozes confidence in the future of the company and
> the
> products being put out there on the market.
> 
> Matthew

There's an impedance issue. The managers don't know as much as the
engineers, and the CIOs won't listen to the engineers. (they don't
here) So it the CIOs want to really know the true nitty-gritty, they
have to learn to listen to engineers. I will also say that the smart
ones do.

As far as confidence: Sun Management should have to attend the
OpenSolaris boot camp and install OpenSolaris given a CD or DVD, a
system, and instructions. That'll really clear a few things about
their touting "the World's Most Advanced Operating System". Maybe
they  seem to lack confidence because they do lack confidence...

I think that given the resources at hand, Sun has done a good job of
advertising OpenSolaris. At least the fud is minimal.

 


Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.christophermahan.com/


   

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On Tue, 2007-07-31 at 11:19 -0700, John Martinez wrote:
> On Jul 31, 2007, at 8:32 AM, Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
> 
> >> Good one. If you are going to target the desktop, games is a must
> >> since OpenSolaris already offers enough to cover mundane users like
> >> word processing, Internet browsing and email.
> >> Maybe a new and separate set of stable interfaces for a desktop  
> >> target
> >> will ease the development of software for OpenSolaris desktops
> after
> >> OpenSolaris gets a proper package management solution to handle
> >> updates from a repository. Given a set of stable desktop
> interfaces,
> >> Apple's download a file and that is also the process of
> installation
> >> would make it really easy for 'normal' users to install software.
> >> Right now Mac OS X has a stable interface which allows people to
> >> create software for Mac OS X without worrying at all about
> >> dependencies.
> >
> > Regarding Photo Editing for end users, 2.4 apparently fixes up the
> > current pig-ugly GUI with something that resembles sanity in  
> > regards to
> > ease of use.
> 
> Version 2.4 of what?

Sorry - GIMP 2.4 - its going to take on SDI and get rid of that
usability nightmare that is MDI.

Matthew

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Sean Sprague]

Hey tripivceta,

>> Whenever the group *for*
>>  "Solaris==Server==Xterm==Niche_product"
>> ecomes very vocal it concerns me.
> 
> Why? Are you afraid of the command line? If you are (note the IF), don't 
> reject an opportunity to learn something. Learn, be enlightened, and be a 
> better person for it.

I'm not sure that it makes you a better "person", but this is empirically 
correct.

> If your concern is lack of Solaris acceptance because of *perceived* (and it 
> really is *perceived*) ease of use:
> 
> "build it an they will come".

Hopefully in their pants if you do a good enough job.

> Enough of the right software that people want and need and they will use the 
> OS (not that they will really care which OS runs their software), no matter 
> what.

Rightly emphasizing your earlier premise.

> Software drives adotion. Adoption drives software. It's a catch-22 situation.
> The focus should be on breaking out of that catch-22 state. And that's with 
> writing or bringing more software to the platform you want the majority to 
> adopt.
> 
> They will adopt it only when it runs the software that enables them to do 
> what they want to do... and for most people, that's the internet and 
> entertainment, not system administration GUIs.

And when the developer community gets the opportunity to actually do sponsored 
putbacks into OpenSolaris (and 
potentially on into Solaris itself), this will be truly achievable. Indeed, 
sysadmin GUI's are way down the list 
of desirables.

> So you want to drive adotion of Solaris on a grand scale? Make it the 
> top-notch multimedia OS. That would be a start. One doesn't need 
> fancy/simple/pretty system administration GUIs for that, but software, slick, 
> fast, easy to use multimedia software, and games of course.

Again, I agree; except for one point. Games should *never* be part of an OE; or 
ever allowed anywhere near. Multimedia, 
yes. Gaming, *definitively* no. Unless someone can possibly embed a 
flight-simulator into init/inittab/SMF as a new 
run-level - "init F" / "svcadm enable fltsim", perhaps.

Regards... Sean.
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Alan Burlison]

Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:

> Hardware - ATI drivers anyone? drivers for webcams, flash card readers,
> sound cards out of the box etc. etc. again, 2 years of opensolaris, even
> more since Solaris x86 support came back and there are still major
> issues.
> 
> What can the opensolaris community do? nothing, it has no money. What
> can Sun do? it has $4billion, you can do alot with $4billion.

Lack of money doesn't seem to have stopped the Linux community.

This is an open source community, if there are improvements to 
OpenSolaris that you'd like to see, please feel free to work on them.

-- 
Alan Burlison
--
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Jim Grisanzio]

Christopher Mahan wrote:

> There's an impedance issue. The managers don't know as much as the
> engineers, and the CIOs won't listen to the engineers. (they don't
> here) So it the CIOs want to really know the true nitty-gritty, they
> have to learn to listen to engineers. I will also say that the smart
> ones do.
> 
> As far as confidence: Sun Management should have to attend the
> OpenSolaris boot camp and install OpenSolaris given a CD or DVD, a
> system, and instructions. That'll really clear a few things about
> their touting "the World's Most Advanced Operating System". Maybe
> they  seem to lack confidence because they do lack confidence...
> 
> I think that given the resources at hand, Sun has done a good job of
> advertising OpenSolaris. At least the fud is minimal.


That last sentence there is interesting. There certainly has been a drop 
off in the FUD about OpenSolaris out there. Oh, there's still a bit of 
confusion and all, but remember how hostile things were a while back? 
And even recently with a big increase in press coverage, the FUD issue 
is really, well, not an issue at all. I think Sun has contributed to 
this by simply performing better in the market this year, but also Sun 
is not taking as many shots at competitors as we used to (which I agree 
with, by the way), so things have been toned down a lot. I hope that 
trend continues. But also, and probably more importantly, I think it 
demonstrates that the OpenSolaris community is proving itself out there.

Good job, everyone. :)

Jim
-- 
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[David . Comay]

> So, I gave Solaris 10 (11/06) a shot.  Solaris barfed all over me; like
> a girlfriend you love but who just can't get it together, it wouldn't
> get past the initial display probe and gave me an unintelligible (read
> bank) GUI screen.  So it was a text based install, which I don't mind,
> as with FreeBSD, it was like the good old days! So I fired up the games
> PacMan and Tetris on a crappy Windows 3.1 box and drank a New York
> Seltzer (Root Beer, of course) and watched "Back to the Future" -which
> also seems oddly antiquated these days (go figure), while it
> installed.  Then however, I began experiencing other issues with
> Solaris on this notebook, that were not trivial, so I tossed Solaris,

I would recommend trying the experiment again using one of the
distributions based on OpenSolaris.

http://opensolaris.org/os/downloads/

Although Solaris 10 has made changes integrated into it that help with
laptop use (GRUB and a new ACPI implementation for two), far more
changes have integrated into OpenSolaris.  Sun's own Solaris Express
Developer Edition is a reasonable choice if compatibility with earlier
releases is important (the Community Edition tracks the innovation more
closely but also will tend to be less stable than the Developer
Edition).

dsc
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Cameron]

Kaiwai:

> I'm surprised that Sun can't get access to those windows codecs under
> the agreement which Sun and Microsoft signed.

I don't think access to the codecs is the problem.  Paying the
royalties required to distribute the IP is more likely the issue.
Especially when only a percentage of Solaris users use it as a
desktop and have such media needs.

Brian


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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Gupta]

On 8/1/07, Brian Cameron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Kaiwai:
>
> > I'm surprised that Sun can't get access to those windows codecs under
> > the agreement which Sun and Microsoft signed.
>
> I don't think access to the codecs is the problem.  Paying the
> royalties required to distribute the IP is more likely the issue.
> Especially when only a percentage of Solaris users use it as a
> desktop and have such media needs.


It's interesting how Ubuntu does it. They point you to external sources,
that they don't vouch for the codecs. (They just make the install painless.
IE: Unrecognized filetype/streamtype. Do you want me to look for one that
work? If you say yes... and you are looking at a quicktime file, it points
you to a non apple codec, which I am pretty sure is not kosher. It does give
you a warning though.)

Brian
>
>
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>
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> Its about communication and advocacy - its about
> making sure developers
> understand the process of contributions and the
> rationale behind it -
> stop hiding under layers upon layers of documentation
> - documentation
> that is 9/10 filled with waffle.

You don't like reading documentation, or what? What do you think, that 
development and/or engineering is a partisan, guerilla coding process?

Sun documentation has always been one of the biggest incentives to take and 
implement Sun technology. What good is an "awesome" technology that there is 
just no documentation for? And, I have to ask myself how awesome is it really 
if the documentation is nonexistant, boils down to a couple of READMEs or 
HOWTOs, or just plain sucks. Awesome products start with (often just as 
awesome) documentation.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> So, I gave Solaris 10 (11/06) a shot.  Solaris barfed
> all over me; like a girlfriend you love but who just
> can't get it together, it wouldn't get past the
> initial display probe and gave me an unintelligible
> (read blank) GUI screen.

Welcome to the club! I've had problems with Solaris 10 and my laptop as well. 
For starters, Solaris 10 1/06 (back when it came out), just plain busted with 
some bizzare RAM error message flooding my screen. I knew my RAM chips were 
good because Windows XP Home ran just fine on this laptop, and so did SchilliX, 
the very first OpenSolaris distro.

You tried and threw up your hands in the air. I didn't, because it pissed me 
off to high heavens.

At this point, I knew that the problem was in the installer. Searching the bug 
database, I saw that the engineers gave up on that particular bug with no 
conclusive diagnostic.

So I built a complete desktop system on my desktop PC, with all the bells and 
whistles, all the software I wanted, the whole kit'n'kaboodle, and made a 
Flash(TM) image out of that. Solaris has that technology and it was easy to use.

Then I put that on an NFS server, it took one command to create an NFS share, 
and I fired up Solaris 9 (yes, nine!), mounted the NFS share and flashed the 
system with a Solaris 10 image I made.

And guess what? Solaris worked, flawlessly. That was my reward for not giving 
up.

In fact, I'm typing this on that same laptop, with Solaris 10 11/06 (u3) 
running on it. Installed over NFS. Works flawlessly, except for the sound, 
since the driver for my ChipSet hasn't been ported from SPARC yet. I guess when 
I get pissed off enough at that, I'll look into compiling it on the i86pc 
myself and backporting it to Solaris 10. Then *everything* on this laptop will 
work.

Point: don't give up, and you will be rewarded.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Artem Kachitchkine]

> You don't like reading documentation, or what? What do you think, that 
> development and/or engineering is a partisan, guerilla coding process?
> 
> Sun documentation has always been one of the biggest incentives to take and 
> implement Sun technology. What good is an "awesome" technology that there is 
> just no documentation for? And, I have to ask myself how awesome is it really 
> if the documentation is nonexistant, boils down to a couple of READMEs or 
> HOWTOs, or just plain sucks. Awesome products start with (often just as 
> awesome) documentation.

Some of your heroes would tell you, perhaps self-indulgently, if 
anything, that code is documentation. Never underestimate the power of 
power.

-Artem
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> Windows ease of use is lame compared to OS X, and not
> much better than
> Solaris or Linux.

Funny you should write that, as a remorseful iBook G4 user, I'm endlessly 
frustrated with Apple's usability guidelines. Mac OS X is one of the most 
frustrating UNIX systems I have had the misfortune of using. The thing is 
nearly braindead, even Windows is more sane as a desktop, even if it isn't 
robust.

Choices Apple has made in human interface guidelines are extremely frustrating 
to me as a desktop user of OS X.

I really, truly regret that I've spent my money on Apple OS X.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> What can the opensolaris community do? nothing, it
> has no money.

Look here:

"Solaris 10 Software Developer Collection >> Writing Device Drivers"

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-4854/

The real issue is, are you just an end user complaining and waiting for 
somebody else to solve it for you, gratis of course, or are you up to snuff?

Every beginning is hard. However, think about this:

- if you learn how to write Solaris device drivers, you will be able to land a 
job just about anywhere, should you ever pursue a computer-related career;

- learning to write device drivers implies you will have learned C, really, 
really well;

- satisfaction: you've "scratched your own itch", you've made something work, 
you've helped the community, and you've helped push your favorite operating 
system forward

- there's this thing of prestige

- writing programs can be a fun, creative activity!
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Joerg Schilling]

UNIX admin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > So, I gave Solaris 10 (11/06) a shot.  Solaris barfed
> > all over me; like a girlfriend you love but who just
> > can't get it together, it wouldn't get past the
> > initial display probe and gave me an unintelligible
> > (read blank) GUI screen.
>
> Welcome to the club! I've had problems with Solaris 10 and my laptop as well. 
> For starters, Solaris 10 1/06 (back when it came out), just plain busted with 
> some bizzare RAM error message flooding my screen. I knew my RAM chips were 
> good because Windows XP Home ran just fine on this laptop, and so did 
> SchilliX, the very first OpenSolaris distro.
>
> You tried and threw up your hands in the air. I didn't, because it pissed me 
> off to high heavens.

My impression is that a current Nevada build with Gnome desktop
will not work decently if it has less than 2 GB of RAM.

This is really bad. Firefox + Xserver will soon consume 1.3 GB together
and a 1 GB system will start excessive paging. Is this really needed?

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
   [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni)  
   [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Alan DuBoff]

On Mon, 30 Jul 2007, James Carlson wrote:

> I think I'm one of the command-line geeks this message refers to
> somewhat indirectly.  My idea of a "GUI" is still twm with xterms and
> emacs windows, and I wouldn't really want to have it any other way.
>
> Just the same, I think having an environment available that can hide
> all of that away and that is robust enough that it's able to do so
> when things are going wrong would be great.  I just suspect that it's
> far harder (read: expensive) to make that work in any reliable way
> than most would suppose.

This type of open thinking is good, because there's not a lot of Jim 
Carlsons in the world. If we want to grow Solaris, we need to focus on 
areas which can allow more users to use Solaris seamlessly.

This is exactly what our CEO has pointed out with Ubunto, and after last 
weeks allhands, I installed Ubunto on one of my computers. I honestly 
don't see Solaris as being too much different, albeit where Ubuntu has a 
leg up is in getting the bits on your computer, and updating them.

First, during the install I selected some type of "Guided 
partition/resize", thinking it would guide me through using fdisk or 
equivilant...bzzzt, wrong answer, and turned the computer off as it 
started to repartition the disk with whatever values were on a slider, 
which one was evidentally supposed to adjust before continuing.

Next time around I did a manual install, and set the disk as I wanted (and 
no, I didn't loose any of the data on the computer).

So, I get it installed, all the hardware was detected, and all is running, 
but on DHCP, not how I wanted it configured, but running none the less.

So, one of the reasons I did want to install Ubuntu is that I have an 
opensource library which one of the Ubuntu developers wants to putback to 
Debian, and I am updating the name to prevent name collision with another 
library. Ah, but Ubunto doesn't install automake/autoconf/libtool by 
default, it's more user oriented. This is important, because I am similar 
to you in the regard that I just want this command tool that I need to 
use, and in this case I don't care about a GUI, but searching through the 
update GUI, I can't find any of the tools to save my life.

Lucky for me, I am pretty familiar with Debian, which Ubuntu is based on, 
and can open a terminal, edit my sources.lst, do an apt-get update, and 
pull the packages down I wanted...including KDE/Kubuntu, and other 
stuff...but those pieces are not available through the default GUIs, 
AFAICT, with a default install. It's always kewl to see a large bundle 
like KDE pulling down 297 packages to install all it's glory...

>From a developer perspective, Ubuntu is no better than Solaris, IMO. 
Because even though it does get bits on the computer better, the bits are 
focused for a simpleton. Yes, I think we do need to attract these 
simpletons...so we have a double edge sword of adoption/attraction.

I do wonder why we need to have a different GNOME desktop? Well, I know 
why we do it (i.e., JDS), but I'm not sure why we should. It only diverges 
us from the mainstream, and makes things different. Seems better to 
leverage the mainstream GNOME project to me, and be the same, the Ubuntu 
uses a stock GNOME desktop, AFAICT. Would be nice to see our desktop folks 
working on implementing solutions for out environment, rather than adding 
lipstick to the pig, for instance...wouldn't it be nice to grab a context 
menu and be able to get the information for "zfs list"? Well, for you it 
wouldn't, but for me it might. It confuses me that zfs has been out for 
about a year and a half and we don't see our desktop folks doing that type 
of simple integration. Being able to take snapshots, list information on 
zfs filesystems, or getting the status of a zpool, those are all things 
that should be available for the user.

OTOH, we're making quite a bit of progress, we even have some wifi 
solutions in place, a modern X server, native OpenGL drivers for nvidia, 
and some basic power management, acceptable audio, much better x86 support 
with Sun finally selling x86 based systems. This is quite a bit better 
than we were a couple years ago, when S10 was released.

Unfortunately our power play is zfs, and we don't have the abiltiy to boot 
and/or configure the system for it at install time. This will need to be 
transparent to the user, and to the user there should be little if any 
difference than using ufs, fat, ext2/3,  reiserfs, or other.

Long story short, we need to retain the Jim Carlson users of the 
community, and be able to attract more of them, but at the same time we 
need to attract the simpletons to really drive adoption. This will take 
some jugglin', IMO, to keep all happy.

--

Alan DuBoff - Solaris x86 IHV/OEM Group
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> My impression is that a current Nevada build with
> Gnome desktop
> will not work decently if it has less than 2 GB of
> RAM.

I assure you that that is just an impression. I'm running snv_61 on my 1.2GHz 
Athlon with 896MB of RAM, and pah-lenty of free RAM to spare (roughly 462MB) 
after I'm logged in and running StarOffice 8, RealPlayer, Firefox and 
Thunderbird.

I am beginning to feel the pain of using a seven year old system as a desktop 
though; the system is beginning to be "CPU challenged", especially with JDS. 
JDS is slow. If I didn't have that NVidia graphics accelerator with the drivers 
to help offload some of the work, it would be unusable.

> This is really bad. Firefox + Xserver will soon
> consume 1.3 GB together
> and a 1 GB system will start excessive paging. Is
> this really needed?

What is ridiculous is that one needs 1GB of RAM for a graphical installation. 
That is really unacceptable, and it's a self-afflicted slap in the face of 
Solaris engineering.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> Again, I agree; except for one point. Games should
> *never* be part of an OE; or ever allowed anywhere
> near. Multimedia, 
> yes. Gaming, *definitively* no. Unless someone can
> possibly embed a flight-simulator into
> init/inittab/SMF as a new 
> run-level - "init F" / "svcadm enable fltsim",
> perhaps.

Perhaps I should have been more clear: I meant if there is good 3rd party 
software for Solaris, that will drive user adoption and that in turn will drive 
more software for Solaris. That includes games, too. Indeed, gaming is 
important, and timing could be better with commercial-quality equivalents of 
Linux gaming down to zero (article is on Slashdot).

Nvidia has clearly demonstrated with their drivers that Solaris can be made 
into a powerful, slick 3D OS. SDL, the Simple Direct Media Layer, the pandan to 
DirectX, exists for Solaris. The only thing lacking is a good audio mixer as 
part of the OS and not just a retrofitted afterthought; then, all the 
multimedia predispositions will be met.
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[UNIX admin]

> Some of your heroes would tell you, perhaps
> self-indulgently, if 
> anything, that code is documentation. Never
> underestimate the power of 
> power.

Code can be documentation if the variable names used are self-explanatory and 
if the working of the code is documented in plain, simple English. Together 
with structured, professional-quality, detailed documentation, it rounds up a 
quality product.

"Never underestimate their intelligence; always underestimate their knowledge."

And: a product is only as good as his documentation and test suite. No more, no 
less.

(Personal note: I have no heroes. There are people who have earned my respect, 
but I will always follow my own way. I am a person of my own convictions.)
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Edward McAuley]

Nice Job!  Persistence and creativity are excellent traits.

It really is not a matter of giving up, though.  As I said, if I had another 
notebook, I'd give it a shot but this is my only notebook, currently and I use 
it for business, every day.  Also, I do run as many as six, x86 and x86-64 
Solaris Server builds at a time for client simulations (usually 1-3).

So, when I pick up my new notebook, I'll give it a shot once again.

I may try it on this box one more time, today, using OpenSolaris, as David 
Comay, was kind enough to suggest this as an alternative, and I haven't really 
built much on it except a few new email addresses.

If I do it, I'll report back with the results.

I'm off to build a DVD I guess.

ejm
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[MC]

On games, I'm not sure everyone knows this, so I'll point it out.  Games are a 
"killer app" for PCs, and they have been for years.  (They make people buy 
computers.)  There is a lot of money in this stuff, but it takes a lot of money 
to get right.  

Microsoft hasn't been steering the PC gaming ship as well as it could be, so 
there is room for improvement there.  "Games for Windows" is a new move of 
theirs to bring more standardization into PC gaming.  Standardization is gd.

Game consoles are just extra computers for the home, but they are very 
successful because of the standardization they bring.  In theory they make it 
easier to develop games and harder to pirate games.  The standardization 
results in a better experience for the gamer and the game developer and the 
hardware developer.  The gamer gets better games, the game developer saves time 
and money, and the hardware developer makes more money.  In theory, anyway!  
The downside is that the gamer has just paid more money.

That brings us back to Solaris and its standardization.  Standardization is 
gd!
 
 
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[John Martinez]

On Aug 1, 2007, at 1:14 PM, MC wrote:

> On games, I'm not sure everyone knows this, so I'll point it out.   
> Games are a "killer app" for PCs, and they have been for years.   
> (They make people buy computers.)  There is a lot of money in this  
> stuff, but it takes a lot of money to get right.
>
> Microsoft hasn't been steering the PC gaming ship as well as it  
> could be, so there is room for improvement there.  "Games for  
> Windows" is a new move of theirs to bring more standardization into  
> PC gaming.  Standardization is gd.
>
> Game consoles are just extra computers for the home, but they are  
> very successful because of the standardization they bring.  In  
> theory they make it easier to develop games and harder to pirate  
> games.  The standardization results in a better experience for the  
> gamer and the game developer and the hardware developer.  The gamer  
> gets better games, the game developer saves time and money, and the  
> hardware developer makes more money.  In theory, anyway!  The  
> downside is that the gamer has just paid more money.

I thought I read somewhere (can't find the source) that the market  
for PC games is shrinking and the market for console games is growing  
(Wii/PS3/Xbox 360). The only exception being MMORPGs like WoW.

The state of gaming is sad on the second largest desktop, Mac OS X,  
so I would suspect that Linux and Solaris would fall way down the list.

But I do agree with you, games would definitely attract a different  
crowd than Solaris is used to, in a positive way.

-john
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Cameron]

Brian:

I'm not a lawyer so I can't really comment on what Ubuntu is doing with
any authority.  There are probably some cases where users could
legally install such IP protected code.  Examples could include:

- people who live in countries that have different IP law (I'd bet
   countries that seriously disregard IP law aren't countries where
   IT companies want to do much business, though).
- people who already own license to use IP in such a way.  In this
   case, if people have already worked with a lawyer to ensure they
   have a license, then by comparison building and installing the
   code should be much less work.

Therefore, I don't really see the value in making it so easy to
build or install IP protected codecs.  People who want such codecs
should probably buy them from a company like Fluendo and therefore
ensure that they are doing things legally and supporting the existing
frameworks to make IP protected codecs available on free operating
systems.

Brian


> It's interesting how Ubuntu does it. They point you to external sources, 
> that they don't vouch for the codecs. (They just make the install 
> painless. IE: Unrecognized filetype/streamtype. Do you want me to look 
> for one that work? If you say yes... and you are looking at a quicktime 
> file, it points you to a non apple codec, which I am pretty sure is not 
> kosher. It does give you a warning though.)
> 
> Brian
> 
> 
> ___
> opensolaris-discuss mailing list
> opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
> 
> 
> 

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Gupta]

On 8/1/07, Brian Cameron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> Brian:
>
> I'm not a lawyer so I can't really comment on what Ubuntu is doing with
> any authority.  There are probably some cases where users could
> legally install such IP protected code.  Examples could include:
>
> - people who live in countries that have different IP law (I'd bet
>countries that seriously disregard IP law aren't countries where
>IT companies want to do much business, though).
> - people who already own license to use IP in such a way.  In this
>case, if people have already worked with a lawyer to ensure they
>have a license, then by comparison building and installing the
>code should be much less work.
>
> Therefore, I don't really see the value in making it so easy to
> build or install IP protected codecs.  People who want such codecs
> should probably buy them from a company like Fluendo and therefore
> ensure that they are doing things legally and supporting the existing
> frameworks to make IP protected codecs available on free operating
> systems.


First off, as I understand the Codecs are opensource. They also might be
legal, but the status is not clear. If Mac OS and Windows, and Ubuntu can
view these files, we should look at making a solaris desktop as easy to use.
Currently desktop usage of Solaris is tiny. Large developers aren't really
targetting SOlaris (just as most large developers aren't targeting ubuntu
yet.)

The fact of the matter is, for OpenSolaris to gain market share as a desktop
(developer or otherwise), we can't lag in the usability area. The point
wasn't really so much that the IP is unknown status, more that it
outomatacilly goes and gets software and codecs painlessly. (Even asking you
if you want to get ZYX pacakge, when it thinks you could use it.).

Brian

Brian
>
>
> > It's interesting how Ubuntu does it. They point you to external sources,
> > that they don't vouch for the codecs. (They just make the install
> > painless. IE: Unrecognized filetype/streamtype. Do you want me to look
> > for one that work? If you say yes... and you are looking at a quicktime
> > file, it points you to a non apple codec, which I am pretty sure is not
> > kosher. It does give you a warning though.)
> >
> > Brian
> >
> >
> > ___
> > opensolaris-discuss mailing list
> > opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
> > 
> >
> >
>
>
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Gupta]

On 8/1/07, Brian Cameron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> Brian:
>
> > First off, as I understand the Codecs are opensource. They also might be
> > legal, but the status is not clear.
>
> There are a lot of issues here.  Note that the GPL/LGPL (and many other
> free licenses) do not allow IP protected code to be included.  This can
> be worked around with proper exceptions in the license, but you'll notice
> most "free" and "open" IP protected modules don't include such verbage.
>
> Therefore there are a lot of poorly licensed plugins out there that you
> can use but are not really under a valid license.  While individuals can
> use
> them, this defeats the free/open source ethos.  People who use them are
> like people who drive gas guzzling Hummers and have a "I support the war
> in
> Iraq" ribbon on the back.


The Free software movement doesn't believe in software patents.

> If Mac OS and Windows, and Ubuntu
> > can view these files, we should look at making a solaris desktop as easy
> > to use. Currently desktop usage of Solaris is tiny. Large developers
> > aren't really targetting SOlaris (just as most large developers aren't
> > targeting ubuntu yet.)
>
> I think there are legal avenues for reasonable media support on Solaris,
> and these avenues will improve over time.  Especially if people support
> companies like Fluendo by purchasing their plugins and letting them
> know there is a Solaris media market.


I can understand paying for authoring tools. But playback is free on Linux,
Windows and Mac.. (Pretty much all standards). I need video codecs, because
tech companies are putting out technical videos, and there is no format
standard. (You name it Flash, Mindows Media, Quicktime, Divx, etc).
Developers are used to certain things from their platforms in this day and
age. Multiple format video playback happens to be one of those things.
Ubuntu, which is closer to Solaris in desktop market share than Windows and
MacOSX have figured out a way to do it, we should at least investigate what
and how they are doing it... (I will try to contribute more feedback in the
install community, but I just started using Ubuntu so my knowledge is
limited.).

I think that the argument that Solaris should do something just because
> someone else does it is not a strong argument.  Especially when there
> are legal considerations.


I beg to differ. You have to wonder why they are doing it, and see if those
reasons apply to you. e.g. Sun strongly embracing x86 commodity servers and
OSes. Price/performance was a huge factor that couldn't be ignored.

> The fact of the matter is, for OpenSolaris to gain market share as a
> > desktop (developer or otherwise), we can't lag in the usability area.
> > The point wasn't really so much that the IP is unknown status, more that
> > it outomatacilly goes and gets software and codecs painlessly. (Even
> > asking you if you want to get ZYX pacakge, when it thinks you could use
> > it.).
>
> Yes, I agree that Sun could use better package management tools that
> would let users easily download and install stuff that they want.  I
> understand people at Sun are working on this.
>
> Brian
>
>
> > Brian
> >
> >
> >  > It's interesting how Ubuntu does it. They point you to external
> > sources,
> >  > that they don't vouch for the codecs. (They just make the install
> >  > painless. IE: Unrecognized filetype/streamtype. Do you want me to
> > look
> >  > for one that work? If you say yes... and you are looking at a
> > quicktime
> >  > file, it points you to a non apple codec, which I am pretty sure
> > is not
> >  > kosher. It does give you a warning though.)
> >  >
> >  > Brian
> >  >
> >  >
> >  > ___
> >  > opensolaris-discuss mailing list
> >  > opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
> > 
> >  >  > >
> >  >
> >  >
> >
> >
>
>
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Cameron]

Brian:

> First off, as I understand the Codecs are opensource. They also might be 
> legal, but the status is not clear.

There are a lot of issues here.  Note that the GPL/LGPL (and many other
free licenses) do not allow IP protected code to be included.  This can
be worked around with proper exceptions in the license, but you'll notice
most "free" and "open" IP protected modules don't include such verbage.

Therefore there are a lot of poorly licensed plugins out there that you
can use but are not really under a valid license.  While individuals can use
them, this defeats the free/open source ethos.  People who use them are
like people who drive gas guzzling Hummers and have a "I support the war in
Iraq" ribbon on the back.

 > If Mac OS and Windows, and Ubuntu
> can view these files, we should look at making a solaris desktop as easy 
> to use. Currently desktop usage of Solaris is tiny. Large developers 
> aren't really targetting SOlaris (just as most large developers aren't 
> targeting ubuntu yet.)

I think there are legal avenues for reasonable media support on Solaris,
and these avenues will improve over time.  Especially if people support
companies like Fluendo by purchasing their plugins and letting them
know there is a Solaris media market.

I think that the argument that Solaris should do something just because
someone else does it is not a strong argument.  Especially when there
are legal considerations.

> The fact of the matter is, for OpenSolaris to gain market share as a 
> desktop (developer or otherwise), we can't lag in the usability area. 
> The point wasn't really so much that the IP is unknown status, more that 
> it outomatacilly goes and gets software and codecs painlessly. (Even 
> asking you if you want to get ZYX pacakge, when it thinks you could use 
> it.).

Yes, I agree that Sun could use better package management tools that
would let users easily download and install stuff that they want.  I
understand people at Sun are working on this.

Brian


> Brian
> 
> 
>  > It's interesting how Ubuntu does it. They point you to external
> sources,
>  > that they don't vouch for the codecs. (They just make the install
>  > painless. IE: Unrecognized filetype/streamtype. Do you want me to
> look
>  > for one that work? If you say yes... and you are looking at a
> quicktime
>  > file, it points you to a non apple codec, which I am pretty sure
> is not
>  > kosher. It does give you a warning though.)
>  >
>  > Brian
>  >
>  >
>  > ___
>  > opensolaris-discuss mailing list
>  > opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
> 
>  >  >
>  >
>  >
> 
> 

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Brian Cameron]

Brian:

> The Free software movement doesn't believe in software patents.

Untrue.  It would be better to say that they do not support them.  I'd
be interested to hear how far "the free software movment doesn't
believe in software patents" argument gets anyone in court.  :)

The GPL license is quite clear that IP protected code should not be included
in GPL/LGPL licensed projects.

> I can understand paying for authoring tools. But playback is free on 
> Linux, Windows and Mac.. (Pretty much all standards).

With Windows and Mac, you pay for the licenses when you pay for the OS.
Most free operating system distros do not ship IP protected media decoders
or encoders.  Any OS that ships them "for free" is very generous to be
paying the license fee and not passing the charge to the end-user.  The
licensing fees for some popular formats are quite expensive.

I have been working with Fluendo to make sure that plugins to enable media
encoding and decoding are available to Solaris users for a modest fee.
I hope that MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 plugins will be available there for Solaris
in the not-too-distant future.

 > I need video
> codecs, because tech companies are putting out technical videos, and 
> there is no format standard. (You name it Flash, Mindows Media, 
> Quicktime, Divx, etc). Developers are used to certain things from their 
> platforms in this day and age. Multiple format video playback happens to 
> be one of those things. Ubuntu, which is closer to Solaris in desktop 
> market share than Windows and MacOSX have figured out a way to do it, we 
> should at least investigate what and how they are doing it... (I will 
> try to contribute more feedback in the install community, but I just 
> started using Ubuntu so my knowledge is limited.).

I agree that we need to figure out a way to do it.  I also agree it is
important.  I also think we need to find the most appropriate legal way to
do things.  I'm aware Sun's legal department is working on this.

> I think that the argument that Solaris should do something just because
> someone else does it is not a strong argument.  Especially when there
> are legal considerations.
> 
> I beg to differ. You have to wonder why they are doing it, and see if 
> those reasons apply to you. e.g. Sun strongly embracing x86 commodity 
> servers and OSes. Price/performance was a huge factor that couldn't be 
> ignored.

Yes, Sun is currently working on Project Indiana to address many of these
issues, including media related issues.

Brian
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Dirk Wetter]

On 31.07.2007 04:34, Kaiwai Gardiner wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 12:11 -0700, Edward McAuley wrote:
>> Uh, let's see.  Beautiful interface (as attractive as the Mac or Vista), 
>>intuitively laid out, ease of use, UNIX (like), open source...it's
already here.
>>
>> You can download it or buy it.

>> Suse 10.2

There's a difference between the versions (see
http://drwetter.org/blog/rpms.Suse-10.2.internet-boxed.diff.html)

>> Please look at this latest version, it is stunning.  The beautifully 
>> designed and intuitive layout 
>of its desktop is very difficult to communicate until you spin it up and
use it for a while.

Unless you're referring to the admin tool yast2 -- which will change in
10.3 and has already in SLES10 SP1 -- that's a matter of the GUI,
Gnome or KDE. KDE is because of historical reasons better integrated in the
Suse Desktop.

 > I've used SuSE 10.2 - if you're happy to avoid the bugs that you can fly
> a 747 through. Beta quality compilers, drivers and libraries. Crappy
> KDE/OpenOffice.org integration (specifically kslaves/openoffice.org) -
> its horrific - "ship first, hide bugs hopeing they won't get found".

Sorry, but your report lacks substance. I've reviewed Suse since an
eternity (http://drwetter.org/blog/opensuse-10.2_criticism.html,
http://drwetter.org/suse10.1/report.suse-10.1.html, printed versions
until Suse 8.X) and I am using it almost on a daily basis. I can't see the
problems you're referring to. The thing which is real crap in 10.2 is ZMD
which will disappear in 10.3 .

I would just try to be fair, there are on the Solaris desktop side a lot of
things -- just read this thread -- which could need an improvement. It
doesn't help OpenSolaris in any way if you b*tch about a competitor.

Linux distributors like Suse and Fedora use their community distributions
with a release cycle of every six months for a broad test of their new
features which eventually find their way into either the kernel or other
applications, but certainly into their commercial counterparts. Sun will
do the very same. Sometimes things break if you're choose a six months
cycle where basically every packet is changing. Debian, Ubuntu LTS have a
different approach, so does commerical Solaris.

> Lord knows I don't want to see Solaris turn into a dumping site for bad
> code.

You mean really Solaris?

In any case: Suse, Indiana, *BSD, any community distribution with
whatsoever-flavor you always can file bug reports or resolve problems by
yourself and commit those changes back. You have the code.


Cheers,
Dirk




-- 
Dirk Wetter @ Dr. Wetter IT-Consulting  http://drwetter.org
Beratung IT-Sicherheit + Open Source
Key fingerprint = 2AD6 BE0F 9863 C82D 21B3  64E5 C967 34D8 11B7 C62F

-
Found core file older than 7 days: /usr/share/man/man5/core.5.gz

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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[Glenn Lagasse]

On Aug 1, 2007, at 1:44 PM, Brian Gupta wrote:
> > If Mac OS and Windows, and Ubuntu
> > can view these files, we should look at making a solaris desktop  
> as easy
> > to use. Currently desktop usage of Solaris is tiny. Large developers
> > aren't really targetting SOlaris (just as most large developers  
> aren't
> > targeting ubuntu yet.)
>
> I think there are legal avenues for reasonable media support on  
> Solaris,
> and these avenues will improve over time.  Especially if people  
> support
> companies like Fluendo by purchasing their plugins and letting them
> know there is a Solaris media market.
>
> I can understand paying for authoring tools. But playback is free  
> on Linux, Windows and Mac.. (Pretty much all standards). I need  
> video codecs, because tech companies are putting out technical  
> videos, and there is no format standard. (You name it Flash,  
> Mindows Media, Quicktime, Divx, etc). Developers are used to  
> certain things from their platforms in this day and age. Multiple  
> format video playback happens to be one of those things. Ubuntu,  
> which is closer to Solaris in desktop market share than Windows and  
> MacOSX have figured out a way to do it, we should at least  
> investigate what and how they are doing it... (I will try to  
> contribute more feedback in the install community, but I just  
> started using Ubuntu so my knowledge is limited.).

Playback is free on Windows and Mac OS because Microsoft and Apple  
licensed the codecs from their respective owners.  Playback is free  
on Linux only because the Linux movement doesn't care much about the  
IP Laws in the US (understandably) and thus leaves the decision of  
"can I use these codecs legally" up to the user (which most users,  
even in the US just don't bother with and go on using things that are  
against US law).

You won't see Sun including code that it doesn't have a legal right  
to include.  By extension, neither should OpenSolaris.  Whether or  
not it makes Solaris (open or otherwise) seem lacking misses the  
point, Sun isn't about to start breaking the law and neither should  
OpenSolaris.  Keep in mind, what's legal in one country isn't  
necessarily legal in all countries.  With a globally used OS like  
OpenSolaris you have to cater to the lowest common denominator.  Now  
if someone wants to pony up some money to license the various non- 
free codecs that the community would like to see, I'm certain the  
community (and Sun) would be happy to accept it.

Cheers,

-- 
Glenn
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Re: [osol-discuss] An Open Letter to the Solaris Community.

[MC]

> I thought I read somewhere (can't find the source) that the market
for PC games is shrinking and the market for console games is growing
(Wii/PS3/Xbox 360).

PC gaming makes much less money than console gaming right now, because of the 
aforementioned advantages to the standardized console platform.

What I was getting at is that there is room for game development and game 
playing to expand into the Solaris and Linux space.  Red Hat makes money from 
selling free stuff, so OpenGL and game development support-providing companies 
could make money too.  Maybe a coalition of groups and companies could push 
OpenGL back into the spotlight, which then pushes gaming closer to Linux and 
Solaris.  Video drivers are moving closer to being open source already.

And the other thing I was getting at is that the stable platform that is 
Solaris (as opposed to Linux) naturally makes for a better game development 
platform than Linux and maybe even Windows.  Plus an open source 3d coalition 
would have no motivation to pull a Vista + DirectX 10 and force people to 
upgrade to something unnecessarily.
 
 
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