"encouraging binary compatibility" is a large part of what I meant by "push out some discipline back to the various OSS projects". Not that it can be dictated, of course. But perhaps someone familiar with such matters could write up a case to the effect that the developers could have projects to be proud of while having more time to pursue the advancements and enhancements they were interested in if they invested probably a portion of the time they spend fending off complaints and fixing bugs in doing things in a more thought-out way. Sun has an incredible amount of engineering expertise (as contrasted with marketing, about which the less said, the better) ; it sometimes seems that if they could communicate a bit of that, it might be to their benefit as well as everyone else's.
Some quick googling found me evidence that other people have run into these problems on Linux too; as one example, see http://plan99.net/autopackage/Linux_Problems I'm not endorsing their solutions (some of which sound like they've got shortcomings of their own), but at least people are starting to think about it, so in that regard, there may be an opportunity, if the right balance of substance and humility can be achieved. This message posted from opensolaris.org
