One of the things I've been thinking about since I came on board is exactly how to partition the OpenSolaris user base. This is important to documentation as it helps us segregate info by user type and [hopefully] make things like site navigation straightforward and understandable. To that end, I've come up with the following list. I'd appreciate any comments, clarifications, additions to this list. (Note that I realize one person may serve more than one of these roles. For example, an application developer by day may be an OSOL package developer by night.) Anyway, here's a cut at roles of an OpenSolaris user:
* Laptop administrator (single-system administrator) Responsible for basic setup of operating environment, including things like connecting to the network (LAN or wifi), connecting to printer(s), configuring mail, configuring music/media players, etc. In reality, this person may not think of herself/himself as an administrator at all, but will do these tasks to get the system configured to their liking. * Network administrator Responsible for maintaining multiple OpenSolaris servers used by multiple people. Responsibilities are more "enterprise" like, including auto-installations and updates, user management, security, storage, network communication, etc. * OpenSolaris package developer Responsible for working with the OSOL package repository and contributing code to various consolidations that are integrated into OpenSolaris. Areas of special interest include building packages, using package manager (GUI and command line) to keep system up-to-date, accessing repositories. * Systems programmer Responsible for interactions between the operating system software and underlying hardware. * OpenSolaris redistributor Responsible for building OpenSolaris with local customizations for the purpose of redistributing. * Application developer Responsible for using OpenSolaris and related dev tools to build applications that run in Solaris environment. Uses OpenSolaris as a development platform, but does not participate in the OpenSolaris community or contribute to the OpenSolaris code base (at least while wearing his/her application developer hat). -alan -- Alan McClellan OpenSolaris Documentation Community Manager #32171 +1 719-352-0993 http://blogs.sun.com/docexchange/
