On Tue, 31 Jul 2007, John Plocher wrote: > > I had a long "chat" with several Sun VP/Director types after the latest > Solaris' All Hands meeting about OpenSolaris. My biggest take-away > was: > > ************************************************************ > We need an operational definition for the term "OpenSolaris" > ************************************************************
I believe that the perception of the word "OpenSolaris" in the broader IT world (including the media) is, and will be, overwhelmingly one thing: OpenSolaris is an operating system. This basically became a fait accompli when that name was picked because "OpenSolaris" is a modified version of "Solaris", and Solaris is an operating system. So I think there's nothing we can do about that perception any more than we could try to get the world to think bottled water was not a type of water. I will say that sometimes "OpenSolaris" also gets used in a project context. But that's easy and natural because unlike Solaris, OpenSolaris is developed as open-source, which is clearly conveyed by the first part of the word. And that usage is cool too because when there are only two contexts in use, the meaning is easy to keep straight. Bottom line. It's *so* not a problem. We just need to burn all the slideware and web pages that say stuff like: "Definition of OpenSolaris: A code base, and the community around it" and other vexing things (to the broader public), and accept that the word means... well, what it means. Eric
