Darren.Reed at Sun.COM wrote: > Alan Coopersmith wrote: > >> Darren.Reed at Sun.COM wrote: >> >>> Is making OpenSolaris a non profit organisation on the >>> agenda of the OGB? >> >> >> >> No - what would the benefit of that be? > > > > To make it an attractive destination for other companies, > besides Sun, to donate cash/hardware.
We could create partner programs to fulfill this desire. Actually, we should do this and I have some ideas about it, too. I think we haven't done things like this yet because OpenSolaris is an emerging project. We are a nascent source community at this point and the development is moving external. We're not done. Also, as the project expands, more people at Sun will get involved ... more people with the expertise to run programs to attract companies to OpenSolaris. That, too, will offer more opportunities for non-Sun community members. > Or is making OpenSolaris attractive for other companies > to back not a goal of OpenSolaris? We had many goals for OpenSolaris when we started. Most of them have been so unbelievably massively successful it's not even funny. We got way more code than we expected. Not even close. The community is so much larger than we expected it's also not even funny. There are more distros. More discussions. More conferences. More projects. More communities. More press. More universities. More of pretty much everything. Some things have taken longer, true, but that's good. They /should/ take longer, and I'm happy that they have. I can easily see companies getting involved in the near future as well. It just makes sense as the project evolves. > Isn't anyone in the least bit interested seeing OpenSolaris > actually be able to employ people or pay for things itself > rather than depend on the good will of Sun to do it all? Good will? Sun is running a multi-million dollar global operation here. The fact that it's open source doesn't make it free (beer free). Someone has to pay the bills. I've always viewed the opening of Solaris as a smart business move on Sun's part. Community building is good business -- the non-Sun community members benefit, the Sun community members benefit, and the company itself benefits. Also, the code is licensed and the community has a Charter and Constitution. Where is the good will here? Actually, now that I think about it, there is good will here. Sun has demonstrated quite clearly its good will by opening the code and opening the operations and enabling a community to grow around all this stuff. Jim -- Jim Grisanzio http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris
