Dennis Clarke wrote:
Well its slow. Real real slow. So many things can be done but I
personally feel that this project is falling into corporate hands more and
more. It feels like a marketing project gone wrong.
Hi, Dennis ....
There are many people at Sun who are involved with OpenSolaris who have
been fighting to keep the project on track and growing into a genuine
community effort. We always knew that we'd grow into the role over time,
though. It's been challenging at times, since the company opened it's
core product -- a first for Sun and from which SPARC and Java have
subsequently learned -- and we've made a pile if mistakes along the way.
But this is far from a marketing project gone wrong. There are actually
very few marketing people involved, to be honest, and those who are
involved have the best interest of the community at heart. If they
don't, you will not see them here, it's that simple. Sun is a big
company with sometimes conflicting messages and initiatives, so I can
clearly see how we confuse people. We are actually pretty good at it,
but we are also getting better at aligning things, too. But if this were
a marketing project, we would not have a Charter, we would not have a
draft governance, we would not have open conversations, we would not
have infrastructure coming, we would not be moving the gate external, we
would not be taking code back, Harpster would not be openly asking for
opinions on v3, and Green wouldn't be blogging about the community's say
in any licensing discussions. Marketing isn't paying for Derek's
computers or Stephen SCM or anything else core to the engineering
project. Marketing does, however, help fund conferences, and ads, and
similar projects to help is communicate and engage new people around the
world. And that's a critical function.
I expect Sun to get more aggressive on the marketing front, especially
in emerging markets, but that's what companies do. That could help us
grow, actually, and it certainly doesn't have to negatively affect the
engineering operation here within the community. Or at the very least,
we /as a community/ get a say in the matter, and we can help influence
marketing decisions. That's not bad, is it?
Jim
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