by Today is the first anniversary/birthday of “OpenSolaris”:http://opensolaris.org/os, the open source code base of the Solaris Operating system. Happy anniversary/birthday!
Recently, there were nominations accepted for OpenSolaris contributor awards. As I read over the nominations, I initially felt that they were similar to other OSS contributions; they were heavily weighted towards people who did code putbacks, developed applications, created distributions (btw, there are five of them, only one is from Sun, and three of them are X86 only; so much for the Sun control and Sun is only interested in SPARC arguments).
So, I started to think about what other ways people could contribute. There are many, many ways to contribute to the OpenSolaris community; something I think is rather unique to OpenSolaris. Just like other OSS communities, you can be involved by providing code or documentation, you can read mailing lists and help people who are having problems, you can create your own distribution (but really, how many do we need; is there really a point to there being greater than 500 linux distros; who actually uses all these?). Similar to other OSS, you can be an evangelist (but what other OSS provides you with a “business card”:http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/marketing/mktgdownloads/visiting-card.sxd, have a “presentation template”:http://opensolaris.org/os/community/os_user_groups/os-presentations/opensolaris-presentation-template.otp, and have a collection of “presentations”:http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/os_user_groups/os-presentations/?) and you can be involved in architecture discussions.
In how many other OSS projects, can you actually be involved in major marketing campaigns and affect them? This shows you the level of commitment from Sun and the Sun employees involved in OpenSolaris. Every OpenSolaris marketing campaign has been discussed in the marketing community. Input has been easily accepted; sometimes a single word change because someone thought it sounded better and others agreed, sometimes an entire message has been respun because of the community. In fact, for their commitment, I nominated Sara Dornsife and Laura Ramsey for their marketing efforts and their flexibility with dealing with people (like me!) who like to dabble in everything and think that we have good ideas from time to time.
I remember early last year. There were many people who were very skeptical about Sun open sourcing Solaris. I remember reading lots of comments about “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Well, I haven’t heard from most of these people in a very long time. A few (a very small few) have stepped up and said they were wrong, but most proved themselves to be nothing more that FUDders and have disappeared into the ethernet.
What has happened in the year since the birth of OpenSolaris? Wow, a whole lot. It started with the open sourcing of Dtrace, continued with the ON (Operating System and Networking, including things like ZFS and Zones) consolidation, the development tools, X11, Java Desktop System, storage services, documentation, installation tools, globalization, and a whole bunch more. Communities have sprung up and done a lot of work, including the amazing BrandZ (branded zones that allow you to run an entire Linux userspace under Solaris), installation/packagin strategy (yes, the possibility of completely rewriting the installation and packaging systems), system administration, performance, compatibility, laptops, you name it.
It’s be one heck of a year. One of the marketing campaigns that came and went through discussion, but that I still like, is: “Most One Year Olds Can Barely Walk; We’re Off and Running!” Here’s to us continuing to run for many more years! Happy Birthday, OpenSolaris.
-spp
PS: Remember I mentioned about affecting marketing, sometimes by single word changes? The original “Most…” wording was “Most One Year Olds Can Only Walk…”, I suggested “Barely” and Sara and the marketing team immediately said “Yes, that’s better”.