Tuesday June 14, 2005
Tuesday June 14, 2005 Overview of Opening Day for OpenSolaris
Welcome to OpenSolaris. Opening Day is here. No, not the MLB-style variety. Don't get me wrong - baseball is interesting -and anyone who knows me already knows that one of my favorite books is set in the world of baseball. The Opening Day I'm talking about is the culmination of years of work, by many people, marked by late nights, early mornings, passionate debates, tremendous dedication, more than a few challenges, big cell phone bills, the generosity of many, and a heck of a lot of commitment.Opening Day for OpenSolaris. w00t! It's a virtual launch, almost entirely online. Hopefully the community's passion and excitement will come through the internet in full dress regalia. Everyone seems to have their own story about why Solaris - and now OpenSolaris - matters to them. I've poured a huge amount of my time and energy into this project over the last year and a half - and what's kept me going, more than the technology, more than the code (sorry, Bryan), and more than my New England work ethic - are the people. These OpenSolaris geeks and marketers are a talented bunch, and they know how to make things - innovative things - happen. I take my hat off to the engineering and marketing teams and to the OpenSolaris Pilot members. Thank you.
For the curious folks out there, here's a quick overview of what's happening:
1. The community website is now live at opensolaris.org!
Please check it out - for access to the source code (and the nifty source browser), downloads, developer tools (OpenSolaris is buildable with both the Sun Studio compilers and GNU compilers), information about the OpenSolaris project, getting started docs and - most importantly - a place for the conversation.
2. Big welcome mat in the blogosphere from OpenSolaris (and Solaris) enthusiasts, developers, users, pilot members and community members.
Find out more about what people really think about OpenSolaris at blogs.sun.com (for Sun employees) and also at the opensolaris.org blog page.
3. No press release. Which is good, because I agree with Steve O'Grady in my dislike of "press release voice" - it sounds artificial and contrived, and I don't know where it was written that press releases must be written in a voice that isn't clear, direct, and, well, human.
There is, however, a short and sweet "media alert" - very short - that tells the media about opensolaris.org and blogs.sun.com. It should be available in the OpenSolaris online press kit on sun.com.
4. Sun.com feature story, updates to sun.com/solaris, sun.com/opensolaris and other websites to point to opensolaris.org.
5. Letter to Sun customers and partners, and to anyone who registered on the opensolaris.org site since Jan 25th asking to be notified at launch.
6. All sorts of information made available to Sun's employees to keep them informed - of what OpenSolaris means for the company, how it can change the dynamics of the industry, why they should care, why they should talk to their customers about this...
7. Really cool electronic billboard ad on Highway 101 - hopefully I'll have a picture to post later in the day (if Ben doesn't get a ticket.)
8. Fan buttons and banners - with real code. Easy to acquire. Lovely to look at. Even a corny "love at first boot" sentiment for the cornballs among you. And the Chinese characters are roughly equivalent to "enthusiast". I've been told that more precisely they mean "a fanatically devoted (cult-like) member". Sounds good to me. (And I had dinner last night with the artist who created the buttons!)
9. Teleconference at 1pm PDT Tue 6/14 to answer questions from media and analysts and share the basics about the launch.
Oh, and did I mention the community site at opensolaris.org? The bloggers at blogs.sun.com? That Studio compilers are free for OpenSolaris participants at opensolaris.org? The excitement? the millions of lines of newly opened source code? The tremendous interest from university professors and governments in the Asia-Pacific region? A true open source license that my team authored in CDDL. That it takes a village...? (That I'm sleepy?) Hello, world. Enjoy!
Technorati Tag:OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag:Solaris
(2005-06-14 08:25:10.0) Permalink
Speaking of my new marketing gig, and spreading the word about OpenSolaris, I love the fact that on the web, and particularly in the blogosphere, you can see the OpenSolaris presence. Check out the OpenSolaris Technorati page - which pulls together an overview of recent OpenSolaris-tagged items from Technorati, del.icio.us, and Flickr. Cool stuff.
If you've got interesting OpenSolaris content, be sure to use our tag: OpenSolaris.
Technorati Tag:OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag:Solaris
(2005-06-14 03:03:24.0) Permalink
