We mobilized our community to throw OpenSolaris a blog party. For a rundown of what's going on today, check out Jim's Announcement.

Here is a collection of blog entries thus far. Note that I expect to update this entry a number of times today, so please check back. Of particular note in my mind are the entries from the people who have contributed code to the project:

• Cyril Plisko contributed the very first externally contributed fix to OpenSolaris-- paving the way for others: he summarizes the numerous contributions he made this year. Thanks, Cyril!
• Peter Tribble writes about being interviewed by ZDNet Australia.
• Jeremy Teo writes about his contributions, but also points the way for future improvement: more community leadership, better GNOME build infrastructure, and "hardware support sucks."
• Shawn Walker posted a pretty extensive list of resources he found helpful over the past year, as well as his own thoughts about the OpenSolaris project: "My contributions to the OpenSolaris project have been a labor of love, and I look forward to contributing more over the years to come."

Sun's OpenSolaris team (the team busy changing the way we do things in order to make things like the website, SCMs, etc. possible) has also started to post their thoughts (I've included OpenSolaris Marketing here, too):

• Steve Lau brings us up to date on his work to establish an SCM bridge and his work on the SCM web application which should be rolling out soon.
• Stephen Hahn relates his anniversary contemplations, muses on advocacy and criticism, and notes that "I'll enjoy getting caught off guard by at least one project in the coming year. Or so I predict."
• Mike Kupfer delivers a treatise on the problems of using .o files as part of Open Source delivery, and warns us that "this approach blurs the separation between open and closed source.".
• Marketing Wonder Twins Sara and Laura have each sent birthday greetings.
• Karyn Ritter talks about her surprise at the community reaching the 100 contribution mark so soon.
• Patrick Finch posted a little photo essay showing some amusing pictures of the team... there seem to be a lot of cars; I don't know why.

We're also lucky to have some celebrity bloggers checking in:

• MaryMary's post is cool. I don't really know how to describe it; so just go there.
• Tim Bray reminds us that "I still want a GNU/Solaris userland, please."

And we wouldn't really be anywhere without dedicated community members:

• Ben Rockwood posted his Year in Review. The whole community is indebted to Ben for his tireless efforts. And he notes: "OpenSolaris has empowered me to be part of the effort, part of the team, not just a bystander watching and cheering from the sidelines."
• Martin Englund is excited about the birthday, but even more excited about the Secure by Default project.
• Chandan B.N. posted a clever perl one-liner. (He also supplied the snazzy new icons the site is using today, for which I am very grateful!)
• Glynn Foster spells out some of the significant challenges ahead, and notes that while "There's still a lot of people in Sun that don't quite grok working in an open source community .... for an evolving open source community, OpenSolaris is doing just peachy."
• Matthias Pfützner talks about using Solaris x86 on a long string of laptops. Nice work!
• John Rice takes us a birthday balloon tour of the new Java Desktop 4 (a.k.a. Gnome 2.14).
• Alan Hargreaves gives us a catalog of his year, including Sydney Users Group meetings, people he met, and some of the community accomplishments he enjoyed.
• James McPherson talks about his year, and notes that "my point is that the opening of Solaris to the world has allowed Sun and non-Sun people to expand everybody's knowledge about what goes on under the hood."
• Other Birthday cards have come in from all over: Alan Maguire, Bill Rushmore, John Clingan, Anish Gupta and from others (which I will try to post later!)

Note: if you're not included here, don't worry-- I'll be adding you later in the day!

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

(2006-06-14 11:25:50.0) Permalink
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/dp/entry/opensolaris_birthday_festivities

What a difference a year makes. A year ago this evening, I was up until about 3am helping others to put the finishing touches on the launch of OpenSolaris.org. Life was different... OpenSolaris advocates were beseiged by charges of vaporware. Critics used phrases like "Put up or Shut up," "There is no OpenSolaris," and "You Sun people are pathetic." It was an ugly time which I documented in a blog entry entitled: Beyond My Wildest Expectations: The Butterfly Effect.

Most of us know the butterfly effect: "Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. ... Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different." [Source: Wikipedia] I often think of this effect when I consider why something surprising happened.

Then at about 8am on June 14th, 2005, we opened opensolaris.org and invited the world in for a look, and to join us in developing a world class operating system. At the time I felt like part of a volcano of activity-- today it seems like another flap of the butterfly's wings.

So today I'm contemplating the butterfly effect of our actions last June 14. Who could have predicted a year ago what today would be like? How will this year's accomplishments be amplified in years to come? Just today we've reached 100 contributions-- I wonder if that milestone number serve to attract new developers? We've seen new faces and new perspectives emerge in the community. Several active distributions with different and interesting missions have arrived. User groups have sprouted up-- and attending SVOSUG meetings has been one of my favorite activities this year.

That's not to say we're done. There's a long list of things yet to be accomplished-- mostly summarized on the roadmap. But we've delivered a lot, and I hope that counts for something. As for me: In the next year I hope to sponsor more fixes, and help out with some redesign of the website look and feel (I helped to author today's redress of the home page, mostly assembled over the last 48 hours). The butterfly effect leaves me optimistic-- and fairly sure that the next year will bring new surprises...

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

(2006-06-14 09:37:20.0) Permalink
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/dp/entry/the_butterfly_effect_revisited