"You're out of the woods, You're out of the dark, You're out of the night.
Step into the sun, Step into the light.
Keep straight ahead for the most glorious place
On the Face of the Earth or the sky.
Hold onto your breath, Hold onto your heart, Hold onto your hope.
March up to the gate and bid it open."

-- "Optimistic Voices," The Wizard of Oz

Here's the gate: OpenSolaris. Bid it open. (Really, how could I pass up an opportunity to quote The Wizard of Oz?)

There were people that believed we would never do it.

There were people that attacked our license.

There were people who thought we were out to take over Linux.

There were all wrong.

People will look at what we've done today and still complain. This isn't the end. It's the beginning. More source code will be coming. Our processes for submitting code and bug reports will get easier. We'll get build and test farms up and running. The point is, we'll do this together. As a community.

I've been on this job now for 4 months, and at Sun for a total of 9½ years. The most fun part of the job has been the excitement around OpenSolaris. Excitement with our employees, with our customers, with our developers, with people that want to make Solaris better. Read the blogs. You'll see what I mean. Our employees are proud of Solaris and want to show it off. We've had a blast working with the OpenSolaris pilot community and we're looking forward to meeting other fun, smart people that want to work on OpenSolaris. (Hmmm.... maybe we should do a deal with match.com. "I am a Solaris developer seeking other Solaris developers between 18 and 120." And while we're at it, can you believe that match.com can hook you up with a 120 year old?? Wow.)

The biggest challenge with my job? Change. People don't like it. We're having to change the way Sun develops software, the way we market software, the way we run our business. But change is also opportunity. There's an opportunity to make Solaris better, to get it into places where it's never been before, and into the hands of people who have never seen it. It's that opportunity that's generating the excitement. So come join us. There won't be any flying monkeys either.

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag: Solaris