[OpenIndiana-discuss] The name: "OpenIndiana"

[BM]

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Alasdair Lumsden <alasdairrr at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would have no issue recommending "OpenIndiana" in a board room to a
> bunch of pointy-haired-bosses* - it sounds way more corporate than
> Ubuntu, FreeBSD or CentOS, which I personally think sound "cheap".
> When someone first suggested CentOS to me as an alternative to RHEL, I
> was like "What?!". But over the years CentOS has gained an excellent
> reputation and I have no doubt that installations of it exceed those
> of RHEL significantly.

Alasdair, but you know, Ubuntu does not sounds cheap at all. And
meaning is very nice, actually. It is rather compact, unique and well
known world-wide, while OpenAnything is yet another item from similar
pile (see below). Instead having prefix "Open" to any $CODE_NAME is
also very common pattern and it sounds even more cheap then FreeBSD or
CentOS (these actually has their cost value embedded in their brand
name).

In fact, the prefix "open" actually implies an alternative to
something that is usually "not-open". E.g. there is "Solaris", but
there is an alternative: "OpenSolaris". There is an Office (read: M$
Office), but there is an "OpenOffice" (well, not anymore, but anyway).
There is a DS, an Active Directory, but there is "OpenDS" as an open
alternative (BTW we need to IPS'ify this one). There is ESB, but there
is "OpenESB" as an alternative. There is SuSE Linux, but there is its
free version as "OpenSuSE Linux" alternative. There is a Document
(read: M$ Office formats) and there is an alternative to it:
OpenDocument. And so on: OpenJDK, OpenIDE, OpenFX, OpenWindows
(ha-ha-ha!), OpenDesktop, OpenDNS and after all, Open Source...

It is very good that you or myself, we can put any odd name in front
of pointy-haired by explaining its validity. But please also don't
forget that in 99.999% cases you deal with intermediate layer, that
connects people who does something useful and yourself. So this layer
— all these marketing sub-brains, who influences most decisions, the
prefix "open" sounds to them (and thus presented in front of
pointy-haireds on a meetings) as "badly or unsupported",
"free-and-thus-alternative-to-something-better", "chaotic", "unknown",
"raises risks", "lunar", interferes with Kuiper Belt and fails when
Jupiter is aligned to the Mars. And just be my guest to break this
stupidity by explaining them it is not like this at all. :-(

Conclusion that picking yet another OpenFoo from a predecessor
codename is not really a brainstorming activity, to be honest. Since
OpenSolaris was not really open, then our real name should be
OpenOpenSolaris. Also I would like to know what the heck is that
"Indiana" thing that we have to bear with an alternative to it,
because visiting their project website (http://indiana.com) I can not
find much information of it... :-)


P.S. I am not against OpenIndiana, nor I like it. I just trying to
align "Ø" with "O" and make sure both are happy. :-)

-- 
Kind regards, BM

Things, that are stupid at the beginning, rarely ends up wisely.