[OmniOS-discuss] illumos and contributions metrics: how to evaluate companies that commercialize illumos based products by examining them in the light of their illumos community's contributions.

[Dan McDonald]

> On Dec 7, 2015, at 8:13 AM, Davide Poletto <davide.poletto at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Is there a way to rank/evaluate and so reward/honour (by, as example, purchasing their products or by sustaining their development as testers/free-time contributors) those {individuals, companies, institutions} that clearly demonstrate not only to have good numbers (commits) but also that they care about the community and that are more transparent than others in advertising their commercial offer's origin?

That's a damned good question.  It's also very tricky.

Some firms keep things closed until they've released, or after some time after they've released.  Some find this fair enough, others find it annoying.  Because people are different, it may be hard to get a consensus on how to rank/evaluate firms the way you wish.  BTW, I lean toward "fair enough" so long as there's consistency and not going back on one's word.  
Keeping to one's word is important to me.  I didn't leave Oracle because of the Solaris-closing: if you read the text of that leaked email, it implied a source-dump-on-release model. Only after I left Oracle did it become clear that it was all a big lie.

You're chasing a hard problem.  You may not get much sympathy.  Making things MORE complicated is that "illumos" as a brand is still tightly tied up by its owner. Many feel that it's tied up too tightly, and that is why you rarely see "illumos" mentioned in marketing materials, especially not the trademarked symbol.

I'm sorry I don't have better answers for you right now.  It's a hard problem, and many of us who might be able to help clarify things are trying to keep all of the machinery moving as smoothly as we can.

Dan