> at some point a project has to move on from being a fork of their predecessor
Sure. But what about doing so when it has become an established name? Right now I'm only interested because it is a fork, those toy OSes that get released every week rarely tickle my interest.
Well think of it this way: Illumos has had about a decade or so to establish its name. Either it’s just a toy OS to people these days or it has a name worth recognizing, beyond and independent of the late OpenSolaris project. If the only name recognition that it has is in relation to OpenSolaris, it will never be more than an OpenSolaris fork.
Personally I’m glad we can think of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonFly BSD as something other than forks. For whatever similarities they retain, they also have different objectives, methodologies and identities. I hope too the Illumos project can build its own brand cachet, and I don’t see it doing that by remaining merely an OpenSolaris fork.
I wonder if the name is actually a part of the problem? It's been 10 years (more or less) and to a first approximation, Illumos has got zero value as a name.
Some of that might be due to its murky origins, with OpenSolaris, OpenIndiana, Nexenta, SmartOS, OmniOS, etc, all having an unclear relationship and basically muddying the mindspace that Illumos sought (and seeks) to occupy.
It's probably too late, but a rebranding exercise might help clarify that it's the survivor, and could also highlight the technical advances it offers, both over Solaris 10 (which is the last release most people used) and Linux (which is what it's competing with).
Sure. But what about doing so when it has become an established name? Right now I'm only interested because it is a fork, those toy OSes that get released every week rarely tickle my interest.