OpenSolaris has been dead since 2009. illumos is the hard fork of that (taking control out of Oracle's hands).
I'm trying to help here. I think they can do better marketing when being maximum transparent from the start. As someone whom just chimed in says: they think that refering to Solaris is bad marketing. I believe the opposite.
Also to get people to take you serious could be done by other means than hiding your origins. Like testemonials and contribution stats.