OpenSolaris now closed

Oracle’s commitment to the Solaris platform is still strong, but there have been some big changes afoot – primarily the discontinuation of the OpenSolaris project. This is a rather unpopular move with the open source community.

In short, Oracle has taken control of releases – the commercial one will ship first – an open source version second.

‘In this manner, new technology innovations will show up in our releases before anywhere else,’ stated Oracle.

This may not increase Oracle’s popularity with many but it may simply be a move by Oracle to make sure it is in control of all new innovations under its umbrella. However, for those who have worked on OpenSolaris over the past few years it is hard to comprehend.

The roadmap for Solaris 11 was outlined prior to this news - Oracle has big plans for Solaris, but they cannot keep everyone happy. And some analysts have pointed out that CIOs may question the cost of locking their company to Oracle. Oracle needs to convince people that the benefits far out way any lock-in worry.

OpenSolaris was never a mainstream desktop platform but for developers and system administrators it created a convincing workstation environment. The ease of installation meant that it opened Solaris up to those technology enthusiasts who wanted to experiment with its capabilities.

Solaris 11 is the primary focus for Oracle in the near future. Existing corporate OpenSolaris users will be moved over to an upcoming Solaris 11 Express binary distribution prior to the official Solaris 11 launch – in the most cost effective manner, of course.

Even though, Solaris will no longer be developed in an open and inclusive manner, the platform is not to be closed. Under Sun’s open source Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), the present Solaris code will be available.