What is on Your Mind?

Hi Everyone,

I would like to ask you about OpenSolaris's imminent disappearance under the ongoing Oracle stewardship. How do you feel about it? I have been an active user of this OS since its beginning and have deployed it in my educational institution across 7 campuses on more than 700 machines. I love its features especially ZFS.

Now I am beginning to get a little bit paranoid. Is their any fork happened already or in progress which I am not aware of (being an avid Slashdotter, I can't remember one)?

Your input on this would be highly appreciated.

Thanks a lot.

Most opinions I read so far feared something like this from the announcement of the take-over: that Oracle would close down (almost) all former Sun projects, and let those silently die that are in direct competition or not valuable. And so far, the only 2 really valuable projects are Java and Solaris. Solaris probably will be closed down (IMO), and I guess they'll try and discourage open implementations of Java by use of patents (see the ongoing fight with Google about Android).

As for a fork: there is one, called OpenIndiana.

MySQL is a very valuable project as well.... folks seem to be uncertainly about where Oracle is heading with MySQL too.

Yes, but MySQL is a direct competition to Oracles Express Edition, so the only valuable thing about it are the support contracts. It's going to be interesting if any of them will be extended, or continued to be sold.

I have used OpenSolaris and was quite impressed with it. There were better alternatives at the time and usage did not extend for very long, since it would require learning new commands and integrating applications that reside on other systems. The OS landscape will just become a little less diverse.

Technically, OpenSolaris hasn't disappeared. Both its name and its license have changed and it has recently been released as a fully supported product (Solaris 11 Express). There are also several OpenSolaris and now illumos derived OSes that are emerging.
The OS landscape isn't becoming less but more diverse, IMHO.

is it just me or does pronouncing "Oracle Solaris" not sound right? just seems wrong to me

i hope OpenSolaris sticks around... but all I have is hope