Friday, September 17, 2010

Illumos: An OpenSolaris Replacement, or Vaporware

OpenSolarisImage via Wikipedia
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The end of the OpenSolaris project was cold blooded, and rather uneventful. Is that because we saw it coming, or has the relevance of OpenSolaris questionable?

There is no doubt that OpenSolaris was the barometer of where Solaris should be heading in an open source world. It included an incredible tool set, and an opportunity to contribute to a great project. The unceremonious end at the hands of Oracle is a brutal barometer to its intentions with regards to open source. This has nothing to do with its current legal battles with Google which is by no means innocent in those legal proceedings.

It was announced in SD Times, and in the Twitter space that Illumos was going to take up the banner for the OpenSolaris cause. As of today, there are no binaries, or code. I am not sure if the legal proceedings have killed the project, or seriously given the project owners a case of heartburn.

The last news is that it will support Mono. This news is least bit interesting to me, and actually I think I caught a chunk in my throat.

I like the idea of continuing the open source development of OpenSolaris, but I am wondering if it is going to fall under the veil of a legal clouds, or a Chinese puzzle box of legal quagmires. Let us not forget that Mono is a bulls-eye for Microsoft.

What are your thoughts?

Signed,

The disaffected, and disillusioned OpenSolaris advocate.
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