Does the Fate of OpenSolaris Tell Us Where Unix Is Headed?
Sep 03, 2010, 01:36 (1 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Brian Proffitt)
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"It's not easy to pin down the exact date of the birth
of OpenSolaris, but it's really easy to nail the date of its
demise: Friday, August 13, 2010. This was the date a leaked Oracle
internal memo was released on the Internet : a memo that
effectively announced the end of the OpenSolaris Project, just over
five years after the general release of the OpenSolaris code and
830 days after the first official release of an OpenSolaris
distribution from Sun Microsystems.
"The life of OpenSolaris may be relatively brief, particularly
compared to the decades venerable Unix has been in existence. But
its tumultuous history serves as an important lesson in how not to
manage an open source project. More importantly, it raises
questions about the long-term viability of the Solaris operating
system itself and, by extension, the entire Unix pantheon of
operating systems.
"OpenSolaris was conceived as early as September 2004, when
Jörg Schilling and two other community members met with 440
Sun developers in Santa Clara for an initial summit. There are
varying versions of what happened at the meeting, but the end
result was clear and public: The pilot program was soon announced
and the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) was
submitted to the OSI for approval in December that same year."
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