Leaked memo: Solaris 11 in 2011, no more OpenSolaris binary distributions

Posted by Bill Bradford on Aug 13, 2010

This link purports to be a leaked internal memo to the Solaris Engineering team detailing Oracle’s plans for the Solaris operating system.

Some highlights:

  • Next release of Solaris will be Solaris 11 in 2011.
  • Solaris 11 Express binary release available later this year; with free Developer RTU and optional support plan
  • No more “OpenSolaris” distribution releases.
  • No more nightly source code drops. New features will be shown to the outside world in full yearly Solaris releases.
  • Source code to Solaris will be released under the CDDL *after* binary releases
  • CDDL will still be used; all new source will be CDDL-licensed
  • Committed to delivery of binary releases, APIs in source or binary form, open source code, technical documentation, and engineering of upstream contributions to common industry technologies
  • “All of Oracle’s efforts on binary distributions of Solaris technology will be focused on Solaris 11. We will not release any other binary distributions, such as nightly or bi-weekly builds of Solaris binaries, or an OpenSolaris 2010.05 or later distribution. We will determine a simple, cost-effective means of getting enterprise users of prior OpenSolaris binary releases to migrate to S11 Express.”

    Personally, I think this is a good thing. It eliminates the confusion that had grown around “OpenSolaris”. Was it a binary operating system distribution? Was it the collected source code bundles that made up Solaris? Was it the source and/or binary blobs that could be installed over an existing Solaris installation to make an “OpenSolaris” install? And so forth.

    2 responses to “Leaked memo: Solaris 11 in 2011, no more OpenSolaris binary distributions”

    1. Constantiniu Ioan says:

      Please not abandon Open Solaris distribution. Is hard distribution and to future. Provocation this distribution is for future. Scuse to linguage.

    2. SteveOll says:

      Well that’s the writing on the wall for OpenSolaris.

      A shame really as it was a nice, clean looking – albeit heavier on system resources – alternative to Linux.