Purportedly, a leaked internal memo to the Solaris Engineering team states OpenSolaris distribution releases have ceased along with nightly source code drops. The Solaris 11 Express binary release, which is expected to be available later this year, will be offering developers a free right-to-use (RTU) license, and customers will have an optional support plan.

New Solaris features will be revealed in finalized Solaris releases, reads the memo that is noted to be penned by Mike Shapiro, Bill Nesheim, and Chris Armes. "We will distribute updates to approved CDDL or other open source-licensed code following full releases of our enterprise Solaris operating system."

The source code will be available under the CDDL after the binary releases and all new source code will be CDDL-licensed.

"All of Oracle’s efforts on binary distributions of Solaris technology will be focused on Solaris 11," reads the memo as posted on Steven Stallion's blog and the OpenSolaris discussion board. "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."

Oracle also will not be removing the CDDL from any files in Solaris to which it already applies. "Anyone who is consuming Solaris code using the CDDL, whether in pieces or as a part of the OpenSolaris source distribution or a derivative thereof, would therefore be able to consume any updates we release at that time, under the terms of the CDDL, LGPL, or whatever license applies."

Under the subhead "Solaris Strategy", two core principles are stated as the company's current and future driving objectives for the operating system:

• 1. The limiting factor in Oracle's engineering bandwidth is measured in people and time, and the top priority is driving delivery of Solaris 11 in order to grow the company's systems business.

• 2. Technology and intellectual property adoption needs to complement and accelerate the company's overall goals and not permit competitors to derive business advantage from Solaris innovations before Oracle does.

"We are using our investment in core Solaris innovation and engineering to drive multiple businesses, through multiple product lines. This already includes our Solaris operating system for Enterprise, and our ZFS Storage product line, and will soon include other Oracle products," the memo states. "This strategy is all about creating more value from a set of common software investments: it makes everything you do more valuable and used by more people worldwide. It also means you as an individual engineer or manager have an even greater responsibility to understand the broader business and technical contexts in which your engineering is deployed."

According to the trio's statistics, Solaris is used by about 40% of Oracle’s enterprise customers. Therefore, there is a 60% growth opportunity within the company's own top customers, not to mention outside customers. "In absolute numbers, there are 130,000 Oracle customers in North America alone who don’t use our servers and storage yet, and a global customer base of 350,000 (the prior Sun base was ~35,000)," the three point out. "That’s a huge opportunity we can go attack as a combined company that will increase Solaris adoption and the overall Hardware server revenue. Our success will also increase the amount of effort ISVs exert optimizing their applications for Solaris."

Plans are in place for Oracle industry technology partners to participate in a program permitting them full access to in-development Solaris source code. Accessible through the Oracle Technology Network (OTN), the program will include both early access to code and binaries, as well as contributions.

Customers will have the option of a Solaris 11 Platinum Customer Program that will offer them direct engineering involvement and feedback. No further details on this support plan were forthcoming.

More Information

Illumos Project - An Alternative Set of OpenSolaris Technologies [...read more...]

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