> > On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Bart Smaalders > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > As many of us have stated, the next release of > > Solaris will be based on the > > > work done in OpenSolaris. > > > > But will it still be recognizable as Solaris? Or > is > > it going to be > > just another Linux clone, albeit with a different > > kernel? > > Well I'm going to use gut feeling and total ignorance > to make my own idle speculation about Oracle's > plans! > I think the reason Oracle prefers to use the name > "Solaris" instead of "OpenSolaris" is *not* because > they want to kill off OpenSolaris but simply because > they recognise the mistake Sun made in giving the > name OpenSolaris to a closed OS distribution that is > based on the open-source kernel of the same name. > However, Oracle now has to face the same decision > that Sun would have had to if they were still here: > what to do with the incompatibility between Solaris > 10 and OpenSolaris, especially packaging. Oracle > knows that their real market is 'big iron Unix', and > their customers will have sysadmins who spent years > refining their tools and scripts to automate the > roll-out of patches and updates across a range of > Sparcs and possibly some x86s, including zones, > legacy Solaris 8/9 (or S10 containers thereof) and > images for diskless clients. This is all based on > SVR4 packaging, and I think IPS is frankly years away > from being sufficiently enterprise-ready to do the > same. Oracle can continue back-porting features from > OpenSolaris to Solaris 10, but for the next version > of Solaris, this back-porting activity is > unsustainable. > > I think the only real option is to make a clean > break. The next version might well be called Solaris > 11 (SunOS 5.11), but there probably won't be an > upgrade path from SVR4-based Solaris 10 to IPS-based > Solaris 11. Perhaps even the application binary > compatibility guarantee will end at Solaris 10. > Oracle will probably continue Sun's long tradition of > providing very long term support and updates for > 'legacy' Solaris 10 systems, but Solaris 11 will > probably be released for new installs only. > > The question is whether Solaris 11 will remain a > separate product or will be a re-branding of the > OpenSolaris distro. The latter case would imply that > the free OpenSolaris distro would be pulled and > repackaged under the "90-day free trial terms" that > Solaris 10 is under, but given that Red Hat has > Fedora and Novell has OpenSuse, there is plenty of > precedent for Oracle to go on sustaining the free > OpenSolaris distro as a 'preview' of Solaris 11 > features (Solaris 11 will probably continue to have > Sun tools first in the PATH, whilst OpenSolaris would > continue to have GNU tools first). However, just > like Red Hat doesn't want to provide commercial > support for both RHEL and Fedora, I don't think > Oracle will continue with the commercial support > option for the OpenSolaris distro, but try to migrate > those customers to Solaris 11, which implies that > they have to be careful not to let OpenSolaris and > the Zpool/ZFS version to get too far ahead of the > starting point for Solaris 11. Maybe, continuing this > line of thought, the reason for the delay in > OpenSolaris 2010.?? release is because they are also > working on synchronising the feature set with Solaris > 11 and running lots of tests to confirm that > customers on OpenSolaris support contracts will be > able to migrate successfully to Solaris 11. > But hey, what do I know, maybe they're spending all > the time unpicking the mess after a global > s/Sun/Oracle/g patch went badly wrong, e.g. > make: oraclecc compiler not found! > > Graham
I think Oracle is going to keep it simple; Solaris is for the enterprise and Opensolaris is a science project. And since oracle is doing so well selling solaris and other software to the enterprise, why release new opensolaris now? when business is booming, I think they will release it when they see fit. their main objective is bringing in revenue and justifying the money they payed for SUN and they are doing well at that. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
