As Oracle moved toward closing its deal to purchase Sun, concerns built in the developer community over the future of OpenSolaris, Sun’s open source Solaris project. Vague comments from Oracle executives in January didn’t help. But not to worry, Oracle’s Solaris chief has spoken out on the issue, pledging to keep OpenSolaris available as an open source project, and offering the commitment that Oracle will funnel more investment money into OpenSolaris than the project enjoyed under Sun’s umbrella.
Datamation has the story on Oracle’s most explicit comments to date on its plans for OpenSolaris.
Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems initially left unclear the future of a number of open source technologies developed by Sun. One of those technologies is Sun’s OpenSolaris project, which is the open source effort through which the next generation of Solaris technologies are developed and tested.
During Oracle’s (NASDAQ: ORCL) Sun strategy event at the end of January, Oracle outlined its general plans for Solaris, though executives there barely mentioned OpenSolaris itself — leaving some in the community worried about its status. That situation has now changed, with an Oracle executive explaining to OpenSolaris users and contributors that they have little to worry about.
“Oracle will continue to make OpenSolaris available as open source, and Oracle will continue to actively support and participate in the community,” Dan Roberts, director of Solaris product management at Oracle, said during an OpenSolaris IRC
In response to a question from InternetNews.com, Roberts said that OpenSolaris end users and contributors will find things mostly unchanged as a result of the Oracle acquisition.