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There is a grassroots effort afoot to deliver open source versions of the closed components of OpenSolaris, including the ZFS file system. According to this report from sister site Server Watch, the newly formed Illumos project is building steam as it aims to provide alternatives for OpenSolaris users as uncertainty remains about the future of the technologies in the hands of Oracle.
“With Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) having remained relatively quiet about its plans for OpenSolaris since it acquired the operating system — along with the rest of Sun Microsystems — concern has been growing among members of the OpenSolaris community about the project’s future.
“Those concerns have now led to community action in the form of the new Illumos project, founded to provide an alternative for those that want to use OpenSolaris technologies, including the ZFS file system.
“But the project’s supporters say their goal isn’t necessarily to fork OpenSolaris. Instead, the Illumos project plans to create open source versions of OpenSolaris components that Oracle does not provide under an open source license, with the goal of creating a new open source ecosystem around OpenSolaris technologies.
“‘The OpenSolaris community seems to be in jeopardy, and my idea was that, rather than dwelling on the negative, I wanted to focus on something positive and get something done,” Illumos project founder Garrett D’Amore told InternetNews.com.
“While D’Amore is an employee at software vendor Nexenta, which uses OpenSolaris technologies as the basis for its NexentaStor storage system and the open source Nexenta operating system, he stressed that Illumos is an independent community project separate from his employer. Still, D’Amore did say that Nexenta will be among the early adopters of Illumos, with the plan being that a future version of Nexenta’s OS and NexentaStor will be based on Illumos.”
Read the Full “Illumos Aims to Free Oracle’s Open Source Software” Story at Server Watch.
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