Rumors and FUD

There have been a lot of rumors around OpenSolaris in the recent days, some of them claiming that Oracle will abandon OpenSolaris. I don't think this will be the case, it would damage to Oracle new enterprise operating system and generate lots of bad will. Oracle can however chose to have a different support model or not even sell support for OpenSolaris at all. This would also be bad, especially in the time before the next major release of Solaris is available. There would then be no way to use new features currently only available in OpenSolaris with support a contract.

Meanwhile, the OpenSolaris community is still very much alive with websites and a a steady stream of updates to the source, and releases that getting close to a full 2010.03 release. This is not the case for other projects like Kenai that Oracle chose to end.

I think the rational way to handle this is just to wait a few more weeks to get the official roadmap from Oracle before jumping the gun and spreading rumors about the end of OpenSolaris or anything else that Oracle is taking over with Sun.

"A posting on the company Website implied that OpenSolaris may soon be "end-of-lifed." However, there's no need for app developers and IT managers to worry: Oracle says it is not killing off the freely downloadable community version of Sun's Unix-based Solaris enterprise operating system anytime soon."

Read the full article here: Oracle Explains Unclear Message About OpenSolaris

Update
According to Dan Roberts, director of Solaris product management, Oracle claims to continue to support and invest in OpenSolaris:
OpenSolaris Alive and Well at Oracle