Solaris 11.4 Beta

Posted by Bill Bradford on Jan 30, 2018

Oracle has released Solaris 11.4 Open Beta.

“The Sudden Death and Eternal Life of Solaris”

Posted by Bill Bradford on Sep 4, 2017

“The Sudden Death and Eternal Life of Solaris” is a blog article by Bryan Cantrill with his thoughts on Oracle’s recent staff terminations.

Oracle lays off large number of Solaris tech staff

Posted by Bill Bradford on Sep 3, 2017

This tweet by Simon Phipps claims that a large portion of Solaris technical staff were let go – as a “Silent EOL” of the product – in the recent Oracle layoffs on Friday, September 1st.

Oracle officially cancels Solaris 12

Posted by Bill Bradford on Jan 18, 2017

According to this Ars Technicha article, Oracle is officially cancelling any plans for Solaris 12, instead focusing on what they call “Solaris 11.next”, which is expected to be released in late 2018 and last through 2021.

James Gosling grades Oracle’s handling of Sun’s technology

Posted by Bill Bradford on Jan 14, 2014

In this InfoWorld article, Java founder James Gosling rates Oracle’s handling of Sun’s technologies in the four years since the acquisition.

In short, Java gets a passing grade, while the treatment of the Solaris operating system fails miserably.

Oracle suing companies providing “illegal” third-party Solaris OS support

Posted by Bill Bradford on Jul 26, 2013

This NetworkWorld article describes how Oracle is going after third-party companies who provide “illegal” Solaris support (patches, updates) to customers who don’t want to go through Oracle.

Adobe supports ColdFusion on Solaris 10/11 (SPARC)

Posted by jkemp on Jul 15, 2013

Adobe supports ColdFusion on Solaris 10/11 (SPARC)

Adobe supports ColdFusion 10 on Solaris 11 (SPARC). The Adobe “Tech Specs” document discusses the details of the supported configurations.

https://blogs.oracle.com/partnertech/entry/adobe_supports_coldfusion_on_solaris

http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion-standard/tech-specs.html

Oracle halting development of Sun Ray technologies

Posted by jkemp on Jul 15, 2013

Oracle will soon be announcing that it’s discontinuing development of its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Sun Ray software and hardware, and Oracle Virtual Desktop Client product lines.

https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/important_information_about_oracle_desktop

http://www.zdnet.com/oracle-to-halt-development-of-sun-virtualization-technologies-7000018028/

OpenSolaris.org shutting down 24 March 2013

Posted by jkemp on Feb 13, 2013

OpenSolaris.org shutting down 24 March 2013

http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/

If you need anything from OpenSolaris.org, now is the time to download and archive it.

Oracle proposes donating OpenOffice.Org to the ASF

Posted by Bill Bradford on Jun 1, 2011

According to this article, Oracle is proposing to give the OpenOffice.Org code to the Apache Software Foundation incubator for further development.

Oracle to make OpenOffice a community project

Posted by Bill Bradford on Apr 26, 2011

After its recent fork as the LibreOffice project, according to this Register article, Oracle is turning the OpenOffice effort into a purely community-driven project and no longer plans to offer a commercial “StarOffice” version.

Oracle & NetApp Settle ZFS Patent Lawsuit

Posted by Bill Bradford on Sep 10, 2010

According to this article, Oracle and NetApp have agreed to settle their patent dispute regarding ZFS.

“Announced this morning via NetApp’s website, the companies have agreed to dismiss their pending patent litigation, which began when NetApp sued Sun Microsystems in September of 2007 and became Oracle’s problem when it acquired Sun last year. NetApp and Oracle are tight-lipped about the matter only stating that they both “seek to have the lawsuits dismissed without prejudice” and that the terms of the agreement are confidential.”

Oracle modifies Solaris licensing (in a good way)

Posted by Bill Bradford on Sep 9, 2010

Good news – Joerg Mollenkamp writes about changes to the licensing terms for Solaris, Solaris Express, and Solaris Cluster:

“I’m not a licensing lawyer, but:

“Except for any included software package or file that is licensed to you by Oracle under different license terms, we grant you a perpetual (unless terminated as provided in this agreement), nonexclusive, nontransferable, limited License to use the Programs only for the purpose of developing, testing, prototyping and demonstrating your applications, and not for any other purpose.”

and

“All rights not expressly granted above are hereby reserved. If you want to use the Programs for any purpose other than as permitted under this agreement, including but not limited to distribution of the Programs or any use of the Programs for your internal business purposes (other than developing, testing, prototyping and demonstrating your applications) or for any commercial production purposes, you must obtain a valid license permitting such use.”

sounds like this evaluation period many people were annoyed of is gone for the purposes described in the first snippet from the licensing aggreement.”

Leaked memo: Solaris 11 in 2011, no more OpenSolaris binary distributions

Posted by Bill Bradford on Aug 13, 2010

This link purports to be a leaked internal memo to the Solaris Engineering team detailing Oracle’s plans for the Solaris operating system.

Some highlights:

  • Next release of Solaris will be Solaris 11 in 2011.
  • Solaris 11 Express binary release available later this year; with free Developer RTU and optional support plan
  • No more “OpenSolaris” distribution releases.
  • No more nightly source code drops. New features will be shown to the outside world in full yearly Solaris releases.
  • Source code to Solaris will be released under the CDDL *after* binary releases
  • CDDL will still be used; all new source will be CDDL-licensed
  • Committed to delivery of binary releases, APIs in source or binary form, open source code, technical documentation, and engineering of upstream contributions to common industry technologies
  • “All of Oracle’s efforts on binary distributions of Solaris technology will be focused on Solaris 11. 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.”

    Personally, I think this is a good thing. It eliminates the confusion that had grown around “OpenSolaris”. Was it a binary operating system distribution? Was it the collected source code bundles that made up Solaris? Was it the source and/or binary blobs that could be installed over an existing Solaris installation to make an “OpenSolaris” install? And so forth.

    Purchasing a Solaris 10 License – Clarified

    Posted by Bill Bradford on Aug 3, 2010

    I received the following note from a contact at Oracle:

    “Oracle Solaris is available with a free development and evaluation license. Production deployment requires a commercial license which comes bundled for free with the purchase of Oracle Sun HW, or you can purchase the new Oracle Premier Solaris Subscription for non-Oracle HW which comes with a license and support. The media pack only includes the development and evaluational use license.”