Sun Microsystems is facing a mixed bag of challenge and opportunity with its OpenSolaris and Project Indiana open source efforts.

It's been nearly three years since Sun Microsystems kicked off its OpenSolaris project by releasing most of the code that comprises its Solaris operating system under an open-source license. And yet, it's only just now, with the release of the first official distribution of OpenSolaris, that the project begins in earnest.

Over three years, the OpenSolaris project has gathered some community under Sun Microsystems Inc. (SMI) guidance. The whole project resides at www.opensolaris.org and is focused on the open flavor of Solaris operating system, licensed under CDDL.

Sun seeks to apply the lessons of Linux and turn open source Solaris into an operating system to rival Linux and to be as commonly used as Java.

If you're like most Linux users, you've heard of OpenSolaris, but I'm willing to bet you've never tried it. One reason, as former Debian co-founder and now Sun Chief Operating Platforms Officer Ian Murdock explained, is that OpenSolaris doesn't come as a packaged operating system like Linux does.

OpenSolaris 2008.5, the new distribution based on the OpenSolaris operating system, has been released into the wild. This release follows the conventions set by many of the popular Linux distributions, such as being based on a single live CD with installer, but also adds a load of OpenSolaris-specific features such as ZFS, DTrace, Containers, and a new package management system, IPS.

Apache Server co-founder Ray Fielding has resigned from Sun’s OpenSolaris Community saying he’s unhappy about the way Sun's behaving. The issue centers over who controls the OpenSolaris trademark - Sun or the governing community - with Fielding saying Sun wanted to have it's cake and eat it too.

Here's how it works: Novell owns Unix's IP (intellectual property). SCO sold Unix's IP to Sun. Sun then included some Unix IP into Solaris. Finally, Sun open sourced Solaris as OpenSolaris. Sounds like trouble, doesn't it?

One of the great tech non-events of the last few years involves Linux on PCs. Every so often, another wave of hype washes in about how companies are finally going to ditch their Windows machines in favour of the open-source operating system and productivity apps like Sun’s StarOffice and (more recently) IBM’s Symphony.