Since Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems last year, the future of the Solaris and OpenSolaris operating systems have been called into question especially as the OpenSolaris 2010.1H release was missing and has been that way for months now with no official communication from Oracle. A new OpenSolaris release hasn't come in more than a year and we still are left wondering if or when it will arrive.

The OpenSolaris community is concerned by the silence from Oracle over its future plans for the open source operating system. In a blog posting, OpenSolaris developer Peter Tribble complained that Oracle has not mentioned OpenSolaris.

At the OpenSolaris Annual Meeting, held on IRC, Oracle executive Dan Roberts has assured the community about the future of the open source version of Solaris. The statements, available as a log of the meeting, have led Peter Tribble, who had expressed concerns on the lack of communication, to conclude "rumours of its [OpenSolaris] death have been greatly exaggerated".

When the OpenSolaris Governing Board issued their ultimatum to Oracle on July 12, few thought it would have the desired effect of saving OpenSolaris.

Well, it has been quite a week, last week. Not too long after the OpenSolaris Governing Board issued an ultimatum to Oracle and closely following the unveiling of the Illumos project, Oracle officially announced (in a memo to internal employees) that they will be leaving OpenSolaris behind. To most (including myself) this is not at all surprising.

Alarm bells have started ringing inside the former Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris community over the project's potential future with database giant Oracle. OpenSolaris developers have complained they've been "completely ignored" by Oracle despite reaching out, with their questions over the project's future going unanswered.

OpenSolaris 2010.03 was supposed to have been released earlier this month. However, March is coming to an end and there still is no sign of OpenSolaris 2010.03. Oracle, which now owns Sun Microsystems, has also not provided us with any comment on the situation nor have they addressed the OpenSolaris community.

A former Sun Microsystems' executive has re-assured worried OpenSolaris users the open-source operating system has a future under new owner Oracle. Dan Roberts, Oracle director of product management, has said the database giant will continue to invest in OpenSolaris and will deliver the operating system's next incarnation: OpenSolaris 2010.03.

A posting on the company Web site 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 down-loadable community version of Sun's Unix-based Solaris enterprise operating system anytime soon.