OpenSolaris board in OpenRevolt against Oracle

One of Sun Microsystems' ambitious dreams, a vibrant open-source community for the Solaris operating system to rival the Linux collective, is in serious danger of evaporating in the Oracle era.

Oracle is committed to Solaris, a version of Unix, but the future of the open-source OpenSolaris project is in limbo, and the OpenSolaris Governing Board that oversees the open-source community is threatening to disband. After Oracle's acquisition of Sun, the board is struggling to hear anything at all from Oracle, according to mailing list messages and the minutes of Monday's OpenSolaris Governing Board meeting.

A motion from board member Neale Ferguson, who's worked to help translate OpenSolaris to work on IBM's Power processors, reads as follows: "The OGB is keen to promote the uptake and open development of OpenSolaris and to work on behalf of the community with Oracle, as such the OGB needs Oracle to appoint a liaison by August 16, 2010, who has the authority to talk about the future of OpenSolaris and its interaction with the OpenSolaris community. Otherwise the OGB will take action at the August 23 meeting to trigger the clause in the OGB charter that will return control of the community to Oracle."

For more on this story, read OpenSolaris board in OpenRevolt against Oracle on CNET News.