Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative



Nexenta's Garrett D'Amore presented Illumos, an OpenSolaris derivative which aims to create an all open source baseline for future distributions. Illumos will be based on OS/Net, a consolidation of the core operating system and networking components of OpenSolaris, with all the closed source elements, such as libc_i18n, nfs lock manager and critical drivers, replaced with open source versions.

The project plans to be downstream of OS/Net (ON) and aims to be 100% application binary interface (ABI) compatible with Solaris ON while acting as a repository for innovations from the community which may not be acceptable upstream (Oracle).

Illumos is endorsed and supported by Nexenta, Joyent, Greenviolet, Belenix, Schillix, Berlios and Everycity in its efforts to create a freely available SunOS derivative. D'Amore emphasises that Illumos is not a fork, but the work being done will empower the community to fork if needed in the future. He believes the project already has the critical mass necessary to sustain the engineering effort needed.

Brian Cantrill, who recently left Oracle and joined Joyent, said the announcement was "Terrific news for OpenSolaris ... This will give us the power to fork the system in innovative ways. I personally am thrilled, we at Joyent are thrilled. We owe a debt of gratitude to Garrett". Simon Phipps, OSI board member and ex-Sun/Oracle, noted that the project was similar to the IcedTea effort for OpenJDK, which positioned itself downstream of OpenJDK and developed open source replacements for the closed source elements of OpenJDK; this has in turn allowed OpenJDK to be more widely used and, in some Linux distributions, it has become the default Java implementation. In a similar way, he hopes to see Illumos become the default open source implementation of OpenSolaris. (more at link)