Oracle Solaris no longer free; OpenSolaris uncertain.

Those who love Solaris have been watching closing what Oracle is going to do with Solaris and this time it may really hurt thousands of techies as Oracle putting an end to ‘free’ Solaris and it will cost you $$ if you wanted to use more than 90 days. As a technology expert point of view this can be a painful to accept, but as a business point of view this is inevitable. InfoWorld broke the news that Solaris 10, the official stable version of Sun’s UNIX operating system, is no longer available to users at no cost. Oracle has adjusted the terms of the license, which now requires users to purchase a service contract in order to use the software.

Sun’s policy was that anyone could use Solaris 10 for free without official support. Users could get a license entitling them to perpetual commercial use by filling out a simple survey and giving their e-mail address to Sun. Oracle is discontinuing this practice, and is repositioning the free version as a limited-duration trial.

“Your right to use Solaris acquired as a download is limited to a trial of 90 days, unless you acquire a service contract for the downloaded Software,” the new license says.

At the same time Sun Open sourced Open Solaris which was getting momentum in open source commuity, says that OpenSolaris might not get all of the new features that are being developed for the Solaris platform. Oracle  is reevaluating some aspects of the development process and isn’t entirely sure how it will proceed. This seems to be a big loss for those open source lovers. Sun actually wanted to replace Linux with OpenSolaris and they were supported the community in great deal. But for Oracle they have already have their own linux and they are doing well with their robust commercial offerings.

OpenSolaris latest updates was scheduled to release in February but was already pushed to March once. So long as OpenSolaris remains free this isn’t the end of the world, but now all eyes turn to OpenSolaris’s fate. Lets watch the next move from Oracle.