Not only is the future for X12 unknown, but there is also an uncertain outlook for OpenSolaris. The successor to OpenSolaris 2009.06 (released last June) was supposed to be OpenSolaris 2010.02 and released in February of this year as implied by its date. However, four months later, there still are no signs of this OpenSolaris update. Sun Microsystems originally planned for the OpenSolaris operating system to be updated every six months, but now we are a year into OpenSolaris 2009.06 and this is clearly no longer the interest of Oracle, Sun's new owner.

In February we reported that OpenSolaris changes were being planned by Oracle in terms of its support and that their OpenSolaris 2009.06 release was no longer even being supported by the company with the operating system reaching an end-of-life status. Even towards the end of March the OpenSolaris 2010.02 release was still missing in action with no official communication in terms of a new release schedule coming out of Oracle. Well, we're now into June and there is still no sign of the release or official communication by its project leads at Oracle.

Not only is the official OpenSolaris 2010.xx release missing, but so is any update OpenSolaris preview snapshots. OpenSolaris preview ISOs used to be released near bi-weekly when Sun Microsystems was independent, but now these preview releases have fallen apart too. The last OpenSolaris preview release made available at Genunix.org was on the 8th of March and is Build 134. OpenSolaris 2010.02 was supposed to be based upon Build 133b. The OpenSolaris mailing lists have also been quiet about any pending OpenSolaris 2010.02 (or OpenSolaris 2010.06 at this point) release.

Bugs were reportedly the reason OpenSolaris 2010.02 didn't make it out in February, but now we are into June. The OpenSolaris 2010.1H blocker bug only has one open bug and that is the IPS blocker bug (the Image Packaging System), but all of its bugs are closed.

We're not the only ones wondering about the OpenSolaris 2010 release, but so are others within our forums, where you can join in on the discussion.