That's the same company that bundles much needed java security updates with the opt-out option of installing a weird browser toolbar and setting the homepage to a crappy service, right?
Seriously, I never cared about that company as long as it was just selling expensive (but supposedly feature rich?) software to the enterprise, but it seems the alternatives to Oracle's java and MySQL need some more support, market- and mindshare.
I personally stopped using MySQL quite a while ago as well. Java, on the other hand, got resurrected for me with Groovy first, then Clojure (and a passing interest in Scala).
Yeah, I know about openjdk. But they don't provide official binaries for all I know (and certainly not for Windows, linking back to the Oracle distribution).
It is still open and available for download at http://opensolaris.org. It just isn't being supported by Oracle anymore since they are focused on Oracle Linux.
No, the gate has been closed about two years ago. Solaris is not open source anymore. The illumos guys forked the last available version of the code and push it forward independently.
FreeBSD is doing a great job of catching up with Solaris innovations. I love those guys! And maybe we can ride for a few more years on Sun's largesse. But who will push things forward?
Seriously, I never cared about that company as long as it was just selling expensive (but supposedly feature rich?) software to the enterprise, but it seems the alternatives to Oracle's java and MySQL need some more support, market- and mindshare.