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Open Solaris project is an open source project sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc, that is initially based on a subset of the source code for the Solaris Operating System. It is a nexus for a community development effort where developers from Sun and elsewhere can collaborate on developing and improving operating system technology. The OpenSolaris source code will find a variety of uses, including being the basis for future versions of the Solaris OS product, other operating system projects, and third-party products and distributions.
Initially, the Open Solaris project will provide the core kernel, libraries and commands that are currently distributed with the Solaris OS. Over time, it is expected that additional parts of the Solaris OS will be made available through the project.
The main difference between the Open Solaris project and the Solaris Operating System is that the Open Solaris project does not provide an end-user product or complete distribution. Instead it is an open source code base, build tools necessary for developing with the code, and an infrastructure for communicating and sharing related information. Support for the code will be provided by the community; Sun offers no formal support for the Open Solaris product in either source or binary form.
The Solaris OS is Sun's operating system distribution and is branded, tested, maintained and supported as a Sun product. Future releases of the Solaris OS will be built from the OpenSolaris source code, but will still be supported in the same manner as current versions of the Solaris OS. At any given time, there may be some software in either the Open Solaris project or the Solaris OS product that is not present in the other. However, over time the intent is to release as much of the existing source code as possible through the Open Solaris project and for future development of the source to take place in the Open Solaris community.
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