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## Is illumos compatible with Solaris/OpenSolaris?
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- illumos is very likely to be compatible with Solaris/OpenSolaris binaries and
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- drivers before Oracle closed the gate in 2010. After that, all bets are off.
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- Solaris 10 update 11, and Solaris 11, and beyond, may contain incompatible
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- changes.
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+ illumos should run binaries and probably even kernel drivers from Solaris 10
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+ update 10 and earlier, reflecting our strong commitment to backwards
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+ compatibility and interface stability.
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+
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+ More recent versions of Solaris, especially Solaris 11, are not considered
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+ compatible -- even if they sometimes seem to be! Oracle develops Solaris 11 as
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+ a proprietary fork of OpenSolaris, and has been diverging from illumos for
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+ nearly a decade at this point.
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+
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+ If you're building and testing software for Oracle Solaris, you need to do that
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+ on a Solaris system.
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## What changes does illumos maintain?
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* Open internationalization libraries and data files.
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* Open replacements for closed binaries.
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- * Code that Oracle may choose to no longer maintain.
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* Community enhancements to critical technologies like DTrace and ZFS.
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* New open technologies.
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* Patches/bug-fixes we have independently developed, including security fixes.
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* Changes to ease community development.
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* ...and more!
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- ## Do you track Oracle changes?
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- We originally intended to closely follow upstream changes, but became a fork by
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- necessity because Oracle's software is no longer open source. We now represent
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- the open future of the code base after Sun.
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-
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- ## Will you work on sending illumos changes upstream?
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- We would like Oracle to use changes from illumos, as long as they are willing
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- to abide by the open source license for our code. Where we use code from other
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- free software projects, we also respect their licenses and keep the source
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- open.
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-
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- ## Why did you announce the project after it was set up and much of the code written?
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- This decision was made for multiple reasons. The signal to noise ratio in the
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- OpenSolaris community had grown low, and announcing the project would have
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- distracted the developers from actual code and contribution. Most vocal members
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- talked about opening the code rather than writing it. illumos chose the
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- opposite. Before the formal announcement, we reached out to developers in the
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- community and solicited their help and participation.
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-
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## And the name illumos?
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We started off with the codename "FreeON", and later realized it is used by an
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