a. Existing customers already got their hands chopped, their prices raised, or their lawyers poked. They're stuck with an abusive, litigious, opaque vendor and will migrate out when they can. Many are stuck.
b. Prospective customers must have some compatibility need or they'd look elsewhere.
c. Developers won't be fooled so rule them out :)
It’s still my favorite OS, if it fits what I need it for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenIndiana
SmartOS, for example, is a more specialized application of the scions of OpenSolaris.
Here is a list of other distros that originated from the Illumos efforts after OpenSolaris was terminated:
-DilOS, with Debian package manager (dpkg + apt) and virtualization support, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-NexentaStor, distribution optimized for virtualization, storage area networks, network-attached storage, and iSCSI or Fibre Channel applications employing the ZFS file system.
-OmniOS Community Edition, takes a minimalist approach suitable for server use.
-OpenIndiana, a distribution that is a continuation and fork in the spirit of the OpenSolaris operating system.
-SmartOS, a distribution for cloud computing with Kernel-based Virtual Machine integration.
-Helios, a distribution powering the Oxide Computer Rack.
-Tribblix, retro style distribution with modern components, available for x86-64 and SPARC.
-v9os, a server-only, IPS-based minimal SPARC distribution.
-XStreamOS, a distribution for infrastructure, cloud, and web development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illumos#Distributions
Edit: From this blog entry, this is suspicious: "the committed support for Oracle Solaris until at least 2037" - does Solaris have a 2038 problem?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s
Start at 33:02 for full rant.
Apparently, it's out of support the same way RHEL 6 is out of support.
Oracle SPARC S7, T8, and Fujitsu SPARC M12 still supported
We are happy to announce a new Oracle Solaris Common Build Environment (CBE) release, to be used for free by developers.
As part of our continued effort to support software development on Oracle Solaris 11.4 we provide developers and the FOSS community access to a build environment that is very similar to the most recent Oracle Solaris 11.4 Support Repository Update. They can develop and test against the newest features released and gain insight into the technology advances that we have delivered into the Oracle Solaris 11.4 Operating System. As an added bonus, the CBE can also be used for non-production personal use.
We first introduced the Oracle Solaris CBE in March 2022 and we released an updated version in May 2025. Now, as Oracle Solaris keeps on evolving, we’ve released the latest version of our CBE. With the previous release Alan and Jan had compiled a list to cover all the changes in the three years since the first CBE release. This time, because it’s relatively soon after the last release we are opting to just point you to the what’s new blogs on the feature release SRUs Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU 84, Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU 87, and Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU 90. And of course you can always go to the blogs by Joerg Moellenkamp and Marcel Hofstetter who have excellent series of articles that show how you can use the Oracle Solaris features.
The release of this new Oracle Solaris 11.4 CBE, together with the Oracle SPARC S7, T8, and Fujitsu SPARC M12 servers, the committed support for Oracle Solaris until at least 2037, the availability of Oracle Solaris in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure all show the continued strength of the Oracle Solaris platform and our commitment to delivering an Operating System for your mission critical enterprise workloads.
To update you can either point your system to the package repository and use “pkg update” and pull in all the changes or use the images on the Oracle Solaris Downloads page.