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OpenIndiana

Solaris-like operating system based on illumos

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ1970127 ↗
Source-derived summary

OpenIndiana is a free and open-source illumos distribution compatible with SPARC and x86-64 based computers. The project began in 2010, forked from OpenSolaris after OpenSolaris was discontinued by Oracle Corporation, and is hence descended from UNIX System V Release 4.

Created by a development team led by Alasdair Lumsden, the OpenIndiana project is now stewarded by the illumos Foundation, which develops and maintains the illumos operating system. The project aims to make OpenIndiana "the de facto OpenSolaris distribution installed on production servers where security and bug fixes are provided free of charge."

History

OpenIndiana takes its name from Project Indiana, the internal codename for OpenSolaris at Sun Microsystems before Oracle's acquisition of Sun in 2010.

Origins

Project Indiana was originally conceived by Sun Microsystems, to construct a binary distribution around the OpenSolaris source code base. Project Indiana was led by Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian Linux distribution.

OpenIndiana was conceived after negotiations of a takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle were proceeding, in order to ensure continued availability and further development of an OpenSolaris-based OS, as it is widely used. Uncertainty among the OpenSolaris development community led some developers to form tentative plans for a fork of the existing codebase.

These plans came to fruition following the announcement of discontinuation of support for the OpenSolaris project by Oracle.

Initial reaction

The formal announcement of the OpenIndiana project was made on September 14, 2010, at the JISC Centre in London.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “OpenIndiana” as solaris-like operating system based on illumos. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around OpenIndiana, Solaris-like and operating.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2010—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with OpenIndiana, Solaris-like and operating providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “OpenIndiana”, the useful work is to connect “solaris-like operating system based on illumos” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1970127. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “OpenIndiana”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow OpenIndiana primary sources, OpenIndiana archive and OpenIndiana research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “OpenIndiana”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “OpenIndiana” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.