Announcing the first Oracle Solaris 11.4 CBE

This you don't see every day - Oracle doing something fun and interesting.

I'm very happy to announce that today we are releasing a new version of Oracle Solaris 11.4 for free/open source developers and non-production personal use.

Today marks the first delivery of our Common Build Environment" (CBE) releases for the Oracle Solaris 11.4.To enable us to make new features and fixes available quicker and to more systems Oracle Solaris now uses a continuous delivery model of SRU/micro releases rather than much larger minor releases every few years.

Now, this isn't a return to releasing Solaris as an open source product - something Oracle cancelled after acquiring Sun - but at least it provides enthusiasts with the ability to install an up-to-date version of Solaris.

It's all very typical Oracle though - you need an account, and as mentioned, this is only free for non-commercial use, and not open source. The reason for this move is probably to drum up some interest to get developers to port newer versions of popular open source tools to Solaris.

Regardless, it might be a fun weekend for some of us.