Rolls Royce Fan System for a Turbine Engine at IMTS near Gardner Publications Booth

Above is a great example of what a machine tool can make that is reasonably large - a 10' in diameter Rolls Royce fan system from a Trent 900 Civil Gas Turbine Engine.

Project OpenIndiana

As an old Sun guy, I was disappointed with Oracle's announcement regarding OpenSolaris.   When the OpenSolaris Board disbanded, that certainly appeared to be the final nail in the OpenSolaris coffin.

Hopefully, this announcement of Project OpenIndiana will provide a venue for those who depend on OpenSolaris a viable OS going forward.   This will not have the momentum of OpenSolaris and Oracle supporting it, but hopefully OpenIndiana will be successful.   It would be a real shame to see the open version of Solaris die....

This is from the OpenIndiana home page:

"OpenIndiana is a continuation of the OpenSolaris operating system. It was conceived during the period of uncertainty following the Oracle takeover of Sun Microsystems, after several months passed with no binary updates made available to the public. The formation proved timely, as Oracle discontinued OpenSolaris soon after in favour of Solaris 11 Express, a binary distribution with a more closed development model to debut later this year.

OpenIndiana is part of the Illumos Foundation, and provides a true open source community alternative to Solaris 11 and Solaris 11 Express, with an open development model and full community participation."

I hope OpenIndiana is successful.   Too many smart individuals put their hearts, souls and minds into OpenSolaris to let it just die....