Oracle shutting off Sun project-hosting site

In the wake of its merger with Sun Microsystems, Oracle is discontinuing access to Project Kenai, which was developed by Sun as an open source project-hosting site.

Kenai, Oracle said in an updated FAQ statement for developers on Tuesday, will be discontinued for public use. "Oracle will continue to use it internally and look for ways that our customers can take advantage of it," the Oracle FAQ said.

The phasing-out is being done to consolidate project-hosting, according to the Project Kenai Team in a Web posting about the future of Kenai. "Minimizing the number of current project-hosting sites is a start in this direction," the team said.

At the Kenai beta site, users were advised to being migrating repositories and content to other locations.

"The complete shutdown of the site and the removal of the domain will be completed in the next 60 days (April 2nd 2010). This should provide ample time for all projects to be moved to a new home of the project owners choice," the Kenai team said.

"Any projects that remain after the 60 day limit (April 2nd 2010), will be removed when the site is turned off," the team said..

"While it has come time to close the domain of Kenai.com, the infrastructure, which is already used under Netbeans.org, will live on to support other domains in the future," the team said.

Oracle also lauded in the FAQ the combination of the OTN (Oracle Technology Network), the Sun BigAdmin system administration portal, and the Sun Developer Network, which includes the java.sun.com Web site.

This combination will "result in the largest and most diverse community of developers, database administrators, sysadmins, and architects," Oracle said.

For the near future, Sun Developer Network and BigAdmin will remain in current forms, Oracle said. The company foresees an integration of these sites into a redesigned and re-architected OTN.

Also, Oracle plans to continue to offer certifications for Sun technologies including Java, SPARC, Solaris, and MySQL as part of the Oracle University program.

Oracle one week ago detailed ambitious plans for its newly acquired Sun technologies.