Thats a very valid concern. For SmartOS it would be a major blow if Joyent were to pull all ressources. They have some of the brightest engineers I know working

Thats a very valid concern. For SmartOS it would be a major blow if Joyent were to pull all ressources. They have some of the brightest engineers I know working on it and I have learned a lot from them by just using the system and hanging out on the irc channel in freenode. Without them the speed of development would definitly take a hit. On the other hand they have been - and still are - very good at building a community around it. There are multiple people and organisations building their own SmartOS images/derivates ([1], [2]). Pull-requests on github come in from a diverse enough group that I think it would survive even without joyent. For OmniOS I don't have enough insight to make that judgement. They have a very clear and detailed release plan and recently hired some good people just to work on OmniOS. These things definitly add some confidence but of course is not a guarantee forever. But if that would be needed one can always buy support from them. [1] http://www.dogeos.net http://www.dogeos.net [2] http://imgapi.uqcloud.net/builds http://imgapi.uqcloud.net/builds