I wonder how the market dynamics would work out in the long term. Would Solaris consume Linux?

Sun Microsystems Inc. has decided that when it makes Solaris available as open source at the end of this year, it will make the entire operating system available, not simply the kernel or portions of the system.
"Our intent when we open-source Solaris is not to hold anything back," said vice president of the operating system product group, Glenn Weinberg.
That would include everything but some device drivers to which Sun does not have ownership rights. In addition, the company plans to make it possible to work with all aspects of the operating system even when some aspects such as these device drivers are released as binary rather than source code, he said.
Sun is still determining other details about how it will offer Solaris as open source, such as the name of the project and the organization through which it will offer the software. This information will be available when the company releases the software at the end of the calendar year, said spokeswoman Jennifer Doettling. Sun president Jonathan Schwartz first indicated at a news conference at the SunNetwork Conference in Shanghai, China, in June, that it would open the Solaris source code. Since then, it has been refining how and when that would be accomplished.
In the meantime, Sun continues to dribble out features for Solaris 10, due the end of the year, through its Software Express program. Under the program, registered users receive the new features of the operating system as they are rolled out roughly monthly, rather than waiting for the full release at the end of this year.
Sun disclosed the full details for Solaris 10 in February but has been releasing the features individually.