Adam Mendoza, director of storage industry initiatives at Sun, said in a statement that Sun is leaving Aperi because end users will want the SNIA to endorse any open-source software delivered by the industry.

"By engaging with the SNIA upfront, we are assured that a collaborative effort will take end-user requirements into account and that the storage community will adapt SNIA-endorsed open-source storage management solutions," Mendoza said.

Sun's departure isn't shaking at least one of the other Aperi members.

"This announcement does not affect the NetApp relationship with Aperi," said Patrick Rogers, vice president of products and alliances at Network Appliance Inc.

Aperi was formed in October 2005 by IBM as a collaborative industry effort to give users more choices for deploying open-standards-based storage software.