Reminds me of my own adventures with systems hanging on PXE boot when a Symantec Ghost PreOS Image didn't boot up completely, and went on to flood the network with packets. See http://dynamicproxy.livejournal.com/46862.html
There's also Belenix, which was the second distro after Schillix, and the first full fledged desktop distro - both based on the opensolaris ON codebase.
Work on Belenix had paused until recently since the active developers got busy with their jobs.
There are things to set in place (updated website, upload rpm5, createrepo and smart for developers to download and use) before we open up for more developers.
At the moment, I'm testing my rpm5 and smart package manager work on a fresh boot environment, and hope to have something available for download by Monday.
So, there is active development happening in the opensolaris community, on a variety of fronts.
He may not have the skills/patience to lead a family life, and is not alone in this regard.