Sun launches OpenSolaris Effort
Sun Microsystems with their decision to release Solaris to Open Source Community have initiated their efforts with the launch of OpenSolaris website. However, initial reactions have been disappointing, as Sun has released only few components yet while the whole Operating System code is scheduled to be available by the middle of the year. They have for now released details and code of Dynamic Trace or DTrace, a key feature of the Solaris 10 operating system.
DTrace is a performance-measuring tool used by developers to find out how to maximize the performance of their code and applications. The official word is that the code of the entire operating system would be available before the end of second quarter. The operating system itself should be freely downloadable by the end of this month.
Sun would however still sell Solaris 10 commercially and would remain a Sun’s branded version of UNIX. They would be offering paid supports for the commercial users, which would be bringing them the revenues. The top management is confident that this move would not harm the company financially as Sun Executive VP for software John Loiacono released a statement to their stockholders.
Sun would be releasing the code of Solaris under Community Development and Distribution License, which would require the contributing developers to share their modified code with the rest of the community. Corporations and communities would however still be free to develop systems based on Solaris and sell them without modifying the base code incase they do not want to share their changes.
Sun is also going one-step ahead on IBM as they have decided to open up 1,670 patents associated with Solaris to Open Source Community. IBM recently took a similar step with 500 of their patents.
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