Sun Micorsystems finally deliver the code

Created by Stuart Yeates (University of Oxford) on June 14, 2005

After a very long incubation, Sun Microsystems have finally released Solaris as Open Source. You can even download it.

Why has it taken so long? Mainly because so many contractors, employees and third parties have worked on the code over thelast 30 years, and Sun had to go through every line line of code asking where it came from and who owns the IPR on it. Even withthe current release there are some "encumbered binaries" they can't release the source code to.

What will this buy Sun? Well, people with a vested interest inselling their hardware (mainly hardware manufacturers), software(mainly service oriented organisations) or ideas (mainly academics) will find it significantly easier to port their software to Solaris. There will almost certainly be community contributions towards making Solaris more POSIX compliant, which will enable more software to run in more places more reliably.

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		Sun Micorsystems finally deliver the code Created by Stuart Yeates (University of Oxford) on June 14, 2005 After a very long incubation, Sun Microsystems have finally released Solaris as Open Source. You can even download it. Why has it taken so long? Mainly because so many contractors, employees and third parties have worked on the code over thelast 30 years, and Sun had to go through every line line of code asking where it came from and who owns the IPR on it. Even withthe current release there are some "encumbered binaries" they can't release the source code to. What will this buy Sun? Well, people with a vested interest inselling their hardware (mainly hardware manufacturers), software(mainly service oriented organisations) or ideas (mainly academics) will find it significantly easier to port their software to Solaris. There will almost certainly be community contributions towards making Solaris more POSIX compliant, which will enable more software to run in more places more reliably. Blog (WebLog) \| Open Source \| Raves Stuart's blog Login or register to post comments 2829 reads
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