Sun Gets Open Source License, Frees Solaris

In a bid to create the same sort of network effects that Linux enjoys, Sun gets a stamp of approval for their open software license.

They are hoping to generate support among developers for their brand of UNIX, and will be shipping their Free Solaris for X86 next week. I'm not really sure what they hope to accomplish, but this effort should be better received than Microsoft's paltry free source efforts among software developers, most of whom have strong feelings about UNIX.

This should put Solaris on equal footing with Linux. It may prove easy to port applications from Linux to Solaris, and opening up the internals may lead to better performing applications on mission critical tasks. From an engineering perspective, it's an interesting move, but it's not an elegant hack.

From the marketing perspective, maybe I'm just not smart enough to see it yet, but I'm not really excited about it either. Maybe I need to read Jonathan Schwart's blog or sit in on a sales call with a Sun sales team to get the gist of this effort. Right now, I don't see it.