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Solaris Goes Open Source

Source: Solaris Goes Open Source

When Solaris 10 is released late this year, Sun Microsystems Inc. will be culminating years of development work on the operating system, as well as launching a major open-source initiative to go with it.

The Santa Clara, Calif., company is on track to deliver on a new strategy, conceived some six years ago, of developing and selling Solaris but also offering the code to the open-source community, Sun executives told eWEEK in interviews last week.

Sun's goal is to use the open-sourcing of Solaris to drive a turnaround of the company's software business, which has lost mind share, if not market share, in the Linux and Windows crossfire. Sun wants to foster a better internal software development process, work more closely with the community and then be able to drive innovation outside its own walls, increasing Solaris' penetration and pushing it into new markets, executives said.

But Sun still has to clear a few hurdles before opening Solaris by year's end. The company has to ensure that it has the legal permissions necessary to make each line of code available, including the Unix kernel on which it's based. This onerous process could ultimately delay the release of the open-source program when Solaris 10 is ready to ship commercially, which is scheduled for December, officials said.

This is going to be interesting, looks like a survival strategy for SUN.