As part of Sun Microsystem's drive to make Solaris more competitive with Linux, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun CEO and president, announced yesterday that the company will be offering an open source version of this operating system.
"We will open-source Solaris," said Schwartz emphatically, speaking at a press conference in Shanghai yesterday.
When he was pressed for a release date, he was physically restrained by his recently-appointed executive VP: software, John Fowler, whose responsibility this release will be.
"It is still TBD (to be determined)," said Schwartz. "Not how, but when."
Sun, as a provider of Linux servers among other things, has long been a supporter of the open source movement. "Java [Sun's programming language] could not exist without the participation of a number of communities," says Jonathan Fowler.
But, despite a great deal of pressure from companies such as IBM, Sun has no immediate plans to open-source Java. Rather, Schwartz stresses, it focuses on open standards.
In an article previously written by Schwartz, he clarified: "Open standards... are documents that outline agreed upon conventions to enable different programs to work together, along with some means to ensure that they actually do. With open standards, your company can pick and choose among competing vendors and not be locked in to any one of them. Open source simply means that the underlying software code is available for inspection and modification."
Schwartz also made it clear that despite a recent $2 billion deal with Microsoft, Sun will not be selling the rival operating system. "Microsoft is still the competition," he stated, clarifying that the agreement is a technology collaboration to help their products work together.
Schwartz also hinted heavily that Sun might be releasing a workstation in the near future, in line with their original stock exchange ticker code, SUNW, with the "W" standing for "workstation".
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