Sun Microsystems Inc has denied that its plans to make the source code of its Solaris operating system available to software developers represent a major shift as the Wall Street Journal put it on Friday. Sun first detailed its intentions to shift towards some kind of open source strategy for Solaris at the beginning of the year (CI No 3,573), most likely through some variation of its existing Community License Model used for Java, Jini and Sparc. It says that its plans are still being defined, and no timescales have been set, but promises it fully intends to get Solaris out to a wider body of developers as soon as the issues are resolved. Whatever the eventual model, Sun will still charge licensing fees for using its code in commercial products.
Sun Microsystems Inc chief scientist Bill Joy has issues with the current wave of interest in Linux. Some of them appear to be reflected in Sun’s problematic delivery of Solaris source to the developer community. The future of Linux? I don’t know, Joy told Computewire, It’s amateur and hobbyist, but at the same time he said it’s a paradoxical economy. People did this thing as amateurs and then some guy makes a billion bucks out of it! he said.
