Sun Microsystems Inc is working on a strategy that will enable it to move its Solaris Unix to the open source development model without stepping on the toes of the Linux community and being branded the evil empire. It says that its dilemma is that Linux is good for Solaris, but that Linux is not a corporate community and our intentions must not be misunderstood. One route would be to turn over Solaris intellectual property and source for development by the open source community but retain all branding, packaging and testing considerations, as with its Java community source model. However, Solaris isn’t as young as Java and Sun is not sure what the effect might be on its large code set and hefty installed base. Other major considerations include the paper chase of royalty, IP and branding rights in the agreements it has made since buying out its Unix license from Novell Inc in 1994 for $82.5m. It is looking for anything that could prevent it taking Solaris open source, such as rights that may belong to other companies. Sun, which is already making Solaris APIs compatible with Linux, says it is also still working out how it will market the initiative and what image it wants to present. It expects to move quickly but until there’s a method we can’t say bombs away, it says.
