Sun Microsystems Inc has finally followed Santa Cruz Operation Inc in distributing a low-end version of its Unix operating system free to students, researchers and enthusiasts. From now on, non-commercial users of Solaris on SPARC or Intel can get the operating system CD-ROM gratis from Sun’s Developer Connection. They still have to pay for packaging and shipping. In the past, the price of Solaris has been a barrier to this creative, innovative community, says Brian Troll, director of product marketing. That’s an understatement: Linus Torvalds has often said that he wrote Linux because there was no inexpensive Unix- like PC platform available in 1992. Now Linux presents a real and present danger to Solaris, hence, perhaps, this release. Not so, says Troll. There is a real Renaissance of super-creative activity going on right now, which to a large extent is fuelled by Linux, he concedes. However, he says: Sun has always been playing in this crowd. This is the environment Sun sprang from. Well, maybe. It’s true that the most serious threat to Solaris doesn’t come from the Linux community but from Microsoft’s Windows NT. Indeed, Troll claims Linux developers as allies, if not crack troops in the battle for hearts and minds. A lot of this creative interesting work is not happening on the Windows environment. We’re trying to take advantage of and encourage that, he says. รก
