Sun to give away Solaris Source Code

People say Linux is a threat to Microsoft’s Windows Operating System. However, it seems to be hitting other companies harder. The latest victim to the popularity of Linux Operating System is Microsoft’s old foe Sun Microsystems. Their very capable offering in Solaris has taken a beating from the free and openly available Linux and as a result, the company had to release the latest version of Solaris for free!

The saga does not end there. Sun has now decided to give away the source code of the operating system to Open Source Community for open development. The software as a result would now become free and anyone would be able to customize it as per his requirement. People would be free to contribute their code and take snippets out of existing code for their projects.

Sun has to take such a drastic step after it suffered considerable damage in their server software market after Linux emerged as a cheaper and more flexible alternative. Computer manufacturers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard sell cheaper servers loaded with Linux Distributions instead of relying on Sun’s Solaris platform.

Sun would hope that this move would generate excitement and encourage developers to turn back to Solaris, which would help them sell more hardware, and support based services. However, critics and market watchers consider that the move from Sun came a bit too late. Linux has become a pet for the Open Source Community and there is little chance many would want to move to Solaris.

Sun would hope that they are wrong, as it would drastically affect them and their business.