Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » Sun's open source Solaris: Is the race already over?

January 26, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Sun's open source Solaris: Is the race already over?

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Sun Microsystems this week finally unveiled its long-anticipated open source program for Solaris and, showing a thing or two to IBM, released 1,670 patents to the community at large. This is far in excess of the 500 patents IBM made available earlier this month.

Once hailed as the open systems company, Sun is now seen as being a bit on the proprietary side, which is unfair to the vendor. Yes, the company has clinged to Solaris and the SPARC hardware architecture while Linux, Windows and the Intel CPU platform have become de facto industry standards, of sorts. But Sun has long been a champion of letting others use its software, such as the Network File System and Java. Unix, on which Sun has built its company, predated Linux as the so-called open systems OS.

Now, the industry at large must sit back and see if open source Solaris can give Linux a run for its money.

Yes, Solaris has lots of years of development and some snazzy features that put it technically ahead of where Linux is today. Linux, though, has had such a head start in open source that it may have already crossed the finish line before Sun's entrant in the race was even able to leap from the starting gate.

In a twist of irony, it may be too late for Sun to lead in the open technology vein that the company always championed.

Posted by Paul Krill on January 26, 2005 03:09 PM

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