Open Source Solaris coming - but Sun doesn't say when

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 3 Jun 2004 at 12:12

Sun's second in command Jonathan Schwartz has confirmed that the company will make its Solaris operating system open source.

Speaking at the SunNetwork conference in Shanghai, China, Schwartz commented: 'I don't want to say when that will happen... But make no mistake - we will open-source Solaris.'

Solaris is a Unix-based operating system used by Sun on its entire range UltraSparc processor based macines. But despite Sun's efforts to make Solaris popular on x86-based machines, it is failing to keep up with the explosive growth of Linux-based systems. By making Solaris open source, Sun will hope to make inroads into the kind of back-office applications, and maybe one day the desktops, of cost-conscious IT managers.

Indeed, Sun execs indicated to us at one of the company's recent quarterly product launches that there were plans to release a Solaris based version of the Java Desktop System.

At the moment, though, most of the migration away from Microsoft and Unix is going to Linux, much to Sun's chagrin - even though it was an early supporter of the open source OS.

However, before the open source community gets too carried away at the chance to hack away at the Sun OS, Schwartz issued a word of caution. He said that any open sourcing of Solaris would be along the lines of Java. Much to the frustration of some in the open source community, Sun has retained a certain control over the programming language. Ostensibly, this is to prevent too much in the way of forking which may result in multiple and incompatible versions of the operating system out in the wild, each perhaps needing different versions of applications to run on them. On the other hand, Sun will clearly want to keep control over what is still a valuable piece of intellectual property.

On this point Schwartz railed against Linux developer Red Hat for not developing its version of Linux to strictly open standards, even though it still releases its source code as required.

As for a schedule for an open source Solaris, there was little mention, although there were indications of a subscription-based pricing structure that would be offered at different levels for academic, personal and commercial uses.