Sun open sources Solaris
by Nikola Strahija on June 17th, 2005 Sun has started releasing part of Solaris to open source.
Technologies including the kernel and networking software will be available for free usage under Sun's Community Development and Distribution License, said Tom Goguen, Sun's platform software VP.
The kernel includes features such as predictive self-healing and Solaris containers for isolating an application within the operating system. Also parts of the release are system libraries and commands.
Users can download source code, combine it with their own source code and make commercial products out of it. -It's a completely royalty-free open source product, Goguen said. -Our goal is to increase and really drive up the ecosystem around Solaris. It's going to be a full, build able environment. That's perhaps the key thing.’
OpenSolaris will run on Intel x86 and 64-bit AMD Opteron systems as well as on Sun's Sparc hardware. Sun hopes to profit by offering support packages to what it hopes will become a more popular operating system. Plus, if open sorucing the OS sees its use increase, Sun hopes it will boost demand for its portfolio of other products.
