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December 1994
Apple Computer sues San Francisco Canyon Company for using Apple Computer's QuickTime code to speed up Microsoft's Video for Windows product.

The ad served by osdn for this article was this sun grid. Actually the ads appears all over slashdot and other sites now.

Anyways, here's the official sun page for the grid and a datasheet in pdf.

The ad served by osdn for this article was this sun grid. Actually the ads appears all over slashdot and other sites now.

Anyways, here's the official sun page for the grid and a datasheet in pdf.

Sun's Overview

Schwartz says computing will become a commodity like electricity.

Hmm.. their OS is free.. You can get their Java Enterprise System for $99 per employee per year, and it may still be free if you have less than 100 employees. Their opteron servers give you a lot of bang for the buck and they have ultrasparc based servers for under 1k. I think you need to have a look at Sun's Online Store and check out their pricing again.

I call bullshit. E450 supports a maximum of 4G ram.

But don't take my word for it.

According to the Solaris 10 system requirements, all you need is some kind of UltraSparc (64-bit Sparc chip). So, an Ultra 1, or even Ultra 5 or 10 would be an inexpensive way to try out Solaris 10. (Ultra 1 and 2's are S-Bus based, Ultra 5 & 10's are PCI-based, and a bit faster).

You can check the Solaris 10 release notes:

"...the Solaris 10 software introduces support for the 64-bit computing capabilities of the AMD Opteron processor"

That was probably Hotjava ... It has been EOL'd now...
http://java.sun.com/products/archive/hotjava/index .html

As a side note, the current version of the Java FAQ lists the current version of HotJava as 1.1beta1...
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/faq.html#A6

That was probably Hotjava ... It has been EOL'd now...
http://java.sun.com/products/archive/hotjava/index .html

As a side note, the current version of the Java FAQ lists the current version of HotJava as 1.1beta1...
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/faq.html#A6

I consider myself lucky that I bought a used Ultra 2 with so much RAM in it; hopefully I'll be able to put it to good use.

Did you really not see that it has 3 different segments?

1) Certified by Sun
2) Certified by 3rd party vendors
3) Reported by outsiders

YOU pick the level of certainty that you need.

Link to Sun's description of the 3 types of entries in the Solaris X86 HCL:

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/tierHelp.html

It looks like the software uses screenshots to take snapsots of windows and then changes the background picture of your desktop to "Animate" the movment.

This is a true 3D desktop currently being worked on by SUN. I can not wait to play with it (NOTE: runs onlu on linux)...

Project home w/ pics and vids
Developer site w/ some doenloads

As far as I can remember when trying it, it isn't even a real windowing system. It just takes a picture of the application and creates a rectangular surface with the picture on it. When they're sent to the background, you can't actually interact with the windows like you can do with Sun's great looking "Project Looking glass": Project looking glass

Looking Glass

Tried it last night, actually, while I was playing with my desktop.

It's a fun theory tool and shows you exactly what SUN was going for in Project Looking Glass. However, when it comes down to it, it has no current practical application. Windows are stored in the sphere, not used in it, which means that everytime you want to recover an open window, you need to go into sphere mode, look arounnd for the window, find it, and then bring it back to flat mode. It adds a whole extra step to the process, and definitely a lot more time.

I think the best improvement may be interaction with windows inside the sphere, but as the website proclaims, this project is still in Beta.

Best,
- Brandon

E450 gets a mention here:

SPARC: Older Firmware Might Need Boot Flash PROM Update

about a third of the way down the page.

Interesting you use an article from 2003 to talk about Suns earnings. How about something a little more current

..."Revenues for the second quarter were $2.843 billion, a decrease of 1.6 percent as compared with $2.888 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2004."
sure its a slight decrease but 2.8 billion in sales for a 3month period aint exactly as you say...."not making money"
Earnings

Cheers,
]-[ellbilly

They have released sol10 with really nice features, cool.
They set it not hardcore-GPL, but at least Sun-defined opensource. Alright.
But what the hell is this about giving the 1600 patents only for CDDL projects?

They show supporting Linux, support the opensource-community, but they cannot/dont't want to move? Could someone explain pls?

Wonder what the exact relationship of Solaris with Open Solaris going to be? Probably, it will be something like OpenOffice and StarOffice.

And if you really, seriously want to do it, for the love of God check the hardware compatibility list and save the rest of us a million questions about why Solaris won't work on your PC. Simple - if the hardware's not on the list, Solaris won't work with it! Really! Sun's not lying in their document.

But the deletion of 'exhibit A' is explained in the detailed rationale thus:

This section is based on Sections 3.3 and 3.5 of the MPL, though the form by which a Contributor identifies Modifications is no longer specified. References to Exhibit A were also removed. This was done because the requirements of the MPL seemed overly specific and burdensome; even the Mozilla community doesn't seem to consistently adhere to this practice. Since failure to follow requirements of the license can have significant legal repercussions, it seemed best to be pragmatic and leave the details of how notice is provided to the community and its developers. We note that our requirement is similar to that of other open source licenses (e.g., CPL, OSL).

In other words, the change is not about preventing code mingling or license changing. Multiple-licensing is actually left to the governance of the open source project in question, just like it actually is with the MPL. Exhibit A doesn't create a need for the original developer to multiple-license nor a right for downstream developers to vary the license the original developer uses. Even if it had been left intact, it would not have placed a duty on Sun to offer multiple licenses (which they still could in a separate contributor agreement), nor would it have given you or anyone else the right to vary the license after the fact.

Thus I'd assert that your original claim ( "The mozilla license has a paragraph that says: you can convert this license to the GPL and mix it with GPL software legally.") is a misreading and that Sun hasn't done the damage you assert (at least not here).

> If Sun didn't plan to do anything in the face of Linux,
> they would not have promoted their grant as one to all
> Open Source developers.

Personally, while I find the press release to leave plenty of questions unanswered and to be phrased for reading outside the developer community, I didn't come to the same conclusion you did when I read it and can't see why you do. It's just clueless PR-speak, not grand conspiracy by an evil genius.

On the subject of OpenOffice.org, what has copyright aggregation to do with patents? It's pretty common practice (Apache demands it for example) and is about the governance of the community, not the defence of patent suits. I agree that the Microsoft settlement left a bad taste but I don't think it was part of grand conspiracy, just a deep desire to end a crippling lawsuit. If it's Microsoft contracts and money that influence your judgement of the F/OSS motives of a company then surely this site should have you looking at some other gift-horses too?

> new buddies MS

Hardly buddies - Scott McNealy said:

Sun and Microsoft shaking hands is a little like two boxers tapping gloves just before they beat the living daylights out of each other.

> I'm just trying to figure out how they are going to
> make anything of Open Solaris in the face of Linux

How about if actually the plan with OpenSolaris doesn't actually involve doing anything "in the face of Linux"? Sun actually talks about the existing Solaris customer base and community in connection with OpenSolaris - all the anti-Linux spin comes from Linux advocates and the ever-balanced trade press.

Maybe there's a case for taking the OpenSolaris FAQ in good faith rather than assuming the worst (even if that's more PC on SlashDot)?

Here is the original press release. However, it doesn't seem it implicate what you are saying. I think they are releasing it to anyone who uses the CDDL (at least according the the PR). I'd also be interested in their legal definition of "OpenSolaris developer process". My guess is, either the "OpenSolaris developer process" will end up being so tightly defined that no one can release a version of Solaris without Sun's permission, or it'll be so open ended such that there's a hole that I can end up implementing the patents in any CDDL licensed project. However, without the legal text, I can't be sure. Maybe they are more clever then I think and came up with a definition that can find a middle ground between those two.

I've got no problems with them licensing the patents such that only CDDL projects can use them. While it will create the great divide in terms of mixing and matching source code, it's their right. However, if what they are doing is saying, you can only implement them in such a way that we'll end up with control over you via patent law instead of copyright law, that seems completely underhanded. It also seems to be completely counter to the image they are attempting to spin. I never thought of Sun as that underhanded (they are a coporation, and generally have interests that are somewhat contradictory to mine, but never thought of them as doing anything that qualifies as "evil genious"). Oh well.

Kirby

Somewhat similarly, Sun honcho Jonathon Schwartz posts these comments about IBM's patent assignments to the OSS movement in his blog:

ps. You've got to love IBM's ability to play the community. Going through some of the patents they "donated" to the open source community a few weeks back, it looks as if they all, curiously, seem to be due for payment - and thus potential expiration - this year. Were they destined for the bit bucket (turns out IBM is among the largest patent expirers in the world, along with its largest issuer).

And some of the patents have nothing to do with open source software - my favorite in the heap is this one.

You may well be right about OO being a dog to use, I've never tried it so I can't say. But the OO file format appears to have traction with the EU at least.

Which must surely be of concern to MS and even if OO is as bad as you say, if the OO file format gains parity with .doc then it can be adopted by any number of competing applications, Wordperfect, AppleWorks, ThinkFree etc.

New entrants will be able to compete with established players hopefully bringing us new ideas and ever better office suites.

> The mozilla license has a paragraph that says: you can convert
> this license to the GPL and mix it with GPL software legally.
> Sun deleted that paragraph

I checked the red-line diff between the CDDL and MPL and I can't see any such paragraph. Please explain.

It seems like dtrace is one area where solaris has a sizeable lead over similar technologies in linux like dprobes/ltt...or at least this redhat engineer seems to think so

You need to ask yourself one thing before starting to learn to program: Do you want to program games, or just make games? The two are different.

A lot of gamers wind up deciding "hey, I want to program video games!" at some point, without realizing that what they really want to do is make games. If you don't know anything about programming, then you should start by learning the basics of programming and forget making video games for a while. You need to understand the basics first, before you can start doing anything complicated.

If you really do decide to make video games, I'd highly suggest making a couple of really simple games first. Something like hangman, where you just take a list of words and make the user enter letters until they "guess" it. This will teach you the basics of keyboard input and graphical display without having to worry too much about speed or game mechanics.

I'd suggest starting with Java too - maybe grab Eclipse as your IDE, or just use a simple text editor. This solves the "cross-platform" part, and as long as you understand that you won't be creating Quake in it, you shouldn't be too disappointed. (You could, of course, also try using Mozilla.) It's similar enough to C and C++ that you'll should be able to pick up those if later you wind up making a game in C.

But based on your post, I'd suggest learning more about how to program in general first. Take some classes, if you can. Learn the basics. Learn about basic data structures. This will give you the ground-work you need to create a game, as well as help you determine if programming is really for you.

I think you might be misunderstanding what JNI is. Each Java runtime provides its own implementation to the native underlying system libraries. Java does not communicate through JNI for I/O of any kind.

JNI itself is a generic abstraction layer to the underlying operating system. It provides a mechanism whereby dynamic libraries not directly supported by the runtime engine can still be accessed by a Java application.

Threading, sockets and GUI are implemented via the native system libraries. AWT used to be very slow (as opposed to just being merely slow today) due to its own multi-layed abstraction. But at no time was JNI the conduit for these systems.

Further reading: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/native1.1/ concepts/index.html

Eric Schrock, a developer for Sun, posits his opinions on why the GPL would not be a good fit for Sun.

Well, this is basically rehashing some well-known arguments that are often brought up in a GPL vs. BSD debate or Free Software vs. Open Source software.

In a nutshell, the GPL gives you some freedoms but only if you accept its rather strict conditions. GPL advocates claim that it is a good thing, while GPL opponents claim that it is a bad thing. The basic idea that differentiates the GPL from other licenses is that a piece of code licensed under the GPL should not be used to give an advantage to non-free software. This is why the GPLed code cannot be linked together with code that is not GPL-compatible. This is also why RMS encourages developers to release their library code under the GPL instead of LGPL, although many developers who are more "open" still release code under the LGPL (e.g., GLib and GTK+, etc.)

The analogy with Oracle having to release their whole code under the GPL is also frequently (ab)used. Nobody is forcing Oracle (or anybody else) to incorporate some pieces of GPLed code into their software. They can easily rewrite something similar on their own, if they need it. If the author of the interesting function wants to promote Free Software and does not want to give an advantage to proprietary software, then his/her wishes should be respected. This is what the GPL does.

If you take the point of view of Oracle and you want to add some functions to your proprietary code, then GPLed software is not better than other proprietary software because you cannot just take it and use it without conditions. But if you take the GPL zealot's point of view, then it makes sense that the GPLed gift comes with some strings attached.

It is just a matter of choice. The arguments from Eric Schrock could interesting if the only option for Sun had been to release the code under the GPL or the CDDL but not both. But there is also the option to dual-license and allow those who get the code to continue their development under the GPL, CDDL, or both. Then anybody, including Oracle as in his example, would have been able to pick the best combination for them. But since Sun did not give any dual-licensing permissions for their code, they are effectively preventing a larger number of free software developers from using their code. It makes sense for them, but some of the arguments brought up in the press release and other public statements are rather misleading.

Also from the FAQ:

"What about dual licensing? Can I license my code under the CDDL as well as another license?

Yes, if you are the copyright owner for the code you can choose to license under multiple licenses, including the CDDL."

Eric Schrock, a developer for Sun, posits his opinions on why the GPL would not be a good fit for Sun.

"Say I post an example of a function foo() to my website. Oracle goes and uses that function in their software. They make no changes to it whatsover, and are willing to distribute that function in source code form with their product. If it was GPL, they would have to now release all of Oracle under the GPL, even though my code has not been altered. The consumer's rights are preserved - they still have the same rights to my code as before it was put into Oracle. I just don't see why they have a right to code that's not mine."

I think his argument holds weight.

The reality is that almost no other commercial software vendor will provide you with updates if you aren't current on maintenance, let alone pirated the software in the first place.

Ehh, what? Seems like a CLEAR MANDATE to me!

There is one thing that I forgot to mention in my previous comment: the CDDL is derived from the Mozilla Public Licence (MPL) 1.1 but at the end of the Detailed description of changes from the MPL, you find this:

Deleted Section 13 of the MPL because it was confusing and unnecessary.

Section 13 of the MPL, titled "Multiple Licensed Code", allows the code to be licensed under the MPL or an alternative license described in Exhibit A (also deleted from the CDDL). For Mozilla, section 13 allows any derived code to be licensed under the MPL or GPL. Sun has removed this section from the CDDL. You can see it at the end of the Redline diffs between MPL1.1 and CDDL (PDF file).

So any code released under the CDDL is definitely incompatible with the GPL. There is also no way to fix that (except if Sun re-released the code under a better license) because Sun has also removed the statements that allowed the code to be used under a "future version of this License" from section 3.1 and section 6 (now 4 in the CDDL).

There is one thing that I forgot to mention in my previous comment: the CDDL is derived from the Mozilla Public Licence (MPL) 1.1 but at the end of the Detailed description of changes from the MPL, you find this:

Deleted Section 13 of the MPL because it was confusing and unnecessary.

Section 13 of the MPL, titled "Multiple Licensed Code", allows the code to be licensed under the MPL or an alternative license described in Exhibit A (also deleted from the CDDL). For Mozilla, section 13 allows any derived code to be licensed under the MPL or GPL. Sun has removed this section from the CDDL. You can see it at the end of the Redline diffs between MPL1.1 and CDDL (PDF file).

So any code released under the CDDL is definitely incompatible with the GPL. There is also no way to fix that (except if Sun re-released the code under a better license) because Sun has also removed the statements that allowed the code to be used under a "future version of this License" from section 3.1 and section 6 (now 4 in the CDDL).

Depends, though. Does the CDDL allow for re-licensing?

Have a look at the CDDL. In section 3.1, it says:

"Any Covered Software that You distribute or otherwise make available in Executable form must also be made available in Source Code form and that Source Code form must be distributed only under the terms of this License. [...]"

In addition, section 3.4 adds:

"You may not offer or impose any terms on any Covered Software in Source Code form that alters or restricts the applicable version of this License or the recipients' rights hereunder.[...]

In other words, this license is incompatible with the GPL (probably on purpose). As a result, you cannot use any CDDL-licensed code in a GPL-licensed program and you cannot use any GPLed code in a CDDLed program. Both licenses are "viral" and they are mutually incompatible.

So you cannot use any CDDLed code in Linux.

A quick google search shows that CDDL is available here.

Wow. Talk about paranoia. It's anti-Linux? No, it's unrelated to Linux. Open source development is not a zero-sum game; both can grow and develop independently from one another (if the existence of KDE and GNOME is good because "it's all about choice," then so too is the existence of multiple open source operating systems). OpenSolaris is about Solaris, not about Linux. It's controlled by a corporation? Not really. Only the first tidbits about "control" have been released, and community (read: non-Sun) participation is an integral part of that. As for "anti-capitlists [sic] and anarchists" I can only assume you're being sarcastic. I hacked Linux for years and never had any interest in chaos. Neither do I see much evidence that Sun engineers think Linux developers' goal is the creation of chaos. We pretty much think their goal is the creation of Linux, which is fine.

Again, the goal is not to get anyone to stop developing Linux. Even if that were the goal, there's no way to accomplish it; developers will work on the projects that interest them most. If Linux developers want to work on OpenSolaris, they're welcome to do so. If not, that's fine too. The goal is to work with and grow the existing Solaris community and provide additional value to customers and developers. Do you see "Linux" anywhere in that statement of goals?

Your paranoia is amusing but not constructive. Sun is not Microsoft and the goal is not to crush out and destroy Linux, a product that Sun also sells.

Ignoring for a moment the question of whether it's buggy, who gives a damn about Solaris 8? That was the 90s, man. OpenSolaris is based on Solaris 10, the release of which is imminent. It's a boatload of new technology plus two full releases' worth of bug fixes removed from Solaris 8. If you had a bad experience, we're sorry, but please don't continue feeding people misinformation based on a badly outdated release. Should I talk about my experience with Yggdrasil Plug and Play Linux (based on kernel 0.99!) in 1993 and pretend my difficulties then are reasons to avoid Debian GNU/Linux 3.0?

Next, pedantry.

Yes, sed and awk have bugs filed against them. Probably everything except maybe /usr/bin/true does. Since you didn't say what kind of bugs, it's hard to assess the legitimacy of your complaint. If you'd care to elaborate, there's a chance your problem can be fixed. Otherwise everyone just assumes you're a crank.

Most of the "bugs" in Solaris userland that draw a lot of complaints from GNU users are not bugs at all but rather artifacts of painstaking maintenance of compatibility with long-extant standards. The GNU tools you're familiar with follow different (or their own) standards, because backwards-compatibility is not a GNU priority. It's a constraint imposed on Solaris development by our customers, who seem pleased with the results. You can in some cases make the GNU tools behave similarly if you wish. Solaris also has several different versions of these tools, each of which matches different incompatible standards. You might just be using the wrong one.

Finally, Linux doesn't have awk, sed, or tar. It's a kernel. I've assumed here that you mean the GNU tools, though of course each distro ships its own version and combination of specific tools, but it's certainly possible to build a system with a Linux kernel and non-GNU userland. In fact, soon it will be possible, at least in theory, to make a system with a Linux kernel and a mostly-Solaris userland, if you really want to.

Ok, on to your other concerns.

Most x86 hardware doesn't suffer from the transient error bug that the non-ECC cache of the ultrasparcII processor.

What does this have to do with Solaris? If you think x86 systems are more reliable, you can run Solaris on those instead.

Linux works on parking meters.

So does Windows CE. Should we all start using that? Standard Linux won't run on less than about 4MB of memory, even if you're talking about Linux 2.0. Newer means bigger. Solaris as shipped today by Sun also requires more resources than would normally be found in a small embedded system. It's a safe bet that, like Linux, the SunOS kernel could be reduced sufficiently for such an application. It's just software and work. The fact that a highly modified version of Linux can run a parking meter is a curiosity and a testament to the effort of the hackers who did it, not evidence of inherent software superiority.

Solaris doesn't work out of the box with an A1000.

I can only assume this is yet another reference to some past bad experience you've had. Since you're not telling us what it is, it's impossible (a) to know if it's still a problem, and (b) to fix it if so. Please, be specific if you want to complain. Hint: referencing bug IDs is a good idea.

Most quality nics work out of the box with linux.

Which nics would you like to use on Solaris? In the 10/100 space there's iprb (Intel), elxl (3Com 3c9xx), dnet (Tulip/21xx0), and about a half dozen others. In the Gb/10Gb space there's e1000g (Intel), bge (Broadcom), sk98sol (SysKonnect), and xge (S2IO). See the reference manual for drivers if you want to participate in an informed discussion. The examples I gave don't include the various vendor-supplied drivers or any of the Sun-specific d

Shouldn't they just deploy the Sun Java Desktop(TM)?

Ever tried to GDB the kernel? D-Trace is very cool -- its an interface to add "probes" to watch what happens in the kernel. This is most useful for people writing drivers (there's a case study that sort of demonstrates the coolness of it in this context) and for people working on performance problems.

Having developed a bunch of tools close to the kernel, I understand right away what benefit there is in being able to do this stuff in kernel-space.

It's not actually useful to compare it to GDB because it's a completely different world. The bottom line is that no, none of the other OSs you mentioned have anything quite like this. Your third question is quite relevant though -- it's not easy to integrate 86,000 lines of code bastardized from another operating system into another kernel =).

-Ant Slayer-

There is no reason why users, administrators or distributers should define the required capabilties, application programmers can do that just fine! In fact its what they do when they type OS_set_time_of_day() and OS_how_about_fetching_me_file(filename). (And lets not forget the ever populair OS_SSL_connect_to_guy_with_certificate(guywithcert .com,certificate) )

The trick is ensuring the user and administrator know what is going on. Something the feodora people currently cant really do as messing with capabilties is, if you allow me to summarise your post, black magic. No user is ever going to check what permissions an application got using a commandline tool and some technical information on what a specific capabilities means. I recall attempts to fix this by promting users if they would like to give an application permission to do stuff once the application requested something from a SElinux kernel

Once the OS allows for fine grained access control, and application programmers define the grains, solving this isn`t a structural problem but a userinterface problem. I like the java web start aproach (similair to applets). Basicly you distribute software along with a list of required capabilities/permissions. Once someone installs software this (short) list is shown in very plain english along with the identity of the person/organisation that signed the software. The users or administrator can then make an informed decision, do I trust person/organisation X with capability Y. In java webstart the legwork of ensuring that as a result of this decision only X can do Y or nothing at all then goes to the webstart GUI and the java sandbox.

Ofcourse this can be optimized, there is no need to ask if a person trusts the operating system coders with his or her data combined with network access and everything else, the user does this by running the operating system. Also, once one application signed by a person gets permission to do something its hard to think of reasons why other code signed by the same person cant get the same access. And when in a coorporate environment a software source has been declared trusted for a purpose this decision applies to all machines that can be used for this purpose, it would be nice if this decision could be configured into these systems somewhat efficiently.

Anyway educating users about what application permissions are (read and write personal files and connect to somguy.com) should be easier then explaining what file extentions are not okay for email attachments today *and* what vendors have a reputation of selling code filled with the most stupid buffer overflow bugs *and* explaining what zombie machines, spyware and open relays are.

I think you'll find that the java.nio classes are actually non-blocking IO, not native IO.

The license isn't very long, you can find it here.

The CDDL is based off of the Mozilla license.

There's a FAQ on the new OpenSolaris site about licensing here:
http://www.opensolaris.org/faq/licensing_faq.html

Along with a summary of the changes from the Mozilla license:
http://www.sun.com/cddl/CDDL_why_summary.html

And a redlined diff of what exactly has changed between the MPL and the CDDL (in a pdf file):
http://www.sun.com/cddl/CDDL_MPL_redline.pdf

The CDDL is based off of the Mozilla license.

There's a FAQ on the new OpenSolaris site about licensing here:
http://www.opensolaris.org/faq/licensing_faq.html

Along with a summary of the changes from the Mozilla license:
http://www.sun.com/cddl/CDDL_why_summary.html

And a redlined diff of what exactly has changed between the MPL and the CDDL (in a pdf file):
http://www.sun.com/cddl/CDDL_MPL_redline.pdf

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - January 25, 2005 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. [NASDAQ: SUNW] today announced the largest single release of patent innovations into the open source community by any organization to date, marking a significant shift in the way Sun positions its intellectual property portfolio. By giving open source developers free access to Sun OpenSolaris related patents under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), the company is fostering open innovation and establishing a leadership role in the framework of a patent commons that will be recognized across the globe.

"As the largest business contributor to the open source community, Sun has always been an ardent believer in open standards and the open source process going back to the inception of this company," said Scott McNealy, Chairman and CEO, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "The release of more than 1,600 patents associated with the Solaris OS far eclipses any other vendor's contribution. Today represents a huge milestone for Sun, for the community, for developers and for customers."

Sun's goal in offering access to these patents is to help facilitate innovation and help users get new open source products and technologies to market faster without having to obtain patent licenses from Sun. The new approach underscores Sun's belief that license agreements for software are not as significant as the company who stands behind its products. Sun is also addressing current issues and increased scrutiny in U.S. and international patent law which has increasingly granted overly broad patents on abstract processes.

In removing the emphasis on intellectual-property rights as an inhibitor to innovation, Sun is leveling the playing field in key emerging markets and helping to revive an innovation system that is straining under a record number of patent filings globally. More markets are looking for ways to monetize their knowledge economy and patents are becoming the profit center. With growing attention on locking up intellectual property in countries like China - which has seen a five-fold increase in the number of patent filings from 1991 to 2001 - Sun is ensuring that software will be available to open source developers and that progress continues unabated.

"By gaining access to these Solaris OS patents, participants in the open-source community now have a tremendous opportunity to build unique and innovative technologies for a wide range of markets," said Stacey Quandt, Senior Business Analyst, Open Source Practice Leader, Robert Frances Group. "An IP contribution of this magnitude has the potential to deliver exceptional value to developers and strengthens the overall open source community."

Addressing the patent system that is under siege, Sun's pledge of open access reduces the quagmire for developers who previously had to walk through a minefield to avoid infringement and enables them to confidently produce derivative works without fear of reprisal or patent claims.

Radically reducing risks associated with using and developing open source software, Sun is firmly standing behind our products and the worldwide development community. Armed with access to Solaris OS platform intellectual property, OpenSolaris developers and customers alike no longer need patent protection or indemnity from Sun's and other participants in the OpenSolaris community for use of Solaris-based technologies under the CDDL and OpenSolaris community process.

By releasing the OpenSolaris OS platform under the CDDL, the open source community will immediately gain access to 1,600 active Sun patents for all aspects of operating system technologies that encompass features ranging from kernel tech

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - January 25, 2005 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. [NASDAQ: SUNW] today announced the largest single release of patent innovations into the open source community by any organization to date, marking a significant shift in the way Sun positions its intellectual property portfolio. By giving open source developers free access to Sun OpenSolaris related patents under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), the company is fostering open innovation and establishing a leadership role in the framework of a patent commons that will be recognized across the globe.

"As the largest business contributor to the open source community, Sun has always been an ardent believer in open standards and the open source process going back to the inception of this company," said Scott McNealy, Chairman and CEO, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "The release of more than 1,600 patents associated with the Solaris OS far eclipses any other vendor's contribution. Today represents a huge milestone for Sun, for the community, for developers and for customers."

Sun's goal in offering access to these patents is to help facilitate innovation and help users get new open source products and technologies to market faster without having to obtain patent licenses from Sun. The new approach underscores Sun's belief that license agreements for software are not as significant as the company who stands behind its products. Sun is also addressing current issues and increased scrutiny in U.S. and international patent law which has increasingly granted overly broad patents on abstract processes.

In removing the emphasis on intellectual-property rights as an inhibitor to innovation, Sun is leveling the playing field in key emerging markets and helping to revive an innovation system that is straining under a record number of patent filings globally. More markets are looking for ways to monetize their knowledge economy and patents are becoming the profit center. With growing attention on locking up intellectual property in countries like China - which has seen a five-fold increase in the number of patent filings from 1991 to 2001 - Sun is ensuring that software will be available to open source developers and that progress continues unabated.

"By gaining access to these Solaris OS patents, participants in the open-source community now have a tremendous opportunity to build unique and innovative technologies for a wide range of markets," said Stacey Quandt, Senior Business Analyst, Open Source Practice Leader, Robert Frances Group. "An IP contribution of this magnitude has the potential to deliver exceptional value to developers and strengthens the overall open source community."

Addressing the patent system that is under siege, Sun's pledge of open access reduces the quagmire for developers who previously had to walk through a minefield to avoid infringement and enables them to confidently produce derivative works without fear of reprisal or patent claims.

Radically reducing risks associated with using and developing open source software, Sun is firmly standing behind our products and the worldwide development community. Armed with access to Solaris OS platform intellectual property, OpenSolaris developers and customers alike no longer need patent protection or indemnity from Sun's and other participants in the OpenSolaris community for use of Solaris-based technologies under the CDDL and OpenSolaris community process.

By releasing the OpenSolaris OS platform under the CDDL, the open source community will immediately gain access to 1,600 active Sun patents for all aspects of operating system technologies that encompass features ranging from kernel tech