Sun Releases Solaris 9 for Intel

nairnr writes "Sun has announced that it is releasing Solaris 9 for Intel. Any takers? According to Sun, it extends the 'enterprise class OS to the X86 market'. How nice of them. Non-commercial usage is available at no charge, while commercial pricing starts at US $99; attractive OEM pricing is also available. Source code for Solaris will now be available. It seems they are after Microsoft, not Linux. More Power to them."

Comments

Not exactly new...

[ImpTech]

The press release is new, but Solaris 9 x86 has been available on Sun's site for a while now. Also, only the SPARC version is free, the x86 version still costs $20 to download or $95 for the media kit. However, since they were originally planning on canning Solaris x86 altogether, this is great.

Solaris is a neat system, and I've enjoyed playing with x86 version 8, though it couldn't replace Linux on my desktop. I have seriously considered using it on my servers though.

$20 is a "shipping charge" only if...

[yerricde]

The software is free...

SCSL is not a free software license by the GNU definition, nor is it an OSI approved open source license.

As to whether the Solaris 9 operating environment for the x86 platform qualifies as gratis with a $20 shipping charge, it depends on whether Sun has licensed it for free redistribution to any third party.

Re:Free?ish

[cybaea]

Download it and copy at will, it's FREE.

"you may not make copies of Software, other than a single copy of Software for archival purposes."

From Binary Code License Agreement.

Of course they aren't going after linux

[drinkypoo]

Linux's market share is growing most aggressively. Furthermore it is Unix so there is a certain victory for all Unixes when Linux succeeds, as long as it's not taking market share away from Sun.

Woops, sorry Sun.

On the other hand the continually growing Unix presence in the world, largely fueled by Linux (I like BSD too, but it has had nothing like the success of Linux) has made it possible for Sun to once again start taking some accounts away from Microsoft (who has been gaining ground on them since NT's release.) This is an especially crucial time because until now the only 64 bit operating systems have been Unix - NT/Alpha doesn't count because of its narrow distribution. Windows on 64 bit is now going to become downright inexpensive with the release of Hammer. There is NO TIME TO LOSE in gaining some ground.