Sun Solaris goes open source

Sun Microsystems, a niche competitor to Microsoft in software applications for desktop computers and servers, as well as the developer of Java, has announced that the latest version of its Solaris operating system will be released as open source.

The code is due in the second quarter and will be releasewd under the Common Development and Distribution License. The project is part of Sun’s new Open Solaris movement.

However, reservations have been made. As reported in Analysts: Sun’s Open Solaris Plans Face Problems, thereare concerns that proprietary rights could be developed from use of the code. On top of that, until the results of the legal claim by the SCO Group that they effectively own Unix, it remains difficult to see how Sun could declare something as open source if they do not actually have distribution rights over the software.