Solaris Opening Up !

Sometime back MS created waves by sharing Win CE source code , although with a limited capability for the community to develop or contribute.

But it was really surprising to see Sun open up its latest version of Solaris - Solaris 10 to the Open Source Community.

OpenSolaris is based on the CDDL License which is a OSI approved License which is more open that what MS did. Also by granting the use of around 1600 patents somehow Sun is trying to pull developers from the Linux community.

Although on the face of it , it looks as if Sun is trying to embrace the community, there is still some missing link. The patents can be used only if the derivative is also CDDL licensed( according to the intial news, I haven't seen the license text) and not any OSI license as IBM had done sometime back with around 500 licenses.

In broader terms this means that they want to restrict Linux from using these patents. Also it offers a nice reason for developers to move from GNU(read Linux) to CDDL(read OpenSolaris) since they are offering indemnification from infringement.

Let us see if Sun can pull this one trick on Linux.