Sun Sees Shining Future in Open Source

SAN FRANCISCO—Jonathan Schwartz, Suns chief operating officer and president, on Tuesday presented a spirited defense of his companys decision to use the Common Development and Distribution License for its OpenSolaris project rather than the GNU GPL, under which the Linux operating system is licensed.

Giving the opening keynote address at the second annual OSBC (Open Source Business Conference) here, Schwartz also touted the companys recent controversial Solaris patent grant, saying that making those 1,600 patents available would help lower the barrier to entry for software development and would benefit open source.

In defense of the CDDL, Schwartz said that “free software does not imply you no longer believe in intellectual property, it means you no longer believe in charging for your IP.”

“These are two hugely different concepts,” Schwartz said. “I do not believe in IP colonialism. We wanted to deliver the means of production without restrictions; thats why we did not use the GPL license.”

/zimages/3/28571.gifRead morehereabout Suns Solaris patent grant.

Schwartz told the several hundred attendees that they should expect to see more free and open-source software coming out of Sun.

He also moved to address financial analysts concerns about such a move, as he said Sun expected those moves to increase its revenues and profits.

Analysts like Stacey Quandt at research company Robert Frances Group Inc., of Westport, Conn., have questioned the rationale for opening up products like Suns Java Enterprise System, saying “they are making money from it, so there is no reason at present to open-source it or any of the other software up the stack.”

Schwartz responded to that statement at the time, telling eWeek that “that totally misses the fundamental shift in the software industry—its like saying Google shouldnt be free or they wont be able to make money.

“In fact, the more people taking advantage of Googles free service, the more attractive their business model. Same with us—the more users there are, the more opportunity there is for service contracts, systems sales, JES licenses, storage and hooking into our grid,” Schwartz said. “For us, open source is capitalism and a business opportunity at its very best.”

/zimages/3/28571.gifTo read more about Suns decision to use the CDDL for its Open Solaris project,click here.

In his keynote, Schwartz looked to the future, saying that Sun believed the industry should head towards fair and just property rights and more free and open-source software.

A well-educated marketplace is also needed and customers need to read the licenses that govern software, as they create obligations, Schwartz said. But, he said, the one undisputed fact is that the role of innovation will continue, as a product is not popular because it is free, but because it is better.

“If you are truly going to stand behind open-source software, you should do so with not only your rhetoric, but also with your products,” he told attendees.

“Our slogan that the network is the computer would be more appropriate if we said that the network is all of our computers. The network is your computer,” he concluded.

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