SUN Open Source Code Solaris and Its Strategic Consequences
(The author Paul Murphy has a book "The Unix Guide to Defenestration", he is a 20-year experience in IT consultant.) Some people believe in society or history: a few people will have a few people. Independently invented new technologies with decisive significance. At this point, my opinion is more radical; I believe that some people have invented the calcination in Newton and Leibniz, but he did not promote. In other words, this is not because the time is not appropriate, but because this invention is not promoted. Open source code has been gradually accepted by society. In fact, the academic community began to use open source basic idea - the same line of comments in the 15th century, and work on other people. But now the Internet brings this idea of this original academic world to the business. So, the SUN is open to the Solaris system is not a hipster, it is a very interesting issue. I think it is, but this judgment reflects the history of Sun, reflecting whether people have general support for open source ideas, and whether people have known the most optimistic trend, they are not known. Java is hot today is an opposite example: At the beginning, Sun's developers did not think about it later. Initially Java is developed in order to solve a problem. Many hardware vendors that manufactures embedded software face this problem: manufacturers must improve hardware and user software, such improvement costs, and is very complicated. Java solves this problem with modular methods: independent of the hardware, and after each version of the user software can be used on the same virtual machine, which reduces the impact of hardware changes, minimizing change costs. Obviously, Sun's high-level considered Java's virtual machine method can solve many problems, which proves that the Java investment is correct, and then they have created a world-wide Java development group, and further expanded the Java market. As a result, people now want to use Java, more than three times more than those who want to use Microsoft products. For example, more than 600 million people have built-in Java mobile phones. This is a predictable, and some can predict that Java does not become the core elements of Sun's commercial software. Because Java is not better than C language. In fact, it is very amateur in commercial information processing. The reason why Java can achieve, because Microsoft develops browsers into generic clients, but it is increasingly deteriorated by its security and stability. Therefore, software developers reference the Java virtual machine to Wintel PC, which is not much affected when the Wintel architecture changes. As the safety and performance of the desktop is gradually improved, they began to apply Java to the server. Java is now a key part of the Sun's global strategy, but Sun's tops must never think that Java will eventually become the main framework of Sun's commercial software. Of course, this is just the previous idea. Most of the source code of Solaris will be open, but no one knows that it will not repeat the history of Java - it is far more important than now. At least SUN has some senior people intend to engage in Solaris's work, this is obvious. SUN plans to use the license to have such requirements: any modification or expansion of the open code, but also the source code must be open, but the open source plugin does not need to open its code. This allows developers to be profitable: they can work in an open source environment, while also have the opportunity to rely on their intellectual property to get competitive advantage, and then obtain profits.
