Open sauce flows at Sun

SUN HAS open sourced OpenSolaris and 1,670 of its patents and promised that more will follow in the second quarter of the year.

In a conference call to hacks, Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy declared Sun to be the largest donor of open source code anywhere on planet earth.

"You can use [Solaris] free. Did I say free? I meant free," enthused McNealy. Solaris source code and the patents will be made available under Sun's Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL).

Sun also will form a Community Advisory Board to oversee the evolution of OpenSolaris OS technology and promote community development efforts.

The release follows IBM's open sourcing of 500 patents last week. McNealy said that unlike "a lot of companies" Sun was not using open source to dispose of end-of-life code.

He said that Solaris 10 was the hottest OS on the planet with the latest and greatest features. Well he would, wouldn't he.

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