After releasing the source codes of its core operating system, Sun Microsystems is aiming OpenSolaris at Philippines developers, expecting the strategy to broaden the reach of its hardware and strengthen Solaris against the more popular Linux OS.
Sun has released more than five million lines of Solaris source code (on its Web site www.opensolaris.org), including the kernel and networking codes. By releasing Solaris as an open source software, Sun is hoping to attract more developers to use it in creating their own proprietary software.
Sun released OpenSolaris under the Community Development and Distribution License (CDDL), which means a programmer can take a piece of code from OpenSolaris, recompile or incorporate it into a project, and license the software independently for commercial profit.
However, it may take a while before OpenSolaris captures a substantial mind share among Filipino developers. Joubert Uriarte, technical consultant for Sun Microsystems, admitted that, at the moment, local open source developers would rather create applications on top of Linux.
Solaris is a version of Unix which gained prominence when Sun"s business peaked during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s. However, it has taken a back seat as Linux became the more popular open source choice, largely through the backing of vendors like IBM and a bigger ecosystem of distributors like Red Hat.
But Uriarte is optimistic that OpenSolaris would eventually establish a foothold in the developer community as Sun releases more source codes, which would allow developers to create applications on Solaris that can be ported to Linux.
"If I"m a developer and I want to increase scalability, I can put Linux as an option. This is one way for us to gain more developers. We want them to get the codes and do something with it," he said during a briefing announcing OpenSolaris locally.
Since Sun posted the source codes last June 14, there have been more than 100,000 downloads, according to Uriarte.
Uriarte said developers will not yet recognize the commercial value of OpenSolaris but noted that this initiative increases Sun"s market coverage.
By making Solaris open source, Sun is hoping that it would generate enough interest among users until they eventually convert to Solaris 10, Sun"s commercial version of the operating system which the company supports similar to the way Red Hat, for example, charges customers for technical support for its version of Linux.
Sun released Solaris 10, the latest version of Solaris, last December.
"If users see the value in running Solaris as an alternative, there"s a big chance they would recognize that they would get the maximum benefit out of the OS by using our hardware," Uriarte said.