|
Sun Microsystems, which has viewed open source code
alternatively as a competitor and as a friend, announced today that it
is joining the Free Software Foundation, origin of the freely
downloadable tools that helped spawn the open source
era. Simon Phipps, chief open source officer, announced that Sun would
become a patron supporter of FSF during a Feb. 24 keynote address at
the Free and Open Source Software Developers European Meeting in
Brussels.
Sun Microsystems, which has viewed open source code
alternatively as a competitor and as a friend, announced today that it
is joining the Free Software Foundation, origin of the freely
downloadable tools that helped spawn the open source
era. Simon Phipps, chief open source officer, announced that Sun would
become a patron supporter of FSF during a Feb. 24 keynote address at
the Free and Open Source Software Developers European Meeting in
Brussels.
FSF patrons make a financial contribution to the foundation in exchange
for the right to use its logo on the Sun Web site. Patrons also get
free consulting on the FSF's General Public License. Sun recently
announced that Java would become GPL-licensed
open source code. With Sun turning to the GPL, in addition to its own
Common Development and Distribution License, "it seemed obvious that
the connections should become stronger," Phipps said in a blog entry on the move.
The CDDL license option allows Java
users to produce and sell a product that includes proprietary code
without being obligated to disclose the source code for the proprietary
parts.
In becoming an FSF patron, Sun joins the likes the Intel, IBM,
Hewlett-Packard, Google, MySQL, EMC, and JBoss. Sun and Oracle declined
to support Linux-oriented open source consortiums, such as the Open
Source Development Labs. As OSDL merged with the Free Standards Group
to become the Linux Foundation, Oracle became a corporate sponsor of the new group. Sun still steers clear of Linux-oriented organizations.
Sun also produces Java development tools, some of which it has made
available as open source code, such as NetBeans. It is one of the few
Java tool vendors competing outside the Eclipse Foundation, which was
initiated with a code contribution from competitor IBM. "This news is
the start of a new phase of our collaboration and I'm delighted to have
been involved in making this happen with our friends at the FSF,"
Phipps wrote on his blog. What a great way to celebrate Sun's 25th
birthday."
Read the original article: http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197009022
|
Get Informed 
