i-Technology Viewpoint: OpenSolaris, Get It While It's Hot!
Go ahead, download the source code for Sun's amazing operating system, Solaris. It's now been released. I just downloaded it in under 5 minutes using BitTorrent. Why? I have no idea. Because I could I guess. Or because I didn't believe it would ever happen. I used to work at Sun at one point, so I have some appreciation for what it took politically, not technically, to get to this point. Congratulations, Sun.

The code to Solaris is now available to everyone. Why would Sun give up such an asset and is it too late for Solaris? Is this move going to bolster Sun, and turn around this excellent piece of engineering? It's hard for me to imagine Linux or BSD kernel hackers leaving behind their beloved code to poke around in Solaris' guts. In fact, wouldn't that make it legally hard for them to return to the BSD or Linux code bases? Aren't there IP issues involved? Or is OpenSolaris open enough that it's okay to study the competitor's implementation before designing your own? I don't know enough about their license, and there are no precedents from which to guess at an answer. My guess is that Sun has learned that it needs to let Solaris grow and influence the community, that type of stewardship will help their OS and Java businesses (such as they are) and potentially their hardware business at some point.