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January 30, 2007 - History is full of examples in which open standards prevailed because they grew markets, while proprietary systems failed because they didn't. Sun was founded as an open source company before the term "open source" had even been coined, and open source and open standards have remained fundamental to its strategy ever since. #1 in Open Source
A recent report on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) prepared for the European Commission measured Sun's activity within the GNU/Linux community. The report found that Sun contributes substantially more code to a Linux distribution than any other organization, including IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Hewlett-Packard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In fact, Sun's overall contribution is more than three times that of its next closest competitor, IBM, in second place, and more than five times that of Red Hat, in third. According to the report, Sun has contributed more than $400,000,000 worth of source code to the GNU/Linux distribution.
“ This is timely and valuable. We had always known that Sun was a key contributor, but this report makes it clear how big an impact we had had even in areas previously supposed to be unrelated to Sun. ”
— Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems
A $2 Billion Contribution
When it comes to Sun's contribution to free and open source software, however, these contributions represent the tip of the iceberg. Sun has open-sourced much of its technology, including the Solaris operating system, under the OpenSolaris project, the UltraSPARC T1 microprocesser, under the OpenSPARC project, and in November 2006, Sun announced the further open-sourcing of the Java technology platform. "If you look at the engineering resources required to produce all of that software, the value easily exceeds $2 billion, and that's assuming you could even find the people to create another Java, another Solaris 10, another UltraSPARC T1," says Phipps. Sun continues to deliver against its commitment to open all of its software, and now participates in countless open source communities. Many of these are building cross-platform technologies such as X.org and GNOME, and many, such as OpenSPARC, are seeded by Sun. "If there were ever a philosophy that guided our decision making at Sun, it's that...an Internet connected by freely available standards is more valuable, to Sun and our customers, than one defined by dependencies on proprietary technologies," said Sun President and CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, in a recent blog entry. A Rising Tide
Open source and open standards in the computing industry combine to create a rising tide that lifts all boats--a perspective that's increasingly borne out in the market. Proprietary standards, by contrast, lock markets and restrict growth. The European Commission study also reported that open-source software drives billions of euros of investment annually in the European economy. The report also provides hard data on the debate of real cost to business of using open source software, according to Simon Phipps, Sun's chief open source officer. "It flies in the face of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that reactionary companies spread about open-source software," says Phipps. Building Vibrant Communities
By recognizing Sun as the largest corporate contributor to open source, the European Commission report confirmed that Sun's commitment to open source is pervasive and ongoing, affecting every corner of the company. Several Sun-supported projects have become wildly popular in the open-source world--and have helped companies save valuable money and time. Dozens of development projects within the OpenSolaris community are underway, for instance, driven in many cases by organizations looking to modify the code base to meet their specific needs. This process kicks off what Phipps calls the virtuous cycle, a process that expands market opportunities for Sun, its partners, and the community at large. "When a community of developers gathers and shares a code 'commons,' each participant creates value for themselves by extending the commons. They then create value for everyone else as they contribute changes back to the commons to reduce their own costs for ongoing maintenance, expanding the user base of their own innovation and thus increasing its value. That value extends beyond the circle of developers, benefiting anyone who uses that open-source software," Phipps explains. "At every stage of the virtuous cycle, enlightened self-interest is part of the mix," says Phipps. The OpenSPARC project illustrates the virtuous cycle in action. Simply RISC, a team of former STMicroelectronics engineers, published the first derivative chip design based on OpenSPARC. This 64-bit, single-core design is freely downloadable and targets embedded applications in PDAs, set-top boxes, and digital cameras. Sun's open sourcing of Java technology is still very new, but many see the economic potential. "This bold, visionary move adds to the popularity and development of Java language, establishing a firm foundation for those enterprises who use open source to build a more open ecosystem for information technology," says Lu Shouqun, chairman of the China Open Source Promotion Union. Creating an Ecosystem of Value
Sun participates in dozens of open source projects, each of which creates an ecosystem of value for Sun customers. The Java development community, for example, is one of the world's largest, with more than 5 million developers. In addition to OpenSolaris, which has over 17,000 members. and Open SPARC, which released the world's first open-source CPU, a few of these projects include:
For more information on Sun's entire roster of open-source projects, go to http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/learnmore.jsp. |
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