2007 Corporate Social Responsibility Report

Sun doesn't see the hardware and software markets as a zero-sum game. For us to succeed, we don't need others to fail.

In 2006, the European Commission ordered a study of the economic impact of free and open source software.

Through open source and open standards, we share our core technologies, such as Java, Solaris, and SPARC, with the global developer community to enable collaboration, innovation, and the development of common platforms. This is known as open sourcing, and Sun is the largest contributor of code to the free and open source community. For more details, see the Open Communities section in "Introduction."

Making these world-class technologies available to the global developer community leads to innovation, and that helps to improve all our technologies. It promotes positive social and economic development by making technology more accessible to more people.

We also see a strong business case for sharing our software. Open source helps more people participate on the network, creating more potential customers for Sun products. By making software like our OpenSolaris source code freely available, we encourage more people to choose Sun servers and Sun support services, and more companies to partner on Sun's technology.

In January 2007, the final report, "The Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU," was published. The findings support Sun's belief that open source drives innovation and economic development and provide evidence of Sun's position as the leading contributor to the open source community.