Date: 26-Nov-2009   URL: www.sun.com/aboutsun/csr/report2008/network/opensource.jsp

2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Report

Active Tab The Network

Sun's open-source philosophy is based on the idea that the ability to collaborate on software need not be restricted to the employees of one company, but rather, it can and should be a global effort in pursuit of common goals. Open source is the ideal business and development model for today's global and interconnected economy. Sharing sparks innovation and participation, and this benefits everyone: individuals, communities, and markets.

Open Source


Open sourceis the principle and practice of promoting access to the design and production of goods and knowledge. This is most often applied to the source code of software that's made available to the general public with relaxed or nonexistent restrictions on usage.

With open-source software, source code is available under a free software license (or an arrangement such as the public domain) that permits users to use, change, and improve the software and redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It's often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Sun participates in the Open Source Initiative (OSI), which approves licenses that promote this freedom, and the Free Software Foundation, which promotes the goals and evolution of software freedom.

Open standardsare specifications that define and describe a method of implementing a particular computing function or action. Open standards are technically, legally, and economically geared to broad adoption due to the process by which they're developed and their licensing terms.

In software development, a communityis a network of developers (and deployers) with shared interests, ideas, tasks, or goals. These developers interact in a virtual society across time and/or geographical and organizational boundaries. Communities comprise individuals who work from their own resources and motivations, at their own pace and skill level, on whatever projects are of interest to them.

Interoperabilitydescribes the capability of different programs to exchange data via a common set of business procedures and to read and write the same file formats and use the same protocols.


We believe that open source creates a better and fairer market for software and, ultimately, for the hardware on which it runs and with which it interacts. Open source creates software with no payment barriers to adoption, so more people can access it.

Open source can play an important role in creating access, especially because such software encourages local skills to develop independent of foreign engagement. Promoting open source is a policy target in developing economies, including China and Brazil. Open source enables economic, community, and market development where proprietary software is too costly, not offered, or otherwise less appropriate.

Open-source software such as the OpenOffice.org suite, Mozilla Firefox Internet browser, and MySQL database enable small and medium-sized businesses to modernize without the barriers of prohibitive cost or proprietary lock-in. A European Commission report released in February 2008 estimates that aggressive adoption of open source would increase the gross domestic product (GDP) of the European Union by .1%, or more than EUR 1 billion.

What's more, open standards ensure that all those participating develop from the same base technology and must differentiate their product, stimulating competition and benefiting users. The marketplace is far more competitive when consumers aren't locked into a specific product or company.

We believe that students who come to understand how software works, how to improve it, and how to share their newfound knowledge freely with others will be the catalyst for a new generation of developers — and for new technologies to solve the world's most pressing problems. For that to happen, open-source technology must be made available to schools around the world.

Our open-source approach continues to evolve. In the past, we developed software using closed processes and then opened up the code. Today, we develop projects such as the OpenSolaris OS in the open. This came about because we relaxed our policies on employee participation in open source. Sun engineers are now open-source developers, working with people who may or may not be Sun employees. We're also making it easier for employees to make their own work open source and contribute to other open-source projects.

Here are some of Sun's key open-source communities:

More details of Sun's open source projects can be found at sun.com/software/opensource.

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