Free and Open Source Software

Benefits for Students

Open source technology and communities offers the student developer some of the best opportunities to further their education.

Learning with Open Source

With open source, you can study how some of the world's leading software is crafted, including the Sun's Solaris operating system, the MySQL database, and the Java platform. But open source communities also offer access to some of the world's leading software engineers, and the opportunity to work with the best. Many of today's developers feel that they learn more, and more quickly, through participating in open source communities.

Opportunities for Student Developers

Sun is committed to offering the student developer opportunities to get involved with Sun open source projects and communities.

Community Innovation Awards
Sun is offering $1 Million through the Open Source Community Innovation Awards Program to participants in select open source projects. Six open source communities have been chosen: OpenSolaris, NetBeans, OpenSPARC, Project GlassFish, OpenOffice.org and OpenJDK.
Campus Ambassador Programme
Sun's Campus Ambassador Program is open to graduate or senior students in Computer Science at select universities around the world. The position of Campus Ambassador is a part-time role leading campus communities around Sun's open source platforms and tools.