Blogging Roller

I hate to be a party pooper, but what's the big deal with the "Red October" announcement?

In case you haven't heard, Sun has made it's entire software stack free and is bundling it all under the name Solaris Enterprise System. Big chunks of it are open source and some pieces are not, but now everything is free. It includes everything: operating sytem, database server, identity server, messaging server, collaboration server, portal server, SunRay server software, C/C++ IDE, high-end Java/UML IDE, web-centric Java/JSF IDE, office productivity suite and more.

Why is that a big deal? Jonathan Schwartz has already told the world that all Sun software will eventually be open source. So free and open source is not news. In fact, what's the hold up! And if you want any form of support, you still have to pay for licenses (contrary to what The Register thinks). Nothing new about that.

So what's the big deal? Is this going to get more customers trying our software, buying services/support and our mighty servers? Are we doing something that Microsoft, IBM and others are afraid to do? Does Solaris Enterprise System beat the crap out of Red Hat Enterprise system? I'm just an engineer, not hooked into Sun marketing strategy and I'm speaking for myself (as always here) but I bet the answer to those questions is yes. That's the big deal.