[ug-bosug] The Challenge of Open Source Software - Interview with Simon Phipps

[Sriram Narayanan]

Hi all:

Here's an interview with Sun's Chief Open Source Officer:

http://www.sun.com/emrkt/innercircle/newsletter/0906feature.html

I learnt from this interview that Sun is very very seriously
investigating how to open source _all_ of their code !

This is a monumental task, IMO. For starters I can think of the following :
1. investigate code
- that may be licensed from others
- to which the license may not be available
- owned along with other companies
- which may directly affect several business divisions.

2. What do you do with all those developers ?
- Do they work on the open source version ?
- Sun pays the developers while the world benefits from that work.

3. Selling services
- Sun is developing the code, and competes with other service
providers for the service market.

I think, if planned well, this could be as good an offering like IBM
does in the Eclipse eco system.

Best of luck, Sun, and I hope you folks do well !

-- Sriram