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Q&A: Sun's Simon Phipps details open source strategy
As Java moves toward open source, other Sun products will follow
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You said that more Sun products will move to open source. What are they and what are the plans for them? The next set of things after Java is open sourced will be middleware products, including a portal server, an identity server, and a Web server. All of those things are being considered for open source. This will happen between now and next year. During this financial year [for the company], you can expect to see the lion's share of these products be announced for open source.
So with a wider move to open source software, what is the strategy here for the company? This is all a dramatic change for how Sun will do business. We are restructuring our product portfolio for the market we think is coming. We're not checking out completely from the old world. We still see products for customers who still want boxed products. What matters to us is to create volume, and when we create volume, we'll create revenue. We made Unix available for free with OpenSolaris 10. But customers want services for patches and help. We find that most customers want that service and pay us for it. By giving it away, we have increased the use of Solaris in a large way and have gotten larger revenue for support. We're taking a big risk giving away the free rights to use Solaris Unix. Sun is also shipping out free servers to customers for 60-day trials, including return shipping if needed. We've discovered that most of the users who try [the server] love it and keep it. We're not locking in customers, but are setting them free.
But despite those business risks, Sun is still looking to offer more open source software from its product lines? What is the hoped for end game from this transformation? This is "iceberg economics" here. Below the water, there's a huge amount of work to do with open-sourcing Java and reconstructing Sun for the coming world of the networked economy. [Above the water], people expect to pay for things when they find they are useful, rather than just when they acquire them.
About the author
Todd Weiss is a staff writer at Computerworld.- Feedback
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