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Why is Sun Doing Open Source |
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Sun Microsystems produces software systems, platforms, and applications that run on both Sun and other hardware. Because of its interest and investment in software, Sun is dedicated to advancing the state and practice of the software arts and sciences. Of particular importance to Sun is the concept of openness. Producing open systems has been the hallmark of Sun's business philosophy since its founding. Today, what better avenue for openness is there than Open Source? We believe in the following principles which embody our software philosophy:
- We believe in shared innovation between developers at Sun and developers everywhere. We strongly believe that most innovation happens outside Sun's walls, and we want to enable that innovation as much as we can by providing source code to outside developers and by Sun engineers participating in existing Open Source projects.
- We believe in the customer and partner benefits of Open Source. These include the freedom for customers and partner to control their own destiny with features and schedules, the abilities to freely innovate on top of Sun software and to expand the vision embodied therein, and the freedom to choose the right balance of stability and feature-richness.
- We believe in the increased quality and security of Open Source software. These benefits are provided by thousands of eyes looking at the source, catching both errors and security holes and by the expertise embodied by the population of Open Source developers.
- We believe in Open Source beyond platforms and utilities. Sun believes that over time almost all software will be developed using open source-like methodologies, and we have taken time to explore and understand the range of issues, including intellectual property, governance, and development cultures suitable for open source development.
- We believe in developing a shared code literature which can serve as a basis for teaching good software design and for advancing our understanding of software principles and practices. The first step is to produce a shared set of sources, which is what Open Source is all about. As we move forward, software systems will become ever more massive and distributed, requiring new approaches to programming and design. Until now, we have had only the smallest corpus of shared code literature.
- We believe in neat stuff, and Open Source is neat. Open Source represents a non-hierarchical, egalitarian philosophy of sharing and helping. Open Source is cooperative where other ways of doing software can be combative. Open Source is one vehicle for improving the lot of mankind, and for having fun while we're at it.
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