"Sun Microsystems today announced a multi-year program called the Open Source Community Innovation Awards Program, which will foster innovation and recognize some of the most interesting initiatives within Sun-sponsored open source communities worldwide. To participate in the program's first year, Sun has selected six communities: GlassFish, NetBeans, OpenJDK, OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris and OpenSPARC. Prizes are expected to total at least $1 million (USD) a year."
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Member since:
2005-11-12
Member since:2005-07-12
What's wrong with that?
Google is doing the same thing with the Android contest.
Sun put a lot R&D and money into developing Java, OpenOffice, Glassfish, NetBeans, OpenSolaris, and OpenSparc, and they're giving that stuff away for free.
This, in hopes of generating more business opportunity for their hardware and services businesses, which seems to be working (they've returned to profitability after years of floundering after the dot com bust).
So why shouldn't they try to generate interest in their own open source initiatives, in order to help generate more business opportunity for themselves?
It's good for their business, and everyone else gets free access to great technologies.
Sounds like a win-win to me.
Member since:2005-11-12
Member since:2005-07-06
read the charter for crying out loud:
...which will foster innovation and recognize some of the most interesting initiatives within Sun-sponsored open source communities worldwide.
of course they will donate money to causes that makes sense for them! Do you expect them to pay out grants to the mono project???
Member since:2005-07-24
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of course they will donate money to causes that makes sense for them! Do you expect them to pay out grants to the mono project???
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It wouldn't be out of the question, no. It is certainly their prerogative to spend the money in strategic or political ways if they so desire. But as has been said, Google invests all around, since you never know what project might turn out to have unexpected value in future. Criteria based strictly upon merit would not be beyond the pale. Not at all.
Member since:2005-11-12
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
They already do that by paying their own employees to work on and contribute to open source projects such as GNOME, Apache, and others.
Member since:2005-07-15
>They already do that by paying their own employees to work on and contribute to open source projects such as GNOME, Apache, and others.
Right. They also support http://www.fsf.org/donate/patron/index_html">FSF FSFE" rel="nofollow">http://www.fsfe.org/en/supporters">FSFE.
Sun does a lot for the Free Software community both woth code and with money. Today sun is one of the largest (if not the largest) industrial contributer to Free Software.
Thank you Sun!
Member since:2005-07-15
Member since:2005-07-07
I know. It is surely ironic that people criticize Sun about open source when it has open sourced its crown jewels (Java, Solaris) while holding up companies like Google and IBM as paragons of the Open Source way. Yet Google's own projects are non-open and IBM still keeps AIX under tight wraps.
Member since:2006-01-01
Because opensource is more than their products?, what about the other opensource software they use, google sponsor all opensource software projects not just their own.
Your kidding right? Sun has open sourced Java, Solaris, OpenOffice ... what significant code technology has Google open sourced (the only thing I can think of is their Java page rendering library).
Honestly, Sun is doing a much better job then Google (by a large margin) in its support of open source. To suggest otherwise is ignorance or malice.
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Member since:2005-11-12
Member since:
2007-07-27
I, and many others, thought that Sun starting to promote open source is a good initiative? That Sun open up all their high technology (ZFS, Dtrace, etc) is good?
Would you rather have Sun just like Microsoft? Closed and never willing to give away something for free?
I just dont get it. This is a bad initiative? Shouldnt you start somewhere small? All improvements in these projects will also benefit other open source code projects. Is this a bad thing? Imagine Microsoft doing this?