There are some distinct advantages for open source technology, said Scott McNealy, speaking at the NICSA Technology Summit 2007 in Las Vegas. The Sun Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chairman of Sun Federal, Inc., said sharing of technology is beneficial to providers and users if it is done correctly.

"We're growing, making money, spewing cash, tons of cash in the back -- trust me, we're doing OK," McNealy said about Sun, reported John Soat in his CIOs Uncensored Blog for InformationWeek. "Free works out OK if you come up with the right business model."

McNealy pointed out the technologies that Sun has open sourced and that have turned into "interesting franchises," namely the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) available through the OpenSolaris project; Java technology available through several projects including OpenJDK (Java SE), Mobile & Embedded community (Java ME), GlassFish application server (Java EE); and the IP for its UltraSPARC T1 processor available as OpenSPARC.

From his point of view, the advantages in open source break down to the following:

Lowers entry barriers and R&D costs

With Sun's technology available to anyone via a download, "it allows you to delay the investment in a new project till production, after you've gotten through R&D."

McNealy cited China as an ideal market where the company's open source business model is set for success. "What do you think China's going to use for its IP stack? OpenSparc or x86? Java or .Net? Solaris or Windows?," Soat reported. "I think we're in a very good position to do quite well in China," McNealy commented.

Drives interoperability

Pointing out Sun's partnerships with Intel (who OEMs the Solaris OS), IBM (whose Power chip runs on the Solaris OS) and Dell (who ships "an enormous amount of Java computers every day"), McNealy noted, "We're the number three server company in the world, number five x86 server company."

Secure

With transparent code, there are no secrets to exploit and the community will find and correct it. "Name a Java virus?" McNealy challenged.

No lock-in

Proprietary architecture can make upgrading to more advanced technologies quite difficult and competitively disadvantageous. With "the shelf life of a banana," why would any organization want to commit to a technology that could easily become obsolete quite quickly. [...read more...]

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