Sun Open Source "summit"

Sun continues to be less schizo about Open Source and recently gathered media and employees at their main campus for an Open Source “summit” briefing.

Cited were improvements like a binary release of OpenSolaris and plans for dynamic scripting support in Sun’s Java Virtual Machine. Executives from throughout the company met with the media at Sun’s Santa Clara, Calif. headquarters campus for an open-source “summit” briefing.

“We have so many people who work on open source inside Sun,” that they must be brought together for an annual conference, said Simon Phipps, chief open-source officer at the company.

Project Indiana is something I find particularly interesting. Where Sun goes with it is something I’ll be watching closely. The implications of having two solid Open Source operating systems with real traction are significant. That’s not to say that the BSD’s for instance aren’t solid (in fact, they’re rock solid), just that none of them have seen wide mainstream adoption. It’s also good to see that 96 percent of Java code has been cleared for Open Source use. That should mean that a public release is well on its way.

–jeremy