Simon’s Blog

I thought it was clear.  Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems said that all of Sun’s software was to be Free and Open Source.    I don’t remember the precise date on which this decision was made - but I think it was early 2006.    At the end of November 2006, Jonathan wrote the following on his blog:

As you know, all our software is free for the asking (you pay only for commercial support, when you want it). From Java to Solaris to NetBeans, to everything in between - it’s all free for the asking.

Recently, though, I’ve begun to wonder if Sun has changed its stance on Free and Open Source.  For example, it’s not clear that Sun’s new virtualization and data center management systems will be completely Free and Open Source: you can’t get xVM Ops Center without going through Sun’s sales team.

I had been putting this down to the fact that Ops Center is new, and perhaps the product and documentation aren’t yet quite ready for prime time; hence a cautious, controlled roll-out. However, rumblings of more non-free, non-open source Sun software have now risen to the surface. A couple of days ago, Mårten Mickos, the Sun SVP who heads up Sun’s MySQL product offering wrote the following:

We will develop high-end add-ons (such as encryption, native storage engine-specific drivers) that we will deliver to customers in the MySQL Enterprise product only. We have not yet decided under what licence we will release those add-ons (GPL, some other FOSS licence, and/or commercial).

This statement is also clear.  It clearly demonstrates that there is a desire within Sun to experiment with new, closed-source, “pay to license” business models.  That’s a huge change in direction for the company. It seems to me there are a couple of possibilities: one, that Mårten didn’t get the memo that all Sun’s software assets are supposed to be available to anyone Free and Open Source;  or two, Sun has changed its FOSS strategy.

Naturally, Sun is free to change its business strategy anytime it wants or needs to.  If it has changed strategy, though, it would be really helpful if the company communicated this to their customers in a clear way.   I’m sure people would want to know the details.