Sun Announces Open Source License for Solaris Operating System

Solaris Code to be Available Under the CDDL in Q2 2005

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - January 25, 2005 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that the source code for Solaris 10 - the most advanced operating system in the industry - will be made available under the OSI (Open Source Initiative) approved Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). The company has established a community Web site at opensolaris.org. Buildable source code for Solaris will be available at this site in the second quarter of 2005.

"Sun's heritage has always been deeply rooted in open source and open standards-based software. OpenSolaris(tm) represents a significant milestone in the history of Sun, the Solaris community and larger open source community," said John Loiacono, executive vice president of Software at Sun. "We strongly believe the OpenSolaris community will help foster the innovation and collaboration needed to open up new opportunities for developers, customers and partners."

"Sun has its roots in the BSD UNIX(r) distribution, which I released under the pioneering open source license. I'm glad that the Solaris source code, and its many innovations, are finally going to be more widely available," said Bill Joy, Sun co-founder and current partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

In conjunction with today's announcement, the company is also releasing code - under the CDDL - for its Solaris DTrace technology, one of the most popular features of Solaris 10. DTrace source code is immediately available for download from opensolaris.org.

"As an Independent Software Vendor, OpenSolaris provides a deeper understanding of Solaris and a direct channel of feedback to the engineers. We now have deeper insight into the workings of production systems," said Philip Beevers, a developer at royalblue. "Through the OpenSolaris pilot program, we've been able to do things with DTrace which we couldn't do before. With access to the source code through CDDL, we hope to innovate more with DTrace and improve our own products."

In support of today's announcement, Sun will also establish a Community Advisory Board to help oversee the evolution of OpenSolaris OS technology and the community development efforts. Initially, the advisory board will consist of five members - two will be elected from the OpenSolaris Pilot community, two will be Sun employees, and one member will be selected from the broader open source community. This advisory board will be finalized by March 2005 and will grow and evolve over time to meet the needs of the community.

The CDDL, which was approved by the Open Source Initiative's (OSI) board of directors on January 14, is based on the well-regarded MozillaTM Public License (MPL). Sun, in partnership with members of the open source community, created a license based upon the MPL that is shorter, clearer, has simplified notice requirements, and contains strong protections against patent litigation. The CDDL was also created to be a reusable license that would be attractive to other open source efforts, so that other projects with similar community and licensing goals would not need to create a new license. For more detailed information on the CDDL license, please visit: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cddl1.php and http://www.sun.com/cddl

"It was great to work with Sun on the CDDL. They did their homework, were careful in all the details and they privately previewed the license with influential members of the license committee," said Russ Nelson, vice president, OSI. "Sun addressed everyone's concerns and in the end produced a license that is clearly and comfortably open source. The CDDL will help them build the community of developers necessary for any open source project."

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com/

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