Fact #2: Sun Embraces Open Source, Linux Compatibility and Support
Open standards are characterized by open (royalty free) interfaces.
Sun has contributed upwards of 10 million lines of code to the Linux community. (see sunsource.net)
Sun Cobalt server appliances are based on Linux and market share leaders in their categories, StarOffice is the de facto standard productivity suite for the Linux community, and Sun is a member of the Gnome effort.
On the low-end, Sun's Netra and Sun Fire V880 systems are actually lower cost than equivalent Wintel or Lintel platforms.
Several Sun products are available in free open source form such as StarOffice, Sun ONE webtop, Chili!Soft for Linux, Sun Grid Engine for Linux, Jxta peer-to-peer toolset (www.jxta.org), SPARC CPU license, HighGround Systems storage resource management, and HPC ClusterTools. You may want to ask other vendors exactly what products they make available this way.
Sun ensures tight compatibility between Solaris and Linux at the API level, development environment, and runtime environment. These capabilities have been available for many months. In addition, some customers run Linux in native form on SPARC. |
