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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael F. Donadio who wrote (14051)	1/28/1999 12:14:00 PM
From: uu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

> This agreement releases the Jini code to anyone who wants it. Unlike many other open source-type arrangements, users can keep what they make. With the exception of bug fixes, developers are not required to give back to the source pool. ... In my humble opinion Sun is making a brilliant tactic by giving out the jini source code without requiring user to give back to the source pool their enhancements to that code. When it comes to software everyone wants to come up with a brand new next product that makes him/her distinguished from everyone else and also makes them a billion dollars! You always want to come up with a software product that would become very popular and at the same time keep its own proprietary notion (e.g. Microsoft Windows OS). What Sun is doing is to give the base framework to the developers who can use to build their own products. This is absolutely brilliant. Think about it. If you get hold of a recipe for a delicious popular food and you are allowed to make your enhancements to that recipe which would make the resulted food even more delicious and more popular, would you rather sell that food yourself as your very own proprietary product based on the original widely accepted recipe, or do you rather give your enhanced recipe back to everyone else so they can also go ahead make that food; Thus taking away your proprietary/copy right notion of what you came up with? In my opinion, You can make more money if you sell your newly created food rather than giving its "recepi" out and create competition and price pressure which would limit your gains. In short you want to sell the food that you came up with, rather than the recepi for making that food. Similarly with Jini, Sun is encouraging software vendors and developers to use the base framework (which is 100% based on Sun's technology) to create their own products. It is telling them, "You guys can do so much with this framework and make so many unique products. And guess what? You get to keep what you make without telling everyone how you made it!" Now as far as Sun is concerned,, it does not care what they make! All it cares about is the usage of its base technology which ultimately results in selling its servers and hardware products. Regards, Addi Jamshidi