Q&A: Sun executive explains move to open-source

Computerworld - Sun Microsystems Inc. has for years tried to improve its software business, and just last week it began offering all of its core software products as open-source technologies (See "Sun to offer core software products for free as open-source"), much as it did with Solaris a year ago. Sun is also moving to integrate the tools from SeeBeyond Technology Corp. -- which it acquired last summer -- into its Java Enterprise System (JES). In an interview with Computerworld last week, John Loiacono, executive vice president of Sun's software group, talked about his company's latest software efforts.
Is Sun's recent open-source move aimed at helping independent software vendor and corporate development teams show IT managers the value of adopting your technology? Yes, they are definitely a primary target, but even on the deployment side, you've got architects and systems administrators who are effectively a different kind of developer and are also looking for easy, unencumbered access to software. It isn't solely developers.
What is the value of making the Java Enterprise System identity management suite open-source? The value of open-source to me has very little to do with making the bits available -- it's the community aspect. Without the communities, open-source means very little. That community can take that base technology and develop on top of it. Now we have a community of 10,000 people who are active [OpenSolaris] members, of which we've had hundreds of contributions, and we've already had probably 15 to 20 [new development features] integrated in, tested and certified, and now running as part of the OpenSolaris foundation.
What type of features do you expect to be added to JES by the open-source community? If someone has some authentication features, that will plug into an existing foundation. If someone has better cryptography, the ability to augment single sign-on capability -- these are things that can come from Sun and can come from outside.
How will the new bundled Solaris Enterprise System, which includes JES, management and development tools, Solaris and Sun Ray, be offered to corporate users? You can package it up with an enterprise license agreement, and you can license the whole truckload. Most likely, people will evaluate on a broad scale and implement specific products.
How will the bundled product be priced? I will have it shortly. The JES is $140 per employee per year, and that's without the SeeBeyond integration. It will be something north of $140 [per user] when we include the SeeBeyond [integration technology]. SeeBeyond has about as much code as JESin its entirety. Then I will have to put some value on a subscription pricing for Solaris, N1 and the tools.

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