Sun plans to make all its software free

And so Sun is opting to make their software free. Sounds good to me, just so long as there is support to go along with it.

Stanford, Calif. — Sun Microsystems (Profile, Products, Articles) president and COO Jonathan Schwartz on Thursday cited the company’s plans to eventually offer all of its software for free as a way to build communities around its technologies.

“The net upside of that is we get more people engaged in our community,” Schwartz said of Sun’s plans while speaking at the AlwaysOn conference here.

Sun currently offers its Solaris operating system components freely via open source. Technologies such as Java also are downloadable at no charge.

“We’ve been trying to faithfully explore how to deliver our products and technologies for free,” Schwartz said. He made no specific statement about offering Sun hardware for free, however. Sun can leverage its software technologies to boost hardware sales. [Read the rest]