RSSSun, HP Lend Further Support to Open Source
By Justin Jenkins | Published July 23, 2001, 7:07 PM
Seemingly in response to Microsoft's opening of Windows CE 3.0 in its own Shared Source model, computer giants Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard also announced today products that each are opening under the fashionable rival Open Source model. Adding to a number of additional applications that it has previously opened, Sun will unwrap the source to Grid Engine, a powerful distributed computing application, at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention this week. Additionally, HP has shored up its support of the Open Source community Monday with an announcement that it will open and release a software development platform for creating mobile e-servers, christened 'Coolbase'.
Grid Engine, acquired by Sun one year ago, uses a master daemon to control thousands of processors over a network allowing maximum computer usage. Essentially, only 20% of processing power is used per system in a corporate environment; Grid Engine allows distribution over all processors available resulting in the best use of the network. Grid Engine is available for Solaris, Linux Kernel 2.2 and 2.4, and GNU C-lib 2.1.2 environments.
HP also joins such big names as IBM, Sun and Apple with the opening of its Coolbase product, strengthening the Open Source model, which has come under heavy criticism as of late by Microsoft.
"As a leading Linux and open source advocate, HP is inviting developers to use Coolbase to create new applications and mobile e-services for a truly connected world," stated Gene Becker, director of the Cooltown project. "With today's launch of Coolbase, HP continues to move forward on making its vision for connecting people, places and things a reality. Coolbase will let people create their own Cooltown experiences."
According to HP, Coolbase was created by scientists and engineers at HP Labs' Cooltown research project, enabling developers to create mobile e-services for embedded and personal systems. Coolbase is intended to help fuel HP's vision for pervasive computing in which people, places and things are connected, and computing power is as available as any utility is today.
This is turning out to be a Microsoft vs The Rest battle.
Why didn't Sun open Java up like they originally said they would rather that 'Grid Engine'. It would make more sense for them to do so given that Microsoft is opening up C#.
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|They just open the source of whatever is not making the desired profit.
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|I realise that, or opening the source of something that may seem important but most likely isn't to the company (e.g. WinCE from Microsoft). It just seems like everyone is trying to 'out do' eachother by pleasing different communities. Of course those that are anti-Microsoft will be anti-Microsoft no matter what and yet this will be seen as 'look SUN is a great company that supports the open source movement'. I just find it interesting how people brand the same action from two companies completely differently based on the companies.
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|If you looked closely at the article you’d notice that HP’s project has been prepared and other parts of it open all along. As for Sun, that could be so, but if so ... what’s so bad about that? Of course, maybe you are referring to Shared Source … with MS’s scheme if they are opening for that purpose later they can basically take it back from the people that worked hard on it, and sell it again to make their own money … once it’s Open-Sourced it’s free to everyone. Then again, perhaps the lawyers will figure a way around that, but I think MS has more of those, lawyers that is. Personally I think not everything should be opened up, but it does not hurt to open everything that makes sense to open up, so cheers to Sun an HP!
~Justin
Justin Jenkins
jjenkins@betanews.com
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