Sun Releases Solaris 10 for Free

In an effort to win back some lost market share, Sun Microsystems (sun.com) released Solaris 10, the latest version of the company's Unix-based operating system software, for free on Monday.

The company hopes the price will result in a return of demand for Sun servers and services. Sun plans to charge subscription fees for support and service programs designed for the scale of customer Sun usually serves.

Sun also hopes that, in addition to new customers, the new free Solaris 10 release will invigorate the development of software designed to run on the Solaris platform.

According to Sun, the new version of the software incorporates $500 million worth of development, and includes more than 600 new features. The company has also promised to make the source code for the software available through an open source license.

The software is reportedly scheduled for release to the market at the end of January.