“Software is going to be free,” said McNealy in keynote speech
at the Java Business trade show held here. “Our shareholders
won’t be happy with that, but everyone else will be.“
“The explosive growth of companies such as Red Hat Software,
which makes a business of free software, and the rise of open
source software, is forcing companies to look at alternative
methods of business beside selling packages of software.”
“Sun has followed the trend, releasing the source code of its
variant of the Unix operating system under its “community” scheme
that requires royalties be paid to Sun on any revenue from
commercial products derived from changes to the code. This is a
modification of the pure open source model, where the underlying
code to a product is set free, with no restrictions.”