Sun Microsystems has stepped in with a special offer in an attempt to steal the thunder of rival Microsoft, which launches its Windows 2000 this month.
Sun has announced a free licensing scheme for Solaris 8, the latest version of its operating system, which will be shipped on February 27.
Sun has always shipped its Sparc-based server system with Solaris bundled in at no charge. However, the Solaris 8 version for Intel processors will no longer carry a user licence for machines with eight or fewer processors.
Sun will make the source code available free to software developers, though if a developer wants to sell a Solaris application commercially it will pay a licensing fee to Sun.
Paul Li, marketing director at Sun Microsystems in Hong Kong, said there was an increasing belief among software developers that software and middleware should be provided either free, at low-cost or on a subscription-based charge.
'We have to keep up with that trend,' he said.
Mr Li cited its office suite StarOffice and the Linux operating system as examples. The Linux operating system is available free over the Internet.
