Networking giant Sun Microsystems has called on its employees and community members to promote the importance and benefits of open source technologies.
Sun has made the call as part of its sponsorship of Software Freedom Day (SFD) on September 20, 2008. It is encouraging its employees to support SFD activities by running a series of global events to raise awareness. These include more than 130 university campuses and open source communities. Sun employees from 60 countries are expected to participate in SFD 2008.
"Attitudes towards open source are maturing rapidly," said Simon Phipps, chief open source officer, Sun Microsystems. "Software is no longer solely the domain of the developer. This is especially relevant in this 25th anniversary year of the GNU Project with more and more businesses moving away from proprietary technologies, that deny them freedom and flexibility, and introducing open source software into their organization.
Seeking new open source audiences
"By sponsoring Software Freedom Day, Sun is helping new audiences across the globe embrace open source and recognize the impact that it can have in organizations of all sizes."
Phipps said that Sun has made a huge commitment to open source software, contributing billions of dollars in developer time, sponsorships and donations, as well as releasing "more code under open source licenses than any other organization in the public or private sector".
Sun offers several platforms, including OpenSolaris, OpenJDK and OpenOffice.org that are supported by vibrant, growing communities, to help foster freedom, innovation and improve the quality of products for businesses.
100 global events
As part of its commitment to open source communities and technologies Sun will be hosting more than 100 events around the globe at elite technical universities and educational institutions, to equip students with free and open source technologies to aid their learning.
In Singapore, celebrations for Software Freedom Day will be held at the National Technological University this week on 17 September 2008 and the National University of Singapore on 19 September 2008.