Sun, HP Lend Further Support to Open Source

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.