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Technology giants continue to embrace the open source community by releasing a number of patents on their products.

With IBM's release of 500 patents leading the way, a number of large technology companies are further embracing open source. This was quickly followed by Sun Microsystems and the Globus Consortium. Globus, which is made up of IBM, Sun, HP and Intel will be providing an open source toolkit that promotes grid-computing.

While Sun is part of Globus, the company is also releasing a number of patents to the open source community. According to The Inquirer, Sun will be allowing patents on over 1600 products to be used by the open source community, making Sun the largest open source code contributor in the world. The Inquirer goes on to report:

"You can use [Solaris] free. Did I say free? I meant free," enthused McNealy. Solaris source code and the patents will be made available under Sun's Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL).

Sun also will form a Community Advisory Board to oversee the evolution of OpenSolaris OS technology and promote community development efforts.

John Loiacono, executive vice president of Software at Sun, had these comments about Sun's patent releases, "Sun's heritage has always been deeply rooted in open source and open standards-based software. OpenSolaris(tm) represents a significant milestone in the history of Sun, the Solaris community and larger open source community. We strongly believe the OpenSolaris community will help foster the innovation and collaboration needed to open up new opportunities for developers, customers and partners."

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.