Sun Microsystems has opened the door to adopting the general public licence (GPL) for its Solaris operating system. Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz raised the option at a company event marking the release of Java SE and Java ME components under the GPL licence.

"Today's event and the feedback that we received today really casts a very positive light on our choices going forward," Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president for software responded to a question from Schwarz.

"The familiarity and comfort level with the license that we've chosen for Java, doubtlessly is going to drive a lot of the decision making going forward for the existing technologies that we've open sourced."

Sun released its Solaris operating system early last year under the open source Common Development and Distribution Licence (CDDL) licence that Sun created.
The move at the time attracted a storm of criticism.

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