Conventional solar technology has thus far dictated that solar panels be mounted on south-facing roofs, or in locations where the sun source is unrestricted and strong.
As some companies may fear releasing customized applications, Sun also offers a secondary license called Sun Industry Standard Source License.
In addition, Sun will release the source code under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Oracle has reiterated that the Java language itself is free and open source (as Sun declared it to be years ago).
These approaches aim to capture our ultimate energy source: the sun.
"This makes Sun a major open-source vendor, and it will have a major pricing impact on the traditional vendors, " says Donald Feinberg, an analyst with Gartner.
Skeptics have argued that it is absurd to downplay the role of the sun, as it is the energy source driving the entire climate system.
At the annual meeting of the Carbon Disclosure Project--a non-profit investor organization devoted to greater transparency in greenhouse gas emission statistics--Sun released a set of open-source software tools that companies can use to track carbon emissions.
The MySQL deal, which is slated to close in the first half of 2008, is a sign that Sun is pushing into more open-source software applications and could even enter the Linux market, the terrain of companies like Red Hat.
Viewed from earth, the disputed source is now too near the sun for big telescopes to observe.
The French nuclear giant Areva bought a company that taps the biggest nuclear energy source in the solar system: the sun.
Among the challenges is modifying sensors designed to detect the heat from an incoming warhead so they can spot the much-cooler satellite, which has no heat source and is warmed only by the sun's rays.
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For now, it appears that the API Copyright Troll concept is limited to the particular case of Java, software created corporate owners (Sun) who chose to make it free and open source, but was then purchased by a company (Oracle) that has had enormous success in selling licenses and services for the software it developed.
By buying Sun, Oracle becomes the world's largest open-source company, prompting much debate among developers and users.
Sun's OpenOffice.org project should be ready by October and will not only give users access to open-source code but will also provide filters to allow Sun customers to use Microsoft's rival products.
Skrenta was doing cryptography work for Sun Microsystems some years back when he began working on an open source version of Yahoo, called NewHoo.
"Sun is doing more and more with being a provider of open source in this enterprise infrastructure space, " says Raven Zachary, an open-source analyst at 451 Group.
If Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems goes through, it will have an even bigger open-source portfolio including MySQL, a popular program for databases.
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The source of all this variability is the turbulent outer layer of the Sun.
An open source team just discovered the first planet known in a 4-sun system, just by parsing public data!
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Oracle, the database-software behemoth, is buying Sun Microsystems, which sells big computers as well as software ranging from Java tools to open-source databases.
It is also an "enabler" for renewable energy, providing a source of electricity that can step in to fill the gap when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining.
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Because geothermal produces consistent, base-load power--it doesn't depend on the wind blowing or the sun shining--utilities will pay up to three times more for geothermal electricity than for electricity from an intermittent source, like wind.
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