The open source movement grew a little bigger last week. Sun Microsystems is giving more than 1,600 patents to software developers. The aim is to make the Solaris operating system, open source.

Developers will be able to for a Common Development and Distribution Licence. They will have to access the code under Sun's Opensolaris programme.

"As the largest business contributor to the open source community, Sun has always been an ardent believer in open standards. The open source process goes back to the inception of the company," commented Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems' CEO.

Sun claim that releasing the patents, US and international patent laws were being addressed. These have "increasingly granted overly broad patents on abstract processes".

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