This news almost reminds me of Jeff Goldblum rant in Jurassic Park:

No hold on, this is not some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs, uh, *had* their shot, and nature *selected* them for extinction!

I know my analogy is bit harsh but Sun’s decision to open source Netscape Web Server ( aka iPlanet Web Server) reminds of just that. That cynicism aside, I am sure there will be huge academic value in exploring the source code. Jyri Virkki writes on Sun blog about this decision:

Well, technically it is not exactly the Web Server product, since the open sourced code does not include some of the value-add components such as the administration framework. But it is the real deal, the massively scalable web server core which is used in the JES Web Server 7.0 product is now all open source!

This marks another milestone in the very long history of this web server. Back in the 90’s this was the Netscape Enterprise Server, which later morphed into the iPlanet Web Server during the Sun|Netscape Alliance. After some years it was renamed the SunONE Web Server and most recently renamed again to the JES Web Server (Sun just like to keep you confused, thus the constant renaming of the product!)

Source code will have BSD license, which is very interesting from Sun point of view. Company has long championed their own CDDL license and used GPL in many occasions.