In a bid to encourage more development of open-source software, network computing infrastructure vendor Sun Microsystems has kicked off a rewards programme for developers of such programs. The company is offering US$1mil (RM3.5mil) in prize money to software developers at six open-source technology communities worldwide — GlassFish, NetBeans, OpenJDK, OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris and OpenSPARC. No details were released on how the software developers would collect the reward and representatives of Sun Microsystems said more announcements on the programme would be made next year.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market. Today's announcement reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor