February 3, 2000 Web posted at: 8:36 a.m. EST (1336 GMT) by Jennifer Jones

From...

(IDG) -- Sun Microsystems gave Linux a triple shot of support on Wednesday when the company let go of key portions of the Network File System protocol and its claims on the NFS trademark. Sun also doubled funding for Linux NFS, Version 4.

Specifically, Sun released its Transport Independent Remote Procedure Call (TI-RPC) protocol under a new licensing program dubbed Sun Industry Standards Source License.

Sun's Chief Technology Officer Rob Gingell said in a statement that the release of TI-RPC would especially benefit the enterprise.

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Under the new licensing program, developers will be able to change and disseminate source code freely. And vendors will be able to include the code in their products without having to make burdensome disclosures.

TI-RPC will be available to developers within 30 days from the Solaris Developer Connection at http://soldc.sun.com

The company also announced it will pump additional funding into the University of Michigan's Center for Information Technology, which is working on an "enterprise-quality" Linux Version 4 prototype, or reference implementation for sharing files across diverse platforms and the Internet.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is working to enhance security, performance, interoperability, and access features of Version 4 -- and thus needed access to the TI-RPC protocol.