sun is too late (Score 1)

One major reason why free solaris wouldn't pose a serious threat to linux is the issue of hardware support.

Solaris x86 runs on very limited hardware and unless sun hired an army of developers they wouldn't be able to catch up to linux in terms of hardware support, assuming of course that solaris is "free" as in "free beer" Even if it they released the source, they'd still have trouble wooing the linux device driver developers away from their current projects.

One of the beauties of the intel hardware platform is that there are so many different choices in individual components. Solaris isn't designed with this in mind. It's designed to run on specific hardware components and combinations.

Linux is too far ahead, and it's too late in the game