In an apparent effort effort to forestall the rapid adoption of Linux in the enterprise, Sun is making some of its software free to students and faculty. Stuff like Solaris 9, StarOffice, and Sun ONE Studio. The idea, it seems, is to get students familiar with these tools while in school so they’ll be enthusiastic about them when they start working.

I wonder how that will turn out. My interest in free and open source software was at first inspired by the price tag. I was a poor student, after all. It was only after I’d become familiar with the tools that I became attracted to the philosophy. I would eventually have become a free-as-in-freedom devotee anyway, but I wonder how much I would have brought that into the workplace had I been steeped in the Microsoft world, or even Sun. Donno.