Sun Microsystems announced today that Netscape Enteprise Server, one of the original grand-pappys of "modern" web servers (which excludes NCSA--sorry fanboys... I know you're out there), has been released under the BSD license. This isn't the really old one that (hopefully) no one uses, but the modern version, now called JES Web Server (part of the OpenSolaris Web Stack). Yep, it was also iPlanet for a bit. And SunONE. And possibly still Sun Java System Web Server. And probably a few other names people with too much time on their hands will find buried in the source.

No matter what you call it, it will be interesting to see over the next few days/weeks/months to see what the security research community does with the source. I suspect we'll at least see a short-term uptick in the number of vulnerabiltiies for the server as people start looking into it and running their analysis tools. Corporations running the Java System Web Server should keep a keen eye on the Sun Alerts.

Some links for you:

• OpenSolaris Project: Web Stack 
• Jyri Virkki: Announcing Open Source Web Server
• Brian "Krow" Aker: Netscape Enterprise Server, Now Open Source