Alan Coopersmith (whom I’ve never met, yet whom I respect about as much as I respect Casper Dik) mentions that Sun Studio 11 is now free.
Download link is here.
Specifications – Basically Solaris 8 or newer on Solaris SPARC or x86. There is mention of Linux (RH 4 or Suse 9) on the sysreq page too, but I am kind of both disinterested by Leenuks, and somewhat puzzled, as RH 4 is circa 1997 and Sun folks probably mean Fedora 4. Or something.
Here Alan is doing some comparisons between Sun cc and gcc for compiling the X subsystem for Solaris.
I own single license for Sun Studio 6, which I picked up at a dot.com bancropcy auction (it was a box with never registered license codes) for 100 CAD. As part of a deal I got about half a cubic meter of Cisco propoganda for Cisco 25xx routers, but it was worth it.
Owing a license for a Sun’s C compiler for a while made me the coolest kid on the block, as I could compile 64 bit versions of IPF (gcc at the time stood in the corner and nerviously smoked whenever it had to compile 64 bit kernel modules)