Sun pairs Unix with open-source stack
3481
In addition to development tools, including a new version of OpenSolaris targeted at developers, Sun's also revamped a program meant to entice SMBs to use its wares.
283167
Ziff Davis - Open-source leader Eric Raymond spells out his objections to Sun President Jonathan Schwartz's contention that the Java Community Process is truer to open-source ideas than is Linux.
385225
Sun Microsystems Inc.  is  revamping its Solaris operating system, incorporating key  pieces of rival Linux software in a move that could gain better  support from developers who have massed behind Linux.
758922
InfoWorld - You've heard of LAMP, the popular open-source infrastructure stack featuring the Linux operating system, the Apache Web server, MySQL's database, and the Perl, Python and PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) scripting languages.
731542
Anyone who registers with Sun will be able to use Solaris for free on servers with x86 processors.
320537
Sun is getting into the open-source business with Solaris, but will this automatically translate into better sales?
740475
Sun Microsystems Inc. has ambitious plans for the commercial and open-source versions of its Solaris operating system, hoping to achieve for Solaris the kind of ubiquity already enjoyed by Java. To come close to reaching that goal, Sun needs to reach out more to developers and endeavor to overcome some long-held prejudices against the OS.
427191
The product brings Sun's middleware software, support and training together into a single place.
565914
Sun Microsystems will create an open-source project around its Solaris 10 operating system by the end of the year, company executives said Monday.
346261
SAN FRANCISCO - Sun Microsystems Inc. last week quietly released a version of its Java Desktop System (JDS) software based on the Solaris x86 operating system, a move the company is calling the first step in a long-term strategy to unify the user interface for Sun's Linux and Solaris products, Sun officials said Thursday.
505138
InfoWorld - Sun is expected to announce next week that it will make the Sun SPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) device platform available via open source, but a user expressed concerns about Sun's commitment to the technology.
213110
California-based Sun Microsystems Inc. released its Unix-based operating system Solaris 10 for free Monday, Web Host Industry Review Magazine reports.
250312
This might be a big geeky but my favorite UNIX directory is /etc.  Whats yours? /proc? /usr/local is pretty good?  There always good stuff in /var!  What about /tmp?
661819
Sun is expected to announce next week that it will make the Sun SPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) device platform available via open source, but a user expressed concerns about Sun's commitment to the technology.Sun SPOT is a Java-based experimental platform intended to enable development of products like wireless sensors, robotics, and communication devices. The open-sourcing is expected to be made official at the Java Mobile &amp; Embedded Developer Days Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., which is being held January 23-24."In this case, I think what's a little bit different is it's not just open-sourcing just the Sun SPOT code," said Roger Brinkley, mobile and embedded community leader at Sun. "It's everything related to Sun SPOT. It's the hardware, it's the software."Included in the open source endeavor would be the Squawk virtual machine featured as part of Sun SPOT. Through the open-source move, Sun hopes to attract more developers to Sun SPOT. "The open-sourcing allows a lot more extension and development to occur," Brinkley said.The plan calls for Sun SPOT to be offered under the GNU General Public License version 2, which means derivatives of GPL code and code that is combined with it must be redistributed. Sun, however, previously has permitted use of the "ClassPath" exception to the GPL, which enables combining of proprietary code with GPL ClassPath libraries without the need to redistribute proprietary code.Contacted afterward, Sun SPOT user Bruce Boyes, president of Systronix, lauded the technology but had concerns about Sun's commitment to it. By classifying the technology as experimental, Sun shows no published commitment to make it available for any period of time commercially, he said. Systronix has been trying to get a commercial license for two years, he said.?"SPOT is a very cool educational and experimental device. We'd like it to become a great commercial and industrial device too. Systronix would like to help make that happen," Boyes said. Systronix is using Sun SPOT in robots, which could be networked and potentially be used in applications, such as roaming of airports to provide security. "We use the Sun SPOT as the application brain," said Boyes.He also expressed concerns about the GPL, which has requirements that can place limits on its use in commercial ventures since software involving it has to be contributed back to the open-source arena. "Open-sourcing would be most interesting if there was a reasonable path to a commercial license," Boyes said.Sun officials were not available to respond to Boyes's concerns on Friday afternoon.In other happenings at next week's conference, application developers in the mobile and embedded space will get together to learn about different topics ranging from virtual machines to mobile clients. Presentations will be done by representatives from such companies as Nokia, Intel and, of course, Sun. James Gosling, CTO of Sun's Client Software who is widely considered the father of Java, will give a keynote presentation on Wednesday.Java, according to to Sun, is on 95 percent of mobile phones shipped today. Sun makes money off of mobile and embedded Java through commercial licenses that feature support services.One topic that is not expected to get a lot of play at the event is Sun's JavaFX and JavaFX Mobile technology. The JavaFX platform, featuring JavaFX Mobile, is intended to provide a consistent and graphical user experience on systems ranging from desktops to mobile devices and other systems. More on JavaFX will be aired at the JavaOne conference in May in San Francisco, a Sun insider said.Currently, Sun's new acquisition, MySQL, maker of the open source database of the same name, has not been factored into Sun's mobile plans, according to Brinkley. Sun agreed to acquire MySQL this week for $1 billion, with the deal expected to close later this quarter or early in the next quarter.
441412
With Sun Microsystems' $1 billion acquisition of open source database vendor MySQL announced Wednesday, Sun gets ownership of a major player in the open source software industry while MySQL gets the backing of a multibillion-dollar, established systems company.Called the largest open source software deal ever, the merger makes Sun the owner of a critical part of the popular LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL Perl/Python/PHP) open source software stack. Sun already has been offering up its own software to open source, even basing its development tools strategy on the open source NetBeans platform."MySQL is an important part of the LAMP stack, [and] has grown to be enterprise-ready technology used by large organizations, and Sun is now a major player in the LAMP stack," said Raven Zachary, analyst with The 451 Group. MySQL customers get the benefit of a larger support organization, Zachary said.Sun, meanwhile, will push MySQL as enterprise-ready technology and as an alternative to proprietary databases like Oracle, he said. "I think Sun has really been struggling in building a software revenue stream around its open source projects, and I think for them to take on MySQL, now they have a very successful revenue stream around an open source software [stack] that was lacking before," said Zachary.The deal was applauded by open source CRM vendor SugarCRM, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) tools vendor Zend Technologies, and SpringSource, makers of the open source Spring Framework for Java development."I think it's an incredibly smart move by Sun and Jonathan Schwartz," said SugarCRM CEO John Roberts. While Roberts said he had been looking forward to an IPO by MySQL, the deal nonetheless makes sense. Sun, Roberts said, gets a mission-critical database that is "probably the most widely used database on the planet today."Zend and SpringSource had similar impressions."I think open source has gone mainstream," and Sun has put its stamp on it, said Zend CEO Harold Goldberg. "We think it's a great day for open source, and we think it's a great day for the LAMP stack.""The acquisition of MySQL by Sun marks one of the most significant recognitions of the importance and power of open source as a disruptive force in technology," said SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson in his blog.Sun heralded the deal as its entrance into the database market and will offer global support offerings for MySQL. "We're announcing we're entering the $15 billion database business," said Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz on a conference call with MySQL and Sun executives.By Sun's acquisition, MySQL overcomes its biggest impediment: Ensuring peace of mind to a global company that wants to put MySQL into a mission-critical deployment, Schwartz said. "It?s very clear to us that that is what our customers have come to expect from Sun," he said. "We believe there are synergies in putting the two companies together that will allow MySQL to grow more rapidly and allow Sun to grow more rapidly."New customers for both MySQL and Sun MySQL has been extending into mission-critical, high performance environments in the last couple of years, said Marten Mickos, who has been MySQL CEO and will become a senior vice president at Sun. "With this acquisition by Sun, we'll be able to offer those customers even better service, a full stack and at the same time heterogeneous solutions running on a number of platforms with a number of environments," Mickos said. "It strengthens our ability to serve our existing customers and very importantly serve the new customers coming over as enterprises move over to Web-based architectures in their enterprise infrastructure."The acquisition complements Sun technology, said Ian Murdock, chief OS strategist at Sun in a separate interview. "If you think about the two companies together in terms of technology offerings and technology basis, it's very complementary," he said. Sun is in the enterprise and has a substantial Web presence, while MySQL has a substantial Web presence and is entering the enterprise, Murdock said.The MySQL database runs on several platforms, including Linux and Sun's Solaris. MySQL does not see the database market, though, as saturated. "One of the things that's always been exciting about MySQL is we're really going after a new market of database users," with success in the Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and SaaS (software as a service) spaces, said Zack Urlocker, MySQL executive vice president of products. Sun and MySQL also have joint customers such as eBay, he said."I think putting the two companies together, both in terms of what Sun can do to accelerate MySQL adoption and what MySQL can do to accelerate Sun's position in the Web space is going to be very interesting to watch," Murdock said. "This allows us to reach into new markets and have conversations with enormous numbers of developers and startups and other companies that are using MySQL in droves," he said, also pointing out that Sun could sell its workstations and servers to these users.Although Sun has been involved in the development of the rival open source database, PostgreSQL, Schwartz said Sun was reaffirming its commitment to PostgreSQL. "We are firmly committed to figuring out the ways we can optimize and integrate innovations across the two communities. Between MySQL and PostgreSQL, we probably have a large portion of the market covered," said Schwartz.Sun's Josh Berkus is the lead on the PostgreSQL project. Berkus said Sun would continue to accommodate multiple databases.The idea of Sun buying MySQL was born out of a dinner between Schwartz and Mickos a few months ago, Urlocker said. Although MySQL had been on a track to deliver an IPO, the chance to become part of Sun "became just too exciting for us," he said. "This enables us to accelerate our growth onto a much larger kind of platform in the industry."MySQL will become part of Sun as part of the deal, which is expected to be completed in about two months. MySQL products likely will continue to be offered via the same open source subscription strategy.
350173
The ostensible confusion within Sun over the relationship between its first-born Solaris and sibling-rival Linux won&#39;t be cleared up by the open source license it submitted to the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
617835
SAN JOSE, CALIF. -- Executives from Sun Microsystems Inc. outlined their response to the growing popularity of Linux, speaking at the launch on Monday of the most significant update of the Solaris operating system in over two years. Key to the effort is a plan to release Solaris under an open source license with a new subscription pricing model, as well as a software updating system similar to those used by Linux vendors Red Hat Inc. and Novell Inc.ADVERTISEMENTSolaris 10(TM) OS: Position your business ten moves ahead.Solaris 10 OS has arrived and provides even more reasons for the world's most demanding businesses to operate on this, the leading UNIX platform. Like the fact you can run Linux and Solaris applications side-by-side and run the same OS on SPARC(R), AMD Opteron(TM), and Intel processor-based systems. Discover more reasons and how Solaris 10 OS can move your business ahead today.