Sun hopes Project Indiana will help OpenSolaris
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Company wants to create an OpenSolaris-based OS familiar to Linux and Solaris users in a long-term attempt to propagate the software.
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IBM is hoping to provide commercial-level technical support to developers building applications using Eclipse open-source tools.
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Ziff Davis - Sun Microsystems, with its StarOffice suite, and the open-source OpenOffice.org consider server-based applications as a way to boost security, portability and deployment.
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Anyone who registers with Sun will be able to use Solaris for free on servers with x86 processors.
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Sun signs up the software company to support its attempt to make useful a version of its Solaris operating system for x86 chips.
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Ziff Davis - The Public Patent Foundation and others have serious questions about what Sun's new open-source patent policies will actually mean for developers.
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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.
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Hewlett-Packard&#39;s recent announcement regarding a pair of free and open source software projects has irked one of its co-sponsors, OpenLogic.FOSSology is a tool for tracking the use of open source software in an enterprise, and is based on technology developed in-house at HP, the company has said. FOSSBazaar is an accompanying Web site housing best practices and other information concerning FOSS governance.OpenLogic&#39;s CEO, Steven Grandchamp, said in a blog post Tuesday that HP&#39;s media release essentially hogged the limelight, downplaying the fact that many other companies are backing FOSSBazaar, including Google and Novell.&quot;Although this initiative was started and led by HP, it is designed to be backed and supported by many in the open source ecosystem,&quot; he wrote. &quot;Just as no single member of a large open source community would claim responsibility for all the results, FOSSBazaar will need to follow these same open source community norms. In HP&#39;s desire to talk about their leadership on FOSSBazaar, they may have lost sight of the open and community aspects.&quot;In addition, the HP announcement mixed together news of the free information housed at FOSSBazaar and&#160;the&#160;company&#39;s&#160;new set of commercial services, he noted. &quot;Those details of HP&#39;s open source services may have been better left for a different forum or separate press release.&quot;Grandchamp also said he has received phone calls and e-mail regarding whether HP is now competing with OpenLogic, which makes a tool called OSS Discovery.Describing the two tools as &quot;complementary,&quot; he wrote, &quot;OSS Discovery can be used to discover which open source packages are installed on your machines (providing package names and versions), regardless of license. FOSSology can be used to search for open source licenses in a set of source or binary code.&quot;But Grandchamp extended an olive branch to HP even as he chided its actions. &quot;Bottom line, we think that FOSSBazaar can be a valuable resource for enterprises, despite some confusion around the announcement. Our intention is to work with all of the participants in FOSSBazaar to ensure that it is a valuable resource helping enterprises to become more knowledgeable about open source governance issues and therefore more comfortable in using open source software.&quot;HP could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.
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Sun described on Wednesday a growth strategy that depends in large part on giving away software in the hope that customers will like it enough to sign up for support contracts and perhaps buy Sun hardware on which to run it.It&#39;s a strategy Sun started several years ago with a free version of its application server and that it has accelerated with such products&#160;as StarOffice, OpenSolaris, its Open xVM virtualization software, and, most recently,&#160;its acquisition of the open-source database vendor MySQL.The free software allows Sun to build communities of developers who will do pilot projects with its software and may eventually buy licenses for commercial deployment, or buy professional services to support critical applications, CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz said at the company&#39;s press day Wednesday. He called Sun&#39;s software a &quot;media asset&quot; for building communities.&quot;These are no longer simply software products, these are media properties -- networks around which communities are being built, [and] this is a means for Sun to talk to a very large developer community,&quot; he said.He put up a slide that showed a map of the world covered in pink dots. Each dot represented a download of Solaris, he said, and hence an opportunity for Sun to start a dialogue with IT people that could lead to a sale of its services and hardware.&quot;Not all customers will pay for these products before they use them -- very few will, actually,&quot; he admitted. But they all buy servers and storage on which to run the software, and the download gives Sun a foot in the door to try to capture that sale.&quot;The reason MySQL was interesting to us is it puts 50,000 new dots on that map every day, and from the community, market opportunities will emerge,&quot; Schwartz said.Sun&#39;s growth is important to customers. Its revenue funds its research and development efforts, and customers want to know there is a big community of specialists in Sun products to support their businesses.Analysts are divided about the strategy. At Sun&#39;s financial analyst conference last week, Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said he found it hard to see a link between software downloads and Sun&#39;s revenue growth.&quot;If you were to plot a chart showing revenue growth over the last 12 quarters and Solaris downloads, there would really be no correlation at all,&quot; Sacconaghi said.&quot;Oh, I think there would be an exceptional correlation,&quot; Schwartz replied. &quot;If you had shut those downloads off three years ago, our revenue would have been declining double-digit.&quot;He reiterated the point Wednesday. Sun&#39;s strongest growth period came in the late 1990s and was preceded by wide use of its software in universities, he said. Today, the growth of Sun&#39;s Niagara servers has been driven by making Solaris open source, Schwartz said.Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said there probably is a connection between Sun&#39;s free and open-source software strategy and its revenue growth, but even if there is not, the strategy is helping the company, he said.&quot;Even if you can&#39;t say that each pink dot equals $372, I think the things Sun has been doing with open source and OpenSolaris and Java and so forth have translated into improved relevancy and an improved perception of Sun, and at some level, logic suggests that this played a role in their improved financial picture.&quot;
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Sun Microsystems has quietly begun seeking official open-source status for a new software license that likely will be used to govern its Solaris operating system.
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Sun will release its Solaris Cluster source code over the next 18 months to help developers build clustered and high-availability applications and services.
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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.
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Sun Microsystems will gain access to high end open source file system technology with its imminent purchase of Cluster File Systems Inc.
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Analysis: To promote the popularity of its Solaris operating system, Sun must entice developers and mend rifts.
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In a deal aimed at helping corporate IT decision-makers feel more comfortable about open-source software offerings, Hewlett-Packard Co. plans to offer first-call support for JBoss Inc.'s open-source application server application.
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TechWeb - The company will use Project Indiana to target the Linux developer community and its enterprise customers with frequent community-oriented releases of the operating system.
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II&#39;m reading everywhere that Sun is making Solaris 10 free and open source ( http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=106224). environment.