Sun plans to countersue NetApp
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ZFS file system can't be un-open-sourced, Schwartz says on his blog. And if Sun wins, it'll donate some proceeds to open-source and patent reform causes.
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Sun Microsystems Inc. will begin building servers with one-time foe Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system installed directly inside of them, instead of forcing customers to install the ubiquitous software on their own or defect to a competitor for one-stop shopping.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Sun Microsystems Inc. will begin building servers with one-time foe Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system installed directly inside of them, instead of forcing customers to install the ubiquitous software on their own or defect to a competitor for one-stop shopping.
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Software giant's deal with Sun has raised some questions.
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Sun plans to provide legal protection from patent-infringement suits to outsiders using or developing the OS--a move to counter Linux.
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If you had any doubts about Sun Microsystems' commitment to open source, it's time to set them aside.
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SAN JOSE, Calif.--When Sun Microsystems releases Solaris as open-source software, it plans to provide legal protection from patent-infringement suits to outsiders using or developing the operating system--one of several ways Sun hopes to make Solaris more
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COMMENTARY -- Judging by his latest blog entry, Sun COO and president Jonathan Schwartz has something new to keep him up at night -- the growing perception that Solaris x86 is anti-Linux -- anti-GNU/Linux, to be specific.
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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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Ziff Davis - Sun will face trouble creating a developer community around its plans for open-source Solaris for many reasons, say analysts and industry figures.
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Sun and Microsoft are using a common strategy to attack a common enemy--Red Hat. Sun President Jonathan Schwartz fired a major counteroffensive against Linux nemesis Red Hat by unveiling hefty discounts on
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(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. Well, Sun plans to spotlight a variation on that mixture, replacing Linux with its own Solaris Unix OS as part of its Solaris + AMP, or SAMP, stack for building Web applications. Featured in Sun's rollout on Tuesday are versions of the open-source AMP components optimized for the Solaris 10 OS plus Sun developer tools. The Solaris + AMP unveiling is part of a multifaceted announcement of free development offerings to debut on Tuesday with Sun hoping to sell support as a way to generate revenues. While stressing that Sun was not trying to compete with LAMP itself, Dan Roberts, Sun's director of developer tools marketing, did note that Sun believes its Solaris platform presents a viable competitor to Linux. Developers can build to Apache, MySQL, and the scripting languages but deploy their applications on Solaris or the open-source variant, OpenSolaris, to get advantages such as reliability and security, he said. "We're very much competing [with] Red Hat," and Suse, Roberts said. The company is featuring the PostgreSQL object-relational database as part of the stack along with MySQL. Sun tools and other open-source technologies also are included, and step-by-step instructions on deploying the stack are offered. Analysts recognized Sun's Solaris + AMP effort as a way to entice open-source developers to the Sun camp. "Theyâre trying to make it more comfortable for those who had been working in Linux to consider coming to Solaris as an alternative," said analyst Jean Bozman of IDC. Although IDC does not rank operating systems, Sun does have tools in its Solaris arsenal, such as the DTrace tracing framework and ZFS (Zettabyte File System), that could be attractive to Linux developers, Bozman said. "It's very clear that Sun is going after the same set of developers in the open-source community," as Linux, she said. Making a stronger case for Sun, Andi Mann, senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates, said Sun with Solaris + AMP had taken the best parts of the LAMP stack, swapped out Linux with Solaris, and added other open-source technologies. "In terms of standing a chance against LAMP, absolutely, I think it's a very strong offering," Mann said. But Sun faces an obstacle in that Solaris still is considered by some to be a proprietary Unix variant, even if that is not true anymore, Mann said. "It's going to be difficult just to get mind share over Linux," he said. Users of Solaris + AMP also can avail themselves to Sun's Try and Buy program, in which customers can try out Sun hardware for 60 days. Sun also plans to unveil Solaris Express, Developer Edition on Tuesday. "Itâs a new distribution of OpenSolaris specifically targeted at developers on x86 or x64 workstations or Intel AMD-based laptops and workstations," Roberts said. Developers can use the OpenSolaris distribution to build applications that would then be deployed on Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris. "It's just like [how] a Windows developer can deploy a solution that runs on Linux." Roberts said. An integrated environment for developing applications for Solaris, Java, and Web 2.0 is featured, and a simplified install mechanism is part of the package. Also included is an improved Gnome-based desktop and Sun development tools, including Sun Studio 11 and the NetBeans 5.5 IDE. Sun is packaging more than 150 open-source applications with Solaris Express, Developer Edition. The Glassfish application server is featured as well. Also on Tuesday, Sun will offer a second iteration of its Startup Essentials Program for startup firms to use discounted Sun hardware and Solaris. New to the program is the inclusion of storage solutions and low-end SPARC systems. Discounts have been 60 percent to 70 percent less than list prices. Through its Sun Developer Expert Assistance Program, Sun offers support for $49 per request. An annual subscription featuring support for unlimited requests costs $249.
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'Filthy rich internet applications' Sun has given the world a (slightly) better idea of what's on the way from client-side Java.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Sun is taking a page from Microsoft's security group and changing the way it updates Java for the desktop. On Tuesday, Sun announced that it will start providing advance notification of its Java SE (Standard Edition) security updates and that it will also scrap its controversial practice of staggering the release of Java patches. Instead, it will release updates for all supported Java SE platforms simultaneously. Sun Spokeswoman Jacki Decoster said that the changes were designed to make it easier for enterprises to patch all of their Java systems at once. But Sun's new system also happens to remedy what some had called a serious security risk. In July,Â eEye Digital Security CTO Marc Maiffret blasted Sun for waiting months between the release of some versions of its desktop Java. In January, Maiffret's company had discovered a serious bug in the Java Network Launching Protocol, which is used to run Java programs over the Web. But Sun made its fix for the problem available to developers several weeks beforeÂ it pushed out the update to the Java community at large. Though this practice gave attackers a chance to reverse-engineer Sun's security fixes and use them against some of Sun's 800 million desktop users, surprisingly, the Java platform has only rarely been targeted, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with nCircle Network Security. "It's still the number-one platform for IT enterprise development in-house. But we haven't seen a whole lot of attacks against it." Besides staggering developer and end-user releases, Sun would also wait before releasing updates to users of older versions of Java. Previously, it was standard practice for Sun to fix older versions of Java, such as J2SE 5.0 and J2SE 1.4, weeks or even months after it had patched the latest Java SE 6 software. That will all change under the new system, which will offer simultaneous developer and end-user releases for these three versions of Java. However, users of J2SE 1.3 will have to wait until next year before their software is updated at the same time as the rest of the platform, Decoster said. She could not say whether Sun planned to offer this type of synchronized release for its embedded or server-based Java platforms, Java ME (Micro Edition) and Java EE (Enterprise Edition). Sun's advance notifications will not be released according to a pre-set schedule, as is the case with Microsoft and Oracle, but they will come out within a week of the actual security patches, Decoster said. Customers can receive the advance notifications via e-mail or read about them on Sun's security blog , she added.
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Exec's comments come after Sun decides to release Java code under the less-controversal version 2 of the General Public License.
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Six patents topped with a slice of avocado Sun Microsystems has spanked Network Appliance with another lawsuit, as relations between the two vendor continue to deteriorate at speed.â¦
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InfoWorld - Sun&#160;is putting millions of Java users at risk by staggering the release of security patches for the software, security vendor eEye Digital Security said Monday.