System News for Sun Users - The Blog

MySQL Co-founder and Others Believe So

An assessment of the Oracle-Sun acquisition in terms of the future for the open source database MySQL is presented by Steve Evans of CBR in the article “What now for MySQL?” He reviews the hard fight Oracle eventually won to become owner of MySQL, and offers why the EU’s decision should assuage some of the worries of the open source community.

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Now the World’s Largest Purveyor of Open Source Software

With its acquisition of Sun, Oracle is now the world’s largest purveyor of open source software. However, as Ken Hess notes on the DaniWeb Forum Index, Oracle’s support didn’t start with its purchase of InnoDB, MySQL or Sun. The company has a history of supporting free and open source software and has done much for the FOSS community.

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Three Reasons Why it is Inevitable

Inevitably IT will be more open by the end of 2010, contends Evan Powell, who cites these three reasons on why the momentum toward openness is certain:

• 1. Moore’s Law -> abstraction -> freedom and flexibility and openness
• 2. Tight budgets -> open minds
• 3. Open source critical mass cannot be stopped

Visit Powell’s blog for details.

Updated Core Directory Server, Significant Improvements in Read/Write Performance

Sun OpenDS Standard Edition (SE) 2.2 provides improvement to the core directory server as well as a new proxy server capability to manage requests between LDAP client applications and remote LDAP servers (either Sun OpenDS SE 2.2 or Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition (DSEE) 7.0). It also includes a web-based “Namefinder” lookup sample application to browse users in the Directory.

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New Guide Offers Best Practices, Steps on Adopting ODF and Coexisting with MS Office

The OpenDocument Format (ODF) is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. The ISO and IEC International Standard is gaining momentum as more enterprises, governments and organizations adopt it. A January 2010 guide offers suggestions on how to develop an action plan for ODF adoption and collaborate with Microsoft Office users, work with a PDF in an ODF environment, and use connectors for content management systems.

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Java Champion Adam Bien Shares His Views

Java Champion and Rock Star Adam Bien, author of “Real World Java EE Patterns,” shared his views on JavaFX with Janice J. Heiss in interview published in January 2010. Getting right to the heart of the subject, he identified the inclusion of “good skinnable components” in version JavaFX 1.2 as a welcome improvement. “JavaFX requires writing less code while it integrates very well with existing business logic written in Java. A reason to go the JavaFX route is better maintainability, and faster development with less code,” he said.

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Survey Reports Move Toward Free Apps on the Horizon

A recent poll of US and UK CIOS finds that a majority of firms are using free software applications across their networks, and plan to increase their usage of free software. According to marketing-research firm Vanson Bourne, about 76 percent of CIOs surveyed claimed they use free software applications at the organizational level, while 88 percent said they have deployed free software applications at departmental levels.

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Declared a Winner by Every Consideration

Sun’s VirtualBox 3.1 has definitely made a big hit with InfoWorld’s reviewer Randall C. Kennedy, who writes, “This is one freebie that breaks the mold and delivers more, not less, than you’re expecting.” In Kennedy’s opinion, VirtualBox 3.1 should give VMware something serious to worry about. ” … after years of wallowing in obscurity, VirtualBox, the desktop virtualisation solution of choice for FOSS groupies and similar anti-establishment types, is causing quite a ruckus,” he continues.

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Sun Execs Simon Phipps and Bob Worrall Examine the Issue

Simon Phipps and Bob Worrall, two Sun stalwarts who know as much or more than anyone else about the value of open source solutions, share their views of the state of open source in Worrall’s Sun Inner Circle column, “Open Source: Where We’ve Been and Where It’s Headed.” The column is addressed to the corporate CIOs among its readers.

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Free to Download, Use, Modify, Access Updates, and Reads/Writes Microsoft Office Files

OpenOffice.org has been downloaded more than 100 million times in the past year. A Sun Inner Circle article takes a closer look at the reasons behind the accelerating adoption of OpenOffice.org, and offers a suggested migration roadmap along with advice to those organizations considering a move to the free, open-source, multi-platform, multilingual productivity suite.

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