In no uncertain terms, the Director of Solaris product management at Oracle Dan Roberts says OpenSolaris will continue as an open source entity and Oracle will actively support and participate in the community. There are some questions regarding which direction Oracle will take in open sourcing some of OpenSolaris’ technologies and the level of support that will be offered, but generally speaking, all is well, affirms Roberts.
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.
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.
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
Introduction to the Simple Web Frontend, Common Object Model, Business Processe
Go through the build, integrations, and some of the design patterns used in creating an online demonstration based on GlassFish Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) 2.2. In a series of blog entries, readers will be taken through the process of building Oracle-Sun’s UK-Pre-Sales team’s new Cars Online Demonstration. Originally built using the SeeBeyond ICAN product set, it was decided to try and build the demo using GlassFish ESB 2.2 to leverage its functionality and flexibility.
Learn the Basics as Well as Indepth Looks at ZFS, DTrace and How to Contribute
India’s largest IT magazine Digit published a special 96 page mini book entitled “Fast Track to OpenSolaris” that covers Install, ZFS, DTrace, Source Juicer, and more. Kumar Abhishek, leader of the Mumbai OpenSolaris User Group, authored the piece, described as a “quick and dirty guide to OpenSolaris”. The mini book is now available for download.
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.
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.
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.
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.
