Free Soft

We made some big announcements this week at our annual developer forums, CommunityOne and JavaOne. I thought I'd highlight a couple in particular.

We announced the first commercial release of OpenSolaris - targeting high speed developers and development teams (not consumers...). OpenSolaris focuses on developers wanting to be freed from proprietary software models, who see innovation and automation in operating systems as a source of competitive advantage.

If Solaris 10, OpenSolaris's older brother, is for IT departments prioritizing carrier grade stability over rapid innovation, OpenSolaris targets the exact opposite - developers, from high performance computing to social networking, that prioritize a constantly refreshing repository filled with community innovations (and ZFS-based automated rollback) over an unchanging qualification target. Go to OpenSolaris.com to download a free copy, or click on the OpenSolaris logo to have a bootable CD delivered to you (free of charge). Or if you want a simpler way of trying it out... just go to Amazon!

We also announced a partnership with Amazon, through which we've made OpenSolaris, alongside MySQL and Glassfish, available with commercial support on Amazon's elastic computing cloud. From where I sit, this is a profound change in the industry - the world's most popular database is now available, and commercially supported, as a cloud service. As is the fastest growing Java container, and a redefined OpenSolaris for the modern world.

The traditional software industry, first revolutionized by open source, next by software as a service, is now embarking on a third revolutionary change... infrastructure as a service.

Sure feels like the clouds are parting.

(And again, if you'd like a free copy of OpenSolaris sent to you on a bootable, "live" CD, just click on the OpenSolaris logo above.)

Tagi: innovatis, software models, amaz, coue, glassfish, amazon, social networking, target, developer forums, profound change, bootable cd, proprietary software, rollback, software industry, competitive advantage, repository, high performance, clouds, operating

As you're probably aware, we've been working very hard to rebuild the community, and the momentum, around all our software assets at Sun, most notably the Solaris operating system.

Why notably Solaris? As a systems company, the operating system (OS) is among the most important lenses through which our microelectronics, software, systems and service innovations are seen by the marketplace - if the lens is cloudy, you can't see much. As is the case with few other products, our overall market is defined by how big a community of skills, applications and developers we can build around Solaris (and its younger sibling, OpenSolaris) - and only then, by how many customers we can generate.

The work to rebuild that developer community was begun in earnest in January of 2005 - the date on which we made the first source code to Solaris available under a free software license. But the investment in innovation (the main reason people care about source code, after all) began far earlier, with projects like ZFS and DTrace beginning about seven (yes, seven) years ago. Other enhancements were more recent - like our embrace of the Postgres community (who delivered a fantastic new 8.3 release into OpenSolaris today), the evolution of Glassfish (which has a similarly long history), and even the inclusion of CIFS (which allows Solaris to be a first class file server for Microsoft Windows machines).

The developer community surrounding Solaris - as opposed to the user community - is best measured by OpenSolaris. Like its brethren in the Linux community, OpenSolaris is always the most up to date release of Solaris innovations, and is used by those who not only tolerate changes to the underlying OS, but eagerly anticipate it in hopes of eeking out incremental performance, features or functions.

Which is why I was so thrilled to read a report from Forrester that showed great progress in Europe - for open source broadly, and for Solaris and OpenSolaris specifically. You can read the report here.

In it, executives in European Financial Services companies point to Solaris as one of the three most important OS's for their business - and the only modern/open source OS (the other two are proprietary). This bodes well for our capacity to grow, and the early return on what's been a long innovation cycle, not solely in features and performance, but in community, too. (I doubt OpenSolaris was even measurable last year.)

But what's really the best part about the report?

It represents data as of nearly a year ago. If two points make a trend...

To the teams involved - inside Sun, and in the community... thank you. Your work is making a measurable difference.

Tagi: free software license, innovatis, software assets, zfs, linux community, first source, reas, developer community, performance features, cifs, windows machines, system os, file server, software systems, brethren, forrester, sibling, ly, microsoft windows,

As you're probably aware, we've been working very hard to rebuild the community, and the momentum, around all our software assets at Sun, most notably the Solaris operating system.

Why notably Solaris? As a systems company, the operating system (OS) is among the most important lenses through which our microelectronics, software, systems and service innovations are seen by the marketplace - if the lens is cloudy, you can't see much. As is the case with few other products, our overall market is defined by how big a community of skills, applications and developers we can build around Solaris (and its younger sibling, OpenSolaris) - and only then, by how many customers we can generate.

The work to rebuild that developer community was begun in earnest in January of 2005 - the date on which we made the first source code to Solaris available under a free software license. But the investment in innovation (the main reason people care about source code, after all) began far earlier, with projects like ZFS and DTrace beginning about seven (yes, seven) years ago. Other enhancements were more recent - like our embrace of the Postgres community (who delivered a fantastic new 8.3 release into OpenSolaris today), the evolution of Glassfish (which has a similarly long history), and even the inclusion of CIFS (which allows Solaris to be a first class file server for Microsoft Windows machines).

The developer community surrounding Solaris - as opposed to the user community - is best measured by OpenSolaris. Like its brethren in the Linux community, OpenSolaris is always the most up to date release of Solaris innovations, and is used by those who not only tolerate changes to the underlying OS, but eagerly anticipate it in hopes of eeking out incremental performance, features or functions.

Which is why I was so thrilled to read a report from Forrester that showed great progress in Europe - for open source broadly, and for Solaris and OpenSolaris specifically. You can read the report here.

In it, executives in European Financial Services companies point to Solaris as one of the three most important OS's for their business - and the only modern/open source OS (the other two are proprietary). This bodes well for our capacity to grow, and the early return on what's been a long innovation cycle, not solely in features and performance, but in community, too. (I doubt OpenSolaris was even measurable last year.)

But what's really the best part about the report?

It represents data as of nearly a year ago. If two points make a trend...

To the teams involved - inside Sun, and in the community... thank you. Your work is making a measurable difference.

Tagi: free software license, innovatis, software assets, zfs, linux community, first source, reas, developer community, performance features, cifs, windows machines, system os, file server, software systems, brethren, forrester, sibling, ly, microsoft windows,

What are you going to be watching on TV this thanksgiving holiday? Probably haven't given it a thought yet right. How about a 4 day marathon of Cool Tools (November 27-30th 7am-11pm). Cool Tools gives you an insider's look at the changing tools marketplace. From the newest innovations to improvements on old standbys, you'll see design, development, demonstrations and testing of the coolest tools out there.

Avoid the lines at the store and all the hassle that goes along with fighting the crowds to try and save $5 on a gift for your sister. She wants a Bosch PS20 anyway, so you might as well sit back on the couch watching Cool Tools on the TV, shop along at OhioPowerTool.com from the laptop and enjoy the weekend with too many left over turkey sandwiches.  

     

Tagi: turkey sandwiches, innovatis, bosch ps20, left over turkey, marath, thanksgiving holiday, cool tools, tv shop, watching tv, crowds, blitz, hassle, nbsp, insider, improvements, thanksgiving, laptop, couch

I like to take one or two books with me when I travel, and one of the books I chose for this trip is HCI Remixed.

Sometimes the books I choose are a bust. Fortunately that didn't happen this time.

HCI Remixed covers all the major milestones in the field of human computer interaction. And when I say major, I mean it: things like Douglas Engelbart's famous demonstration, now referred to as The Mother of All Demos:

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

So, all those trappings of modern computing that we take for granted today? Engelbart demonstrated them all two years before I was born. It just took a while for the rest of the world to catch up to his vision.

That's the lesson of many of the groundbreaking HCI discoveries presented in this book. Some people see further. Engelbart was so far ahead of his time in 1968 that his demonstration wasn't taken seriously -- it seemed absurd and impractical. It really makes you wonder which of today's HCI researchers we're ignoring but shouldn't be.

The book also takes an interesting approach; it doesn't summarize the papers, instead, it presents the reflections of current working HCI professionals on the papers. It's a little bit meta. You're hearing the impact of these HCI discoveries -- some big, some small -- as related by young researchers who were heavily influenced by them.

As a primer and overview of the field of human computer interaction, it's tough to beat. Reading this reminds me how far we've come, and yet how far we have to go.

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Tagi: menlo park ca, hci researchers, stanford research institute, douglas engelbart, innovatis, th trip, public debut, menlo park, video interface, modern computing, th time, computer mouse, sessi, douglas c, human computer, trappings, menlo, two books, ground