Oracle News Archives

Last week at JavaOne, former Sun CEO, Scott McNealy, had commented on Sun Microsystems' new scripting language -- JavaFX -- as well as on two mistakes Sun had made with Solaris. JavaWorld has some of the highlights, and this search link has additional information from our coverage of JavaOne 2007 last week.

On Monday we covered Ian Murdock's CommunityOne session where he had hinted at good things to come for the Solaris Operating System, but he wasn't too specific as to what would be taking place. According to Stephen Shankland at CNET, Murdock is responsible for "project Indiana" where he will be making Solaris more like GNU/Linux and has a few comments from Murdock himself. The CNET article is available here.

JavaFX Mobile will be available to OEM manufacturers around the world and will work on a variety of devices such as PDAs and mobile telephones. JavaFX Mobile has been dubbed "The Network in Your Hand". Pictures from Green's speech will be uploaded to Phoronix after the event has ended.

Rich Green has just announced that a series of new releases in the coming months will greatly increase the speed of Java SE 6. JavaFX has been announced along with JavaFX Scripting Language for next-generation Internet applications. James Gosling is on stage right now at JavaOne talking more about JavaFX Script.

Coming out of JavaOne this morning is quite a bit of new announcements delivered by Rich Green. Java is now fully open-source with the availability of the OpenJDK along with announcing an interim governing board to determine the future of Java. The Java TCK compatibility kit source-code will also be made available. Other announcements coming out this morning include Real Time Java, Erricson going open-source, NASDAQ going to utilize Real Time Java, and Sony Pictures using Java on Blu-Ray discs. More information (and pictures) to come soon.

Sun's CommunityOne is starting this morning with JavaOne 2007 officially starting tomorrow morning. Below is the first picture from CommunityOne 2007 with many more (and interesting) pictures to come later in the day.

Sun Microsystems has issued a press release detailing that engineers have yesterday been successful in running Solaris 10 on the Rock. We originally told you that the Rock had arrived on Jonathan Schwartz's desk a few weeks ago, but this 16 core processor has now booted with Solaris OS. The Rock is not only a 16 core processor but it also 256 terabytes of RAM in a single software domain and is an UltraSPARC implementation. Sun's Rock is currently on schedule for shipping in the second half of 2008.

If you aren't making the journey out to San Francisco, California for Sun's JavaOne conference, I have received word from Sun that they will be hosting a virtual pavilion in Second Life. John Gage, Sun's Chief Researcher, will be issuing a virtual keynote address on Second Life along with a Q&A session on the major happenings from JavaOne 2007. The Sun Pavilion on Second Life will also feature videos, web links, and news releases from Sun. Free virtual JavaOne backpacks and t-shirts will also be given away.

Computer World has published a very brief Q&A with Sun CTO Bob Brewin. Brewin's comments primarily focus on Java at JavaOne with all of the GPL code being on track for release before next month, but he does make an interesting comment about whether we will see a GPL-ized version of Solaris at JavaOne. Brewin states: "We haven't decided what we are going to do about that. JavaOne is the wrong place to do that. We're keeping a really close eye on the upcoming GPL 3. It is one of the things that will gate our decision. That is due out in July. We want to see how that will play out, and then we will make our decision." This comment is in contrast to BusinessWeek's article yesterday stating Jonathan Schwartz may announce Solaris adopting the GPL during the JavaOne conference next week.

BusinessWeek is out with a new article this morning entitled Sun Mulls Deeper Open-Source Dive. This news analysis goes over Sun Microsystems' continuing problems in turning a profit on their servers with their stock price dropping 22% since February. Aaron Ricadela of BusinessWeek seems to believe Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz will announce releasing Solaris as GPL code. This announcement could come next week at JavaOne in San Francisco, California (which Phoronix will be covering live). Releasing Solaris as GPL code could help Linux developers in now being able to adopt ZFS, DTrace, and other of Solaris' brightest projects. But will it be too late to be of a real benefit to Sun Microsystems and their declining server sales? Of course, last year at JavaOne Sun's Schwartz had announced Java going open-source.

The 58th edition of the OpenSolaris Weekly News is now available. New developments this week in the OpenSolaris community include the release of SXCE build 62, basic support for an Emacs mode in writing DTrace D programs, a Mercurial plugin for Netbeans, a new version of Virtual Consoles, and a few other topics.

If you're an OpenSolaris x86 user and are using a NVIDIA graphics card with NVIDIA's binary Solaris drivers, you can now enjoy Compiz on your desktop. Erwann Chenede has produced packages of Compiz 0.5.0 for OpenSolaris x86. In fact, to ease the process he has even written an OpenSolaris install script for Compiz. At this time it is limited to x86 users with NVIDIA graphics cards, and there is also no word on any future Beryl support. More information (along with download links) is available from Erwann's Sun Blog.

While this falls more under the Java umbrella, today's release of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04) makes it easier than ever for Linux desktop users and server administrators to benefit from the realm of Java possibilities. Using Ubuntu's Multiverse with apt-get, Feisty Fawn users can now install Sun's GlassFish, Java SE (JDK 6), Java DB 10.2, and NetBeans 5.5. Canonical has been in relations with Sun Microsystems for almost a year now, but up until today this level of integration wasn't found in Dapper Drake or Edgy Eft. From the perspective of running Ubuntu on a few machines and being a Java developer, this is certainly a nice move to see. Linux Planet has some additional information along with comments from Ian Murdock.

Yesterday we had reported on the announcement of the new SPARC servers coming between Sun and Fujitsu. This afternoon Top Tech News has some additional information on these new SPARC enterprise servers. These new servers are up to 50% faster than current SPARC servers and includes hot-swappable processor and memory support. All of these new servers ship with and are fully supported by Solaris 10. Though be forewarned, however, the new high-end Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 starts out at $511,385 USD.

After last week's DoS attack advisory a new vulnerability has been discovered for Sun's Solaris and the Java Web Console. Affected systems could be remotely penetrated due to a format string error in its call to syslog(). This vulnerability can be resolved by upgrading to post Sun Java Web Console 2.2.6 or newer. This security advisory comes from SecuObs.

Today Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu will be announcing several new SPARC-powered servers. Their low-end servers will use the Niagara UltraSPARC T1 while the high-end models will feature the dual-core SPARC 64 VI. These SPARC servers will ship with Solaris 10. eWeek has provided additional coverage of these new Sun and Fujitsu servers.

A Malaysian IT site known as ComputerWorld Malaysia is reporting that Sun is donating storage code to OpenSolaris.org. The first bits of Sun code for their storage technology getting out is the Zettabyte File System, Network File System v4.1, and YANFS. Sun Microsystems also plans on donating code from the StorageTek QFS shared file system, StorageTek Storage Archive Manager, and StorageTek 5800 client interfaces and simulator/server. QLogic will also be donating code from its HBA Fibre Channel storage products for the OpenSolaris movement.

After the announcement earlier this week that Sun would be acquiring SavaJe Technologies, the rumor mill over at The Inquirer is reporting that perhaps Sun is plotting a JavaPhone. An industry analyst had commented in the article that it could be a pure Java-based mobile phone. I guess we'll just have to see what is on display this year at JavaOne in San Francisco.

David Norfolk of Reg Developer has published an article entitled Linux and Solaris face off, which is about Solaris within the Linux community and how it's embraced (or not) by their readers. If you're undecided on using Linux or Solaris, or just are looking for something to read, this may be worth checking out.

FORTUNE Magazine is running an article entitled The greenest computer company under the Sun in which they talk with Sun's Dave Douglas. Dave is the vice president of eco-responsibility in which he deals with the energy efficiency of Sun. In this article he talks about the efficiency of the UltraSPARC server processor, the world wide energy usage of servers, how virtualization can save power, and Sun's hopes for the environment.

Secunia is out with an advisory that warns users of Solaris 8 and 9 of a denial of service attack possibility. There is a vulnerability in Solaris that could be exploited through special IP packets. This issue affects both SPARC and x86 Solaris platforms. A patch is available from Sun for Solaris 8/9, while users of Solaris 10 should be in the clear.

Device Forge is reporting that Sun has acquired SavaJe Technologies. SavaJe Technologies is the company behind the Java-based embedded operating system for mobile phones. Additional details are expected to come out next month at JavaOne 2007.

At the UK-based technology website Techworld, Sun's Larry Wake has responded to Novell's recent comments at Techworld about Sun and the real intentions of Solaris. Specifically, Novell's Adrian Keward believes that Solaris has suffered due to Sun's primary focus on their hardware offerings. In Sun bites back at Novell, Wake responds with thoughts on Sun's software division, Solaris hardware support, the performance of Solaris, open-source Solaris, and the longevity of Solaris applications. Larry Wake serves as a group manager for Solaris at Sun.

Jonathan Schwartz has posted on his Sun blog that the Rock (the codename for Sun's upcoming processor) has arrived at his desk. He mentions that this is a 16-core 2395 pin (1514 of which are used for power/grounding and 812 pins are for signaling) UltraSPARC processor. Using the Rock processor and OpenSolaris, it will allow for up to 256 terabytes of RAM in a single software domain. More on Sun's Rock CPU will be revealed in the coming weeks (JavaOne time-frame).

TechWorld published a new article this morning entitled New Sun exec aims to close Solaris ‘usability gap’. In this article they interview Ian Murdock who is the new chief operating platforms officer for Sun. There are only three questions in this piece, but Ian highlights his plans to close the "usability gap" for Solaris.

Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian Linux, has left his CTO position at the Linux Foundation to now work for Sun Microsystems. He outlined this change today in his blog, and it appears he has some hopes or things up his sleeves for Sun's operating system division and Linux. His new position at Sun is in operating system platform strategy.

Just in time for Christmas Sun Microsystems has released its first bit of Java code that complies with the GNU GPL v2 license. J2ME was first for release and is now available as phoneME. Enjoy!

Project Looking Glass has reached version 1.0! For the uninformed, Project Looking Glass is an open-source 3D desktop environment for not only Linux but also Solaris and Windows, and is powered by Java. Binary Builds are available for all major platforms here. More information can be found at the Project Looking Glass LG3D Core Project.

Sun Microsystems has finally pushed out Java 6. Sun's Java 6 is the most extensive release yet, and is coming after two years in development and a great deal of outside work. More on Java 6 Standard Edition Platform can be read here.

With the official announcement of Java going open-source under the GPL, several developers and those associated with various Linux distributions and projects have begun blogging their thoughts on this topic. Among those sharing their thoughts so far has been Rich Burridge (GNOME), Christian Schaller (GNOME), Pete Zaitcev (Fedora), Jesse Keating (Fedora), Alvaro Lopez Ortega (GNOME), and Jonathan Carter (Ubuntu). There are also various thoughts shared on the Phoronix Forums.

Sun Microsystems is expected to start releasing some of Java's code under the GPL (GNU Public License v2). This move should allow a greater number of Linux distributions to ship with Java after it has become an open-source project. This is certainly some great news especially for Java programmers. All of the Java source-code should be available by March of 2007. Some information can be read at ZDNet and Lycos. Share your thoughts on this at the Phoronix Forums.

As was anticipated, today at the start of JavaOne, Jonathan Schwartz has stated that the source-code to Java will be RELEASED. This source-code will hopefully create Java as an independent entity of Sun Microsystems, in the event the company goes under or other circumstances arise. No word yet on when or how the code will be released. More information on Sun's promise is here.

With today's open-source announcement of Java by Sun Microsystems, they have also announced the recast of Java licensing for GNU/Linux and OpenSolaris communities. The new license allows distributors to include Java SE 5.0 Java Development Kit and Java Runtime Environment as installable packages. Among the projects already after including Java with their software is Ubuntu, Debian distributions, Gentoo, NexentaOS, Schillix, and BeleniX -- many more announcements are expected soon. More information is in the Sun press release.

Many speculations have been flying around the Internet in regards to Sun Microsystems potentially open-sourcing Java. While we likely won't hear a yea or nay until JavaOne, there has been an open-letter from a former Sun CEO to the new Sun CEO -- Johnathan Schwartz. In this letter, the push is made to open-source Java, including the Java Virtual Machine. If Java were open-source, the point was made that it could be more competitive with Microsoft's .NET. The open-source Java situation will certainly be an interesting subject matter at JavaOne Conference 2006, which runs from May 16 to 19 in San Francisco CA. The letter can be found at ZDNet.