Rich Green, Executive Sun VP of Software, did a fantastic job leading Sun Software over these past two and half years (Rich came back to Sun on May 1st, 2006) and I am really bummed to see Rich leave.    Rich oversaw the most important and significant changes to Sun's software portfolio that Sun has ever gone through since we transitioned from SunOS to Solaris.

Rich has had a long and impressive history with Sun.  He was VP of the Java Group, where J2ME, J2SE and J2EE were defined and developed.  Rich was personally responsible for the success of Sun's Java strategy and platforms.  Obviously, Rich did a great job.

Prior to leading the Java organization, Rich was VP of the Solaris Products Group and prior to that he managed the design and development of distributed object systems, network communication products, desktop integration technologies, software development tools and database systems.

Rich was a real thought leader in Sun's open source software strategy.  The acquisition of MySQL can also be credited largely to Rich as well.   

Rich liked to say, "Volume Drives Value."  This is a simple but powerful concept: the more developers there are on the network, the more compelling devices and services they create, the broader the market opportunity for Sun's network innovations - hardware, software and services.

On Monday November 13th, 2006 - Sun open sourced Java:

Rich said at the time, "This undoubtedly is the largest single open-source contribution in the history of IT." 

Mike Dillon, Sun General Counsel was quoted at the time:

The transition was tedious and legalistic, said Sun General Counsel Mike Dillon. "Java Standard Edition contains about 6 million lines of code," Dillon said. "Our legal team [of 190 lawyers] had to go over it, line by line, and look for all copyright marks and third-party involvements.  Where Sun didn't have the correct licenses, we had to contact the owners, one by one and determine the rights." In some cases, Sun had to settle with copyright owners.  Dillon said the company considered some of the 200-plus open-source licenses but settled on the GPL because "it has the largest development community at this time driving innovation, and that is what Sun is striving for."

 Something that Rich and I shared in common was that we both love the movie Annie Hall.  Annie Hall has more great lines than any other  movie that I can think of.  Woody Allen played the character Alvy Singer in Annie Hall.

Alvy Singer: "I remember the staff at our public school. You know, we had a saying, uh, that those who can't do teach, and those who can't teach, teach gym. And, uh, those who couldn't do anything, I think, were assigned to our school."

Thanks for everything Rich.  Best of luck to you in all your endeavours.

This was the best CEC by far.  The training was World Class quality.  It
never ceases to amaze me that when we ask Sun's technical community to put in
the nights and weekends to create top notch hands on training - they always
deliver.  That we are able to capture all of this is even better.

While we have seen a great deal of change at Sun Microsystems in the past few
years, the one constant is the deep passion Sun's technical community always
demonstrate when it comes to helping each other and Sun's Partners get smart
about our technologies.

I had the privilege of giving a one hour presentation on Open Source Monetization that I will share parts of later this week on my blog.

Most importantly, we all owe a HUGE Thanks to Kirk Brown, Sun Global Software Chief Technologist, for his great leadership of CEC 2008.

 Tom Toles of the Washington Post that captured just how important today is with this op ed cartoon.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....

 Without question, this is the most historic day in my lifetime and if we ever needed a transformational and inclusive leader it is now.   Barack Obama has been given a very tough hand, but I believe that he has all the tools to be a truly great President of the United States of America.

I was at the Sun Office in Irvine, CA a few weeks ago and they had a 1982 Sun-1 in the lobby.  Below are two photos I took from my cellphone.

As Wikpedia states:  Sun-1 was the first generation of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in May 1982. These were based on a CPU board designed by Andy Bechtolsheim while he was a graduate student at Stanford University and funded by DARPA. The Sun-1 systems ran SunOS 0.9, a port of UniSoft's UniPlus V7 port of Seventh Edition UNIX to the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, with no window system. Early Sun-1 workstations and servers used the original Sun logo, a series of red "S"s laid out in a square, rather than the more familiar purple diamond shape used later.
The first Sun-1 workstation was sold to Solo Systems in May of 1982.^[1] The Sun-1/100 was used in the original Lucasfilm EditDroid non-linear editing system. 

 As I have first personally heard Scott McNealy say, "the first serial number was 15 so customers did not think they were getting one of the first systems."

Something cool to check out is the SUN Workstation Architecture, Andreas Bechtolsheim, Forest Baskett, Vaughan Pratt, Stanford University Computer systems Laboratory Technical Report No. 229, March 1982

Another interesting tidbit of Sun history that I learned at the 25th anniversary of Sun Microsystems at The Computer History Musuem was that Vaughan Pratt was the person who designed the famous Sun logo.

As Wikipedia points out, the Sun logo, which features four interleaved copies of the word "sun"; it is an ambigram

I just heard an amazing statistic that since 2001, 3.5 MILLION manufacturing jobs have been lost in the United States!  This is where standards such as MTConnect really matter for the United States.  We must increase the productivity for the manufacturing technology industry and MTConnect is the absolute first step because until manufacturing technology systems can speak the same language, the industry will continue to languish.   The great news is that, as you see below, MTConnect is doing tremendously well thanks the the huge success of IMTS 2008.

MTConnect at IMTS 2008 was a HUGE SUCCESS.    Above is the sign describing the approach to MTConnect based on open, royalty-free standards.

IMTS is an amazing show to attend.  As the good folks at AMT like to say, machine tools are the "things that make the things".  What you see above is an engine block that is approximately 16 FEET in length and made with a machine tool.  Machine tools are just one example of the manufacturing technology that is shown at ITMS.

Above is Dr. Dave Patterson (second from the left) and three members of the AMT Board of Directors watching the MTConnect video at the MTConnect display at the Emerging Technology Center.

Above Dr. Armando Fox and Dr. Dave Patterson discuss MTConnect during the private executive tour.

Andy Dugenske of Georgia Institute of Technology, sent me this photo when we were watching one of the MTConnect videos when I happened to be on the video stating that "MTConnect will be a revolution and not an evolution in the manufacturing technology sector".

Above was the most popular screen at the MTConnect area at the Emerging Technology Center where you could select one of the 25 companies listed and get real time data on what the machine tool was dolng at the exact second.  A great example of how easy MTConnect can be to implement is the lower right LNS selection.  LNS asked if they could be part of MTConnect on a Tuesday evening.  Will Sobel, Consultant and Adjunct Professor at UCB pointed them at the MTConnect homepage where the MTConnect SDK lives.  They spent that evening writing the adapter.  The next morning Will Sobel went to their display and had them up and running in less than a 1/2 an hour.

Above John Turner of GE FANUC shows of GE FANUC's MTConnect GE FANUC PC8 (that is a black box that makes it extremely easy to plug multiple types of machine tools on one side and ethernet ports on the other) to Dr. Dave Patterson of UCB.  We believe it was the PC8 first MTConnect sale EVER and it happened at IMTS 2008.

Above is the close up of GE FANUC's PC8 MTConnect device.

MTConnect and specifically AMT is sponsoring an MTConnect Student Competition where the winner(s) will receive a trip to Milan, Italy to attend  EMO MILANO!

You can see that all of us are extremely happy that MTConnect was such a huge success.  From left to right, Dave Edstrom, Dr. Armando Fox of UCB, Dr. Dave Patterson of UCB, Dr. Dave Dornfield of UCB, Will Sobel, Consultant and Adjunct Professor of UCB, Andy Dugenske of Georgia Institute of Technology and Athulan Vijayaraghavan, Ph.D. student at UCB.  This is the most fun and most technically satisfying experience I have had in my 30 years in the computer industry....

 Above is the invitation to Dr. David A. Patterson's Dinner in Chicago honoring Dave for his tremendous contributions to MTConnect.

Above,  Armando is making a point to Dave Patterson while I concentrate on feeding my face :-)

Above John Byrd is presenting Dave Patterson with a special MTConnect gift.

Above is Dr. Dave Patterson, Will Sobel (Consultant and Adjunct Professor at UCB, John Byrd (President of AMT), Dr. Armando Fox of UCB, Dave Edstrom and Paul Warndorf (CTO of AMT) after Dave Patterson's Dinner.

MTConnect at IMTS was a HUGE success and the dinner was fantastic.  Leaders in the manufacturing industry also attended this dinner in Chicago.

Sun's CTO, Greg Papadopoulos, has coined the terms Red Shift and Blue Shift as it relates to applications that customers have  that are growing faster or slower than Moore's Law. 

But to steal from Senator Barack Obama, we do not have Blue Customers, we do not have Red Customers, we have Sun Microsystems Customers who have a variety of computing needs - some blue and some red.  I am going to discuss what I call BlueRed Application Shift.

Red Shift, of course, comes from the astronomy definition of a shift in the spectra of very distant galaxies toward longer wavelengths (toward the red end of the spectrum) which is generally interpreted as evidence that the universe is expanding.

 Please note that the "Universe is expanding" is the same reason the young Alvy Singer in Woody Allen's 1977 picture of the year "Annie Hall" gave for not studying at school. "If the Universe is expanding, what's the point?" he told his mom and the school official :-)  But I digress...

Blue Shift  from an astronomy definition (this is from Wikepedia) is the shortening of a transmitted signal's wavelength, and/or an increase in its frequency, due to the Doppler Effect, which indicates that the object is moving toward the observer.

 As Greg defined it, "Red Shift" are those applications that customers a have  that are growing faster than Moore's Law - ie Web 2.0 companies.  Greg also defined "Blue Shift" as those applications that companies have that are  not growing as fast as Moore's Law, so by definition, those companies need less  square feet of computers because speed of computer processing is faster than their business is growing.  

 So, what am I calling a BlueRed shift?  A BlueRed shift are those applications that companies that have been historically blue shift and now because of a significant event,  have moved quickly out of Blue part of the spectrum, raced through green and yellow and orange part of spectrum heading towards Red.  I expect that with MTConnect, we will see companies that have been historically classic blue shift applications, will become BlueRed shift applications as they see their compute and storage needs start to take off.  This is not a risky prediction as we have seen this happen again and again when markets embrace open and royalty-free standards.

Why do we need the term BlueRed Shift? Because we need to indicate that Blue Shift applications with customers do not have to be slow growing forever and events do change industries.

More on this as I attend the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) 2008 this week in Chicago.

Below is the offiical announcement where Sun announces we are joining  MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTAG)

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - (Business Wire) Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq:JAVA) announced today that it will join the MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTAG) to further define the open communication protocol standard it helped create for the manufacturing technology industry a year ago.

MTConnect is an open manufacturing technology standard that uses proven, royalty free Internet communications technologies as its basis to allow manufacturing technology vendors and customers to safely and easily communicate.

"Sun Microsystems has a very long history of working with the industry and academia to create and promote open technology standards that drive genuine innovation,” said Dave Edstrom, Chief Technologist of the Americas Software Practice for Sun Microsystems. “Open source and open standards are the keys to unlocking manufacturing innovation and efficiency around the world, particularly in growing emerging markets. I am thrilled Sun has been able to play a pivotal role in the development of such an important initiative as MTConnect."

The Challenge in Today's Manufacturing Facilities and Machine Shops

A typical manufacturing facility includes hundreds, if not thousands, of machines and autonomous systems that must operate together to produce high-quality products in a timely and cost-effective manner. While each of these machines and systems accumulates information on its operation, this data cannot usually be shared, which makes it difficult to track machine efficiency, process flow, energy usage, toolpath validation and other metrics. As a result, manufacturers are challenged to coordinate and optimize machines and systems to ensure that these individual components and the factory as a whole are operating at acceptable levels.

Interoperability from Design Studio to Shop Floor

MTConnect is an essential first step to connect these production islands and will open up new markets and opportunities for the manufacturing technology industry. Bringing unprecedented interoperability from design studio to shop floor, MTConnect helps enable third-party solution providers to develop software and hardware that make the entire manufacturing enterprise much more productive.

With MTConnect, the manufacturing technology industry can mirror the success of the information technology industry, where common, open industry standards are used to design hardware and software technology to enable different manufacturers’ products to work with each other. Just as large compute farms are used to accurately model microprocessors today, MTConnect should help enable the vision of "art to part, first-time correct" by taking advantage of large compute clusters.

Sun’s Leadership

As a leader in creating open standards for the IT industry, Sun is in a strong position to help the manufacturing industry create a common, open standard. The Solaris™ Operating System, Java™ technology, the Sun Java Real-Time System, Sun™ SPOT, Sun™ xVM software and MySQL™ software are among the innovative technologies that will help enable MTConnect to deliver complete and open interoperability on the manufacturing floor, seamlessly connecting to the enterprise as well as to technology manufacturing partners in ways that were previously impossible.

Sun’s long history of innovation in CAD/CAM, HPC, grid computing, simulation, real-time and modeling technology provides the ideal platform for MTConnect. Indeed, manufacturing technology companies could have immediate access to Sun computing resources via the Network.com Software Catalogue platform, allowing them to easily build, test, and deploy MTConnect enabled applications on-demand over the Internet.

MTConnect History

Although developed through an open collaborative effort, the MTConnect initiative was initially led by Dr. Dave Patterson, Professor in Computer Science of the University of California at Berkeley, and Sun’s Dave Edstrom.

Edstrom was inspired to approach Dr. Patterson after attending the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in September 2006. “I was absolutely convinced that creating a manufacturing technology standard using proven, open and royalty-free Internet technologies was an imperative effort in which Sun must invest,” he said. “The expected impact of MTConnect on the manufacturing sector is analogous to the effect that the browser had on the development of the Internet: MTConnect will revolutionize the manufacturing technology industry by providing a common, open platform which, in turn, will revolutionize manufacturing.”

Dr. Patterson commented, “It is great news for the manufacturing technology industry that MTConnect is becoming real, and that Sun Microsystems will be officially joining the MTConnect Advisory Group."

"Sun recognized the potential of utilizing the power of information technology to move manufacturing to levels of productivity never seen before,” added John Byrd, President of the Association for Manufacturing Technology. "When the history of MTConnect is written, Sun Microsystems will be recognized as having played a critical role in the development of the initial concept. Dave Edstrom's vision and foresight enabled thought leaders of our industry to step out of their comfort zone and tackle the most significant issue the manufacturing technology industry will face in the 21st Century."

MTConnect will be demonstrated at next week’s International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS 2008).

About Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development, and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java, Solaris, MySQL, Network.com and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Rebecca Lui, 650-786-8365
rebecca.lui@sun.com

Mark Hapner, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems and I attended Corvettes At Carlisle.
Corvettes at Carlisle is always a great experience with the highlight being the
ability to speak directly with the Corvette Engineers. 

Above is the logo on the amazing Corvette ZR1.

Above is the ZR1 638hp LS9 engine.

Above is the LS9 SuperCharger.

Above are the AMAZING specs on the ZR1.  Check out ZR1 Nurburgring Official 7:26.4 Record Corvette Run

 This page will have non-proprietary updates on the Software Genius University (SGU)
to Sun Software University (SU) transition.

A little background history...

Sun SGU grew out of the extremely successful Software Genius Program (SGP).  The
genesis of SGP was a conversation that Scott Radeztsky and I had in the fall of
2005 when we asked the basic question, "what can we do to help the SEs to
embrace the developer and Sun's software stack?"  In January 2006, we kicked
off the Software Genius Program Council (SGPC) where the SEs in Americas
Software Practice created ten courses, or twenty hours, of software training.
This program had one goal - to ensure Sun's Systems Engineers were properly
equipped with the necessary software knowledge and skills to be successful.

Sun SGU served a very important need when it was announced globally on July 1st
2007.  SGU now has 740 hours of course work in it and the best of that content
will be transitioned to Software University.  There are countless individuals
who should be thanked for the (literally) 1,000s of hours that went into Sun SGU.
We will continue to make the necessary student competence mappings transitions
from the Sun SGU's University certifications levels to Software University's
Accreditations much like we did with the global Solaris training that came out
of Dan Berg's organization last FY.  We will make it very clear regarding the
how, when, where, why and what as we go through this effort.

HUGE Thanks to George Selix and Joe Campbell of Sun Learning Services for their
leadership and guidance in this transition.  We will be transitioning selected
SGU content to Software University immediately.  Bob Eskenberry, Jerry Neece,
Catherine Sees and I will be leading this effort.

SGU's "Learn Once, Work Anywhere" philosophy will continue with SU.

The story coming out of San Francisco should be extremely frightening for all IT Managers.  The Washington Post, has a great article on this written by Ashley Surdin.

Ashley brings out, "San Francisco is being forced to overhaul security measures on the computer network that controls data for its police, courts, jails, payroll and health services, as well as other crucial information, after the technology administrator entrusted with the system blocked access for everyone but himself last month and for days refused to reveal the password, even from jail. "

There is a misconception that Solaris with Trusted Extensions is only for the three letter government agencies  and it is simply not true.   A very important aspect is how Solaris Trusted Extensions - Labeled Security for Absolute Protection - simply extends Solaris security.  The paragraph below is brought out on the Solaris TX page and is key for everyone to understand:

"It utilizes User and Process Rights Management, Solaris Containers, file systems, and networking and doesn't require a new or separate kernel. Best of all, it doesn't require ISVs to requalify their applications to run them with sensitivity labels. And because it's an extension to the Solaris 10 OS's security policy, Solaris Trusted Extensions technology is flexible and quick to deploy: You can add new applications, new users, and more, very quickly, without extensive analysis of each application — and without the need to write complex, error-prone security policies that require a system reboot."

Solaris has been and will continue to be a leader in being the most open and secure operating system on planet earth. 

My wife Julie and I celebrated our 25th Wedding Anniversary
by spending a month in Europe. NO EMAIL OR VOICE MAIL :-)

We flew First Class and our three sons - John, Michael and Tim flew Business
Class.  The retail cost would have been almost $50,000.  THANK YOU United
Airlines - I used 480,000 miles from my Frequent Flyer account.

Best month of my life.  EVERY DAY WAS SUNNY TO PARTLY
SUNNY! No rain during any of the days for an entire month.

The Complete Itinerary is at the end of these set of photos.

John 20, me old, Michael 17 and Tim 14.

Above is my oldest son John wearing an OpenOffice.org t-shirt on top
of the leaning tower of Pisa.

Tim on a donkey riding up the long trail in beautiful Santorino.

Above is the picture of my family and my parents (aka Slim and Weasie) on the wrap
around porch we had in our Royal Carribean Brilliance of the Seas Royal Family
Suite  (biggest suite on the whole ship :-)

John,  Tim and Michael at the Coliseum.

There were three nights where it was black tie on the ship.
We rented tuxes so we were not carrying them all around Europe.

I rented a Ferrari 360 Modena (400HP, V12) and took it on the same Monaco
Gran Prix F1 Circuit. 

We had GREAT sunsets every single night on the cruise.

ITINERARY

June 23rd fly out from Dulles to Zurich

June 24-28:  Jesolo, Italy (outside of Venice), Hotel
Mediterraneo pronounced YaySolo   We went to Venice and saw
'The Bridge of Sighs'  now I know Robin Trower did not come
up with this name for his famous album :-)  Great food and
the only place you should ever order pizza.

June 28-July 1: Munich, Germany, Mercure Hotel Munchen

We went on a three hour tour of Munich.  Highlights for me was the Science and
Technology Museum in Munich.  The Hofbrau House is always a highlight :-)  My
wife did not buy my rationalization that I was *only* drinking two beers at
night.  I guess when each beer is a litre, that is different :-)

July 1:  Zurich, Switzerland; Hotel Continental Zurich is a beautiful city and
we took a train to Luzern which is the most beautiful city on planet earth.  We
will go back there to spend much more time.  Tim jumped off a 20 foot platform
into Lake Luzerne.

July 2:  Overnight train to Barcelona
         We have first class cabins with dinner and breakfast on the train.
         Eurail is the only way to travel in Europe.  We met a very nice family
         from Texas that was heading to the same Mediterranean Cruise we were
         going on.

July 3:  Barcelona, Spain:
        Thanks to my father, we stayed at an amazing hotel called The
        Circulo.   Barcelona has lots of great Tapas restaurants and very
        interesting architectures such as never finish church.

July 4:  Board Ship, Brilliance of the Seas
        We had the largest suite on the entire ship - The Roya Family Suite.
        It was huge, multi-bedroom, huge living room with a wrap around porch
        with our private concierge.

July 5:  Nice, France Julie and the boys went to the beach and I investigated
sports cars.  Highlight for me was renting a Ferrari Modena 360 and taking it
on the same circuit as Monte Carlo F1 Gran Prix.

July 6:  Pisa/Florence, Italy
        We had private tour of both cities.   The history of Pisa and Florence
        is amazing.   We were the first ones up on the Leaning Tower of Pisa
and I bet the first "Open Office" photo on top the tower :-)

July 7:  Rome, Italy    Rome is a City that is the must category of life.

July 9:  Mykonos, Greece   There were 60knot winds the morning we
                           were to leave the ship, so we did not visit Mykonos.

July 10:  Kusadas, Turkey  Too many things to highlight, I will update later.

July 11:  Santorini, Greece     A very beautiful city on a steep cliff.

July 12:  Athens, Greece    BEST food of entire month. 
                     Too many things to highlight, I will update later.

July 14:  Naples   Too many things to highlight, I will update later.

July 16:  Barcelona, Spain, Circulo

July 17:  Overnight train to Zurich

July 18: Zurich, Switzerland; Hotel Continental
                We visited Luzerne again.

July 19:  Return Home

Below is my /etc/motd on my Solaris 10 Toshiba notebook.

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in
numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it,
when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager
and unsatisfactory kind it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you
have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

        Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
        Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.

This video at YouTube is a must watch if you believe,as I do, in the importance of quantifying challenges.  If you want to watch the narrated version, go to this video.

In my 30 years in the computer industry and 21+ years at Sun, no one has been better at discussing Software Development than Dr. Bruce Haddon.  Bruce has the rare ability to talk to a CEO one second and the Java Real Time Developer the next.   There are countless examples of Bruce speaking to a large group of Developers and the final question is ALWAYS,  "Bruce, this is GREAT, when can you come back? "  I always went out of my way to attend any of Bruce's talks since I always learned something new and interesting.

 There is not enough storage space on http://blogs.sun.com  to list all of Bruce Haddon's many accomplishments.  I will name just two of  a very long list.   Bruce was the Father of Java Center Of Excellence (JCOE) as well as my co-author in Software Genius University (SGU).  When I was told that we only had one chance to speak to an extremely important customer about software development, my response was always the same, "call Bruce, no one is better on this planet."

Dr. Bruce Haddon is the definition of what the ultimate professional should be.

Thanks Bruce for your INCREDIBLE LEADERSHIP in Software Development at Sun Microsystems with so many customers,  Developers, Partners, University students, employees.....

I received an  email from my cousin Chris yesterday.  Chris has done two tours of duty in Iraq.   I was at my sisters house yesterday and my father was there.  My father did two tours of duty in Vietnam and is the world record holder for number of years with  Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL).  

 Chris and my father are just two of the many heroes we should have thanked yesterday for their service to our country.

 
As someone who lives in Northern Virginia, I am very proud of the GI Bill of Rights that Senator Webb proposed.  It is absolutely inconceivable to me why ANYONE would be against this Bill.
 

As The New York Times wrote on the 50th anniversary of the G.I. bill: “Few laws have done so much for so many.”

“These veterans were able to get a first-class future,” Senator Webb told me in an interview. “But not only that. For every dollar that was spent on the World War II G.I. bill, seven dollars came back in the form of tax remunerations from those who received benefits.”

Senator Lautenberg went to Columbia on the G.I. bill, and Senator Warner to Washington and Lee University and then to law school.

The Bush administration opposes the new G.I. bill primarily on the grounds that it is too generous, would be difficult to administer and would adversely affect retention.

This is bogus. The estimated $2.5 billion to $4 billion annual cost of the Webb proposal is dwarfed by the hundreds of billions being spent on the wars we’re asking service members to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s important to keep in mind is that the money that goes to bolstering the education of returning veterans is an investment, in both the lives of the veterans themselves and the future of the nation."

I think back to when I was with Joy W. and my wife listening to Oliver Stone present at a small College in California.  Oliver Stone was asked, "why did the Vietnam war go on for so long?"   Mr. Stone replied, "Do you really NOT know? - that is EASY, because Senators and Congressman's sons were NOT dying."

 Why is it that it is always the politicians who were never in battle  are ALWAYS the ones who are quickest to send our sons and daughters in harms way, but then have the complete LACK OF CHARACTER AND LACK OF COURAGE to take care of them when they come home?
 

 Thank you Senator Webb for you LEADERSHIP!
 

Today, May 4th is my 21st anniversary working for Sun Microsystems.  I am in San Fancisco preparing for CommunityOne and JavaOne.   Last year on this date, it was hard for me to believe that twenty years had gone by so quickly. 

CommunityOne will become more important than JavaOne by 2015 in my opinion.  More important in the sense of the overall scope and reach.  JavaOne will always be an important event, but the depth and breadth of CommunityOne should just continue to grow and mature.  The open source model will continue to grow and evolve with new twists and turns that we can not even predict today.  Last year at CommunityOne, Rich Green made the statement to Jonathan Scwhartz, that "today we have Robin Hood in reverse."  Rich went on to explain that, "today, we have the rich taking from the poor."   He was referring to large companies taking code from the small developer with little or no direct payback. 

The truth, with open source today, is that most large companies are funding open source.  This is no secret to anyone who is the business.  The challenge going forward will be around creating new and interesting revenue opportunities so the small developer or small partner can make a living off being a developer in the pure open source world.

 CommunityOne starts tomorrow and if it is anything like last year's inaugural  event, it should be a great day.  I was amazed at the attendance and excitement last year at CommunityOne.   JavaOne starts and when you have Neil Young as part of your event, how can you go wrong? :-)

                      Sun ^SM   Software Genius University

                          Learn Once, Work Anywhere

Sun ^SM   Software Genius University (Sun SGU) is comprised of three majors:

•  Identity Management
•  Java CAPS
•  Solaris

Sun SGU is designed for two categories of individuals designed for Sun and Sun's Partners:

• Systems Engineers
• Professional Services Consultants
  

Sun SGU curriculum is based on the university taxonomy where upon completion of a year the individual can:

•   A Freshman (Step-1) can give a quality technical presentation.
•   A Sophomore (Step-2) can give a technical demonstration. 
  
•   A Junior (Step-3)  can give a customized technical demonstration.
•   A Senior (Step-4)  can lead a Proof Of Concept (POC).
•   A Master  can lead a customer deployment.
  

Each Major (undergrad) represents 280 hours of work in a mixture of disciplines with a strong emphasis on hands-on learning.

Sun employees can access Sun SGU.

The initial announcement of Sun(SM) Software Genius University (Sun SGU)

I was speaking with David Axmark, Co-Founder of MySQL, at the Chaminade Resort atop the Santa Cruz Mountains that overlooks Monterey Bay.  David made a very interesting statement that really caused me to pause and think.  We were discussing open source and David said, "you are not doing open source until someone says no."

 The key point David was making was that if you are open sourcing your code but retaining 100% control of your entire code base, that is not doing real open source.  Obviously, there are many examples of companies/individuals doing this type of release (retaining 100% version control) very successfully, but David makes a great point.

There is a corollary on the sales side of the house that I heard many, many years ago which says:

     You are not selling until the customer says NO.

 There are not too many Laws that have both technology and sales parallels, but this is clearly one of them.

The picture below was on the Collegiate Times last year at VT:

There is a permanent  memorial at VT.  The Collegiate Times has a nice article describing the memorial.

My memories of last April 16th started with a phone call from my wife.  Julie called and said, "just wanted to let you know that John is fine."   At the time I was on my SunRay reading email while on a con call when she called my cellphone.  She never calls me during theday since she is a school teacher.    "Why would John not be be fine?" I asked.  She asked me if I was watching TV or listening to the news.  Of course I was not watching TV or listening to the news.  She explained what was going on.  I immediately interrupted the Sun folks on the con call and quickly said, "I had to there was a shooting at my son's school."

 It was then that I turned on the TV and was shocked to see the peaceful and beautiful VT campus on the news.  I started getting emails, phone calls from literally around the world checking on John.  You sometimes forget in casual conversation that you mentioned something about your kids that your friends and colleagues remember.   Every time a call came, I paused the DVR.  I was getting the current updates from friends and family over the phone.  As the numbers kept rising, it became more and more surreal. 

 
Last year, when John was working for the Collegiate Times,  he put together a very nice week long history of events starting on April 16th through April 23rd that shows what happened each day. 

 I can not imagine the horror the students and faculty must have felt.   There was an article in the post today by Nick Miroff,  titled, "A Year Later, Virginia Tech Is Still Healing" is a well written article worth reading.  As Miroff points out:

They do not use the words massacre, or shootings, or rampage. They call it "April 16th," and sometimes not even that. To say "four-sixteen" is enough.   Everyone knows."

 I have been back to VT five times since April 16th, 2007.  Each time, the first thing I do is visit the memorial.  Governor Kaine has done a good job with the VT Task Force.  

Governor Kaine stated today:

 "On April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech University suffered a terrible tragedy.  Today, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families and the entire Virginia Tech community.

"In the year that has passed since that horrible day, we have grieved for those we lost and prayed for the comfort of their loved ones. We have rejoiced in the recovery of those who were injured. We have been inspired by the unfaltering hope and Hokie spirit of Virginia Tech. And we have renewed our commitment to do even more to learn lessons from that day and to make our campuses and communities safer.

"As I think about the victims' families, I am at a loss for words to express what is in my heart. The courage and strength they have shown in the face of such tremendous, tragic loss is awe-inspiring. We have been inspired by the resilient Hokie spirit of Virginia Tech, both in Blacksburg and around the world. Since that tragic day last April, the unshakeable sense of unity and hope demonstrated by the Hokies has touched the lives of people around the world. Their focus on pulling together to support their school and each other in the days after the shooting, and their commitment to public service through the VT Engage program in the months that followed has moved us all.

"We still have work to do. A continued commitment to improvement is the best tribute we can pay to those who lost so much. And as we move forward, we will continue to be inspired by those in the Hokie Nation."

VT seems to have made the right changes.  The VT Task Force seemed to not pull any punches when it came to how the University should have dealt with the events on the morning of April 16th, 2007.  

As the AP reported and I FULLY AGREE with Governor Kaine about purchasing firearms at gun shows.  Virginia needs to get its act together.

"Gov. Timothy M. Kaine proposed mandated background checks yesterday for everyone who attempts to purchase firearms at gun shows - legislation that he called critical to helping prevent future tragedies like the shootings at Virginia Tech.

Many families of those killed or injured in the April shootings have called on legislators to close Virginia’s so-called gun show loophole, which allows people to purchase firearms from unlicensed sellers at gun shows without having to submit to background checks. Under current Virginia law, only licensed dealers are required to run background checks on customers.

“If by doing this, we can keep one family from having to go through what these families have suffered, it will be the best thing that the legislature will do this year,” Kaine said at Virginia State Police headquarters, surrounded by several of the victims’ families."

Hopefully the healing will continue for those directly affected...

 Today is the one year anniversary of the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

 My thoughts and prayers go out to all the families, relatives and friends of those who lost their lives year ago in this senseless tragedy.....

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"There are two types of users - those who are ready to spend a lot of time in order to save money, and those who are ready to spend a lot of money in order to save time.”

                                                    - Mårten Mickos, CEO MySQL

This captures the true essence of the two poles of open source.  I would say that most individuals are not on the extreme ends, but are someplace in the middle.  Open source is a continuum.  The definition of open source  25+ years ago was Bill Joy sending around BSD tapes of the source.  Open source continues to evolve.  Those who think open source simply means, "this is how we do our development" are short-changing what is really occurring.  For those who are heading out to JavaONE, I would strongly encourage you to swing by the Moscone Center on Monday the 5th to truly see what is going on in open source by attending  CommunityOne.

 
The great part of Unix lore can be captured in the buttons. 

I am not sure the 1983 USENIX button would be allowed today :-)

                    Thanks npg
 

Stephen Barr of the Washington Post has a great article today titled:

The Idea Factory That Spawned the Internet Turns 50

Below is a snippet from Stephen Barr's article:

"Like many government initiatives, DARPA was born out of a crisis.

The Soviets launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957, beating the United States into space. At the direction of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, DARPA opened for business the next year, focused on helping guard the nation against technological surprises. The agency's mission has been evolving ever since, and today DARPA also works to create its own technological surprises that permit the U.S. military to overwhelm adversaries.

Unlike most federal agencies, DARPA operates with little red tape. It has only two management layers, encouraging the rapid flow of ideas and decisions."

 It is it possible the Internet would have happened without DARPA?   I seriously doubt it....

Sun's CTO, Greg Papadopoulos is quoted in a very nice article in the New York Times that is called "Thinking Outside The Company's Box"

                        "How to resolve the tension between make and buy varies from one organization to the next.
                              Sun, for instance, has created many important technologies in-house, including a family of microprocessors based on an original design and the Java language, popular with programmers.

        Yet even companies that maintain their own powerhouse research-and-development units are
increasingly aware that valuable ideas can sprout anywhere. For instance, Sun broke with
its home-grown tradition this month, when it paid $1 billion for MySQL, which makes the
most popular open-source database program.

              Sun needs a database program to support its line of powerful server computers,
which can be optimized to work with MySQL. To create a viable database
from scratch might take Sun 10 years, Mr. Papadopoulos figures. Instead, Sun
gets a vibrant product overnight — and immediate contributions from scores of
database engineers around the globe.

Having spent some time with the MySQL folks at a Sun off-site, I am extremely impressed with the MySQL team.   These are very interesting times at Sun and in the computer industry.    Thanks to npg for sending me this article.
 

On March 6th, 2008 I gave the keynote at the AMT-NCMS Manufacturing Technology Forum.

This was a global two day conference where I spoke about the importance of standards and MTConnect.  The slides below provide a highlight of my keynote.  To drive home the importance of MTConnect, I used Sun's historical tagline to frame my talk.
 

One of my pet peeves is going to a Conference, watching someone ask a very basic question, and then listening to the speaker or panelist go on and on using every buzzword every invented and not saying a damn thing.   This is especially true when topic is Service Oriented Architecture.   I brought this up at the last conference that I attended.  When someone asks what is SOA and the answer provides zero real life examples, then chances are you are hearing a description of what I like to call SnOA  - Snake Oil Architecture.   I have a very simple framework for judging answers that I call my THREE "C's"

1. Is it CLEAR?
2. Is it CONCISE?
3. Is it COMPELLING?
   

Congratulations to my oldest son, John, who was selected to be Campus Ambassador of the Month for Sun Microsystems.  Increasing the number of Campus Ambassadors is one of Jonathan Schwartz's most brilliant strategic investments since he became CEO.  John is doing lots of very interesting Tech Talks, on topics such as Chris Melissinos discussing Gaming,  Solaris with Dr. Harry Foxwell at Virginia Tech that have been extremely well attended.  There are many other activities that John has been doing (such as the NetBeans 6 demo he did for students and faculty) and you can read more about that here at his Sun blog.

 John gave a nice interview about his activities as a Campus Ambassador at VA Tech.