Barton's Blog

One of the things I really enjoy about JavaOne is getting to meet other Sun employees from around the world whom I've only corresponded with via email or talked to over the phone.  Earlier this week I got to meet Jaroslav "Yarda" Tulach from our NetBeans team in Prague.

I had recently learned that Jaroslav, on his own time, had packaged NetBeans for inclusion in Mandriva 2008.1.   This effort also served as the basis for the work needed to get NetBeans into Ubuntu.  I had planned to blog about this before JavaOne but things got too crazy.  Now I'm able to post the entry and with a picture to boot!

Not only that but at JavaOne I learned from Tom Fitzsimmons of Fedora/RedHat that Jaroslav's work to get NetBeans into Fedora is coming along nicely and should result in NetBeans getting in a update for Fedora 9.  Tres cool!

Jaroslav, this Bud's for you (the real Czech kind not the crappy American brew). 

Last week, with the release of Ubuntu 8.04LTS, came the debut of the JDK in Ubuntu's Universe repository.  

Universe? So What?

While the JDK had been in Ubuntu's Multiverse before, getting into Universe meant having JDK packages based on OpenJDK6 that were 100% free. This was made possible by the work of a lot of people at Sun and the community (most notably the folks at Fedora cranking on IcedTea).  

The effort to produce the Free implementation started in earnest, as Mark Reinhold points out, last summer when Joe Darcy began creating a Free software "JDK6 code base by removing new features from a clone of the JDK 7 code and then gradually working through the remaining encumbrances and other issues." 

Having a Free implementation of the JDK also opens the doors for packages that depend on a JDK being in Universe, one example being NetBeans, which also made its Universe debut in 8.04LTS. 

Fedora Next

Free Java also means that  Fedora 9 which is due out in a couple of weeks on May 13, will also be able to include an OpenJDK implementation (Fedora, unlike Ubuntu, only accepts Free software).   Specifically, according to Lillian at Red hat's blog, the java-1.6.0-openjdk  package will replace java-1.7.0-icedtea that was in Fedora 8.   Check out the details here on the Fedora wiki.  More hoopla to come on the actual release of Fedora 9.

Mahalo Doko

A huge shout-out to Doko, aka Matthias Klose, the Ubuntu Java ubermensch who did the actual packaging of OpenJDK and then went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that the latest versions of GlassFish and JavaDB made it into 8.04LTS as well.

 
Doko and me in an Edinburgh pub last summer at Debconf7.  I owe him a few more of what he's holding in his hand.

Java in Ubuntu -- A Trip down Memory Lane

The JDK first appeared in Ubuntu two years ago in the 6.06LTS release and was made possible by the DLJ (Distribution License for Java) which made Java technology redistributable.  One release later, the JDK was joined in Multiverse by some of its buddies: GlassFish, NetBeans and JavaDB.  In 7.10, the "Java Stack" while still in Multiverse was made up of rev'd component pieces.  And now with 8.04LTS, NetBeans and the JDK are both in Universe and GlassFish and Java DB have been updated. 

Stay tuned for Intrepid Ibex and see where Java lands next!

*in backport

Want More?

• To literaly hear the details behind this cool event, check out this podcast Rich Sands, Bruno Souza and I did with the Java Posse.
• Check out the press release.
• Gilles joy at OpenJDK in Ubuntu 

Pau for now... 

Fedora! OpenSuse! Ubuntu! -- Three community managers together on one stage!  And if that wasn't sick enough we're going add in OpenSolaris and one of their board members!

When?! Where?! How Much?!

One day only, Monday May 5 at CommunityOne at the Moscone Center in San Francisco! 

And the price of admission? FREE! FREE! FREE!  Free as in beer, Free as in Freedom, Free as you feel when you're riding your Harley down a twisting mountain rode at midnight listening to death metal and the wind is howling through your hair, like a banshee thats sooooo mad its not even funny!

Meet the Gladiators: 

Fedora	OpenSUSE	Ubuntu	OpenSolaris
Karsten "The Killer" Wade	Zonker "Bring it On" Brockmeier	Jono "No Mercy" Bacon	Glynn "Miles of Smiles " Foster

The Schedule - Monday May 5

These community warriors will each be given an hour to present their side of the story then we'll bring them all together at the end of the day for the first Free and Open Source panel ever to be held in a locked cage! 

No rules, no limits, no problem! 

12:25 - 1:20    Jono Bacon - Community leader Ubuntu Linux!

1:30 - 2:25     Zonker Brockmeier - Community leader OpenSUSE Linux!

2:35 - 3:30     Karsten Wade - Sr. Developer Community Manager!

4:00 - 4:45     Distro Panel: Jono, Zonker, Karsten + Glynn Foster - OpenSolaris Governing Board member, moderated be me!

You'll not want to miss this one!

Pau for  now...

A few hours ago, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long Term Support) made its worldwide debut.  Parties are being held by LoCo teams around the world and there is even an IRC bash that is currently going on.

LTS Mach II

This is Ubuntu's second LTS version and just like the first, Ubuntu 6.06LTS, this one has been certified to run Sun systems.   Not only that but so far Sun is the only major vendor to be certified on 8.04LTS. 

8.04 is a big deal because, as an LTS, it is supported with free patches and upgrades for five years on the server and three years on the desktop.  Normal releases are supported for 18 months on both the server and desktop.  This is Canonical's big run at the enterprise and its great to be a part of it!

Which Sun Systems?

Canonical has certified four Sun servers, three new ones and one which has been certified since the last LTS.  These servers represent both AMD and Intel based systems and, in the case of the AMD-based X2200M2 and the Intel-based X4150 the certification holds for both the dual and quadcore versions.  Also certified is the Intel-based Ultra 24 workstation which was first certified on the 7.10 release.

The Heron has landed - Congrats all around!

So a toast to the Ubuntu community, Canonical and Hardy Heron, a most excellent release!

Pau for now... 

Earlier this week I attended the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, serendipitously held here Austin.  It was a fantastic opportunity to meet a lot of the people in the community whom I hadn't met before as well as to catch up with old friends.

 
Maddog (R) helping Executive Director Jim "Led" Zemlin to Flourish 

Great Speakers
(and I'm not talking Bose, which really aren't great speakers anyway)

There was an impressive line up of panels and speakers the first day of the summit ranging from Al Gillen of IDC to the Kernel Hackers panel to Brian Stevens, CTO of Red Hat (here's a good write up of the panel and Al's presentation).  My personal favorite, and I may be biased, was Marten Mickos' presentation.  I thought he came across as sincere and relaxed, yet authoritative.  Marten re-affirmed MySQL's commitment to GNU/Linux and talked about the "New Sun" characterized by, among other things, a "bold and humble new management."

One thing that struck me, particularly during the Q&A session of the kernel panel, was the preponderance of Englishmen.  It seemed for a while there,  one question after another was being asked by someone sounding like Hugh Grant (or at least closer to M. Grant than Ricky Gervais). 

A Super Location 

The event was held at UT's Super Computing Center about 10 minutes from my office and the exact same place where, six weeks ago I attended the dedication of Ranger: the Sun Constellation Linux Cluster.  In fact during the Summit they had tours of Ranger, aka"the world's most powerful supercomputer for open science research." 

If you want to get a feel of what its like to walk-through this uber computer check out this video that  Whurley shot during the tour.

 
Qua bottle lounge, where Tuesday's fete was held: Below the plexiglass dance floor swam sharks and manta rays.

Open Source, Open Bar

Of  course the biggest value in a summit like this comes in the after hours get togethers where you really get to meet people.  The Summit was no exception.  While the breakfast spread at the conference was put to shame by the breakfast spread that the Free Software Foundation (the Free Software Foundation!) offered at its member meeting, the food and drink Tuesday night was first class. 

I can't remember the last time I've been to a truly open bar.  I reflexively asked for a beer at the bar assuming that beverages would be limited to beer and two colors of wine.  I was quite surprised then a little while later when the hostess asked the person next to me what they wanted to drink he asked for a vodka tonic.  From there on it was margaritas for me!

James Bottomley (kernel SCSI god) picks the second winner in the raffle. I was the first winner and will be getting the new HP mini note running SUSE, Yippee!

 
Old Apple buddies, Mark Murphy (now of Canonical and who has the pleasure of dealing with me on a regular basis) and Zaheda Bhorat (of Google and tireless ODF champion) 

Pau for now.... 

We are now about three and half weeks from the debut of Hardy Heron aka Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long Term Support).  This will be the second LTS for Ubuntu, the first being 6.06 (aka Dapper Drake),  and it will help to give Ubuntu greater credibility in the enterprise. 

Sun and Canonical worked together to certify Sun systems for the original LTS and have done so for every release from then on.  In the case of Hardy look for a few new systems.

On the software side when we last saw Sun's Java stack it was safely within the Gutsy (Ubuntu 7.10) multiverse.  Tune in on the 24th of April to see what progress our Java bits have made within the distro. :)

 
Hardy Heron -- What a long strange trip its been. 

Pau for now... 

Well here in the U.S. the election primary season is in full swing (as if you didn't know).  Barack? Hillary? McCain? (Oh, and by the way did I mention enough times that I went to school with Barack/Barry?) 

The Open Solaris Governing Board is in the midst of its campaigning/elections with voting closing on Monday and the winners announced on Tuesday and the Debian GNU/Linux distro is in the middle of its Project Leader campaigning period.

Debian Project Leader '08 Elections

Voting for the Debian Project Leader runs between March 30 and April 13 with the victor ascending on April 17. 

In the running in this year's election are:

1. Marc Brockschmidt  [platform]
2. Raphaël Hertzog  [platform]
3. Steve McIntyre  [platform]

The Line of Kings

For those of you interested in history, since its inception, there have been 10 project leaders for Debian:

1. Ian Murdock (August 1993 – March 1996), founder of the Debian Project
2. Bruce Perens (April 1996 – December 1997)
3. Ian Jackson (January 1998 – December 1998)
4. Wichert Akkerman (January 1999 – March 2001)
5. Ben Collins (April 2001 – April 2002)
6. Bdale Garbee (April 2002 – April 2003)
7. Martin Michlmayr (March 2003 – March 2005)
8. Branden Robinson (April 2005 – April 2006)
9. Anthony Towns (April 2006 – April 2007)
10. Sam Hocevar (April 2007 – present)

Who will be lucky #11? (not to be confused with client #9)

Good luck to all three and may the best man win! :)

Pau for now... 

Yesterday Jono Bacon announced that the next Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) will be held from May 19 - 23 in Prague.  This is very cool for two reasons: 1) I've never been to Prague and 2) our Net Beans team is located there and will be able to attend in force.

 
The intrepid Jono Bacon about to make his debut on the Sun's SDN channel.  (I'm hoping to get this interview posted in the not too distant future.)

The Prague UDS, like the others before it, will serve as the planning session for the upcoming release which in this case will be Ubuntu "8.10ish" (looks like the October timing isn't exactly set in stone at this point).  As is tradition, yesterday the release was also given a pre-release alliterative animal name.  Alphabetically Ubuntu is now on "I" and rather than going with something common like an Iguana, the four legged beast that Mark revealed was an Ibex and an Intrepid one at that. 

According to Mark the focus for this Fall release will be mobility i.e. the ability to access the web through a variety of wireless technologies to be able to move from the office, to the train, and home, staying connected all the way.  They are also looking to beef up the desktop version so that it also can serve as a high-end workstation.

Virtual box and Ubuntu

And speaking of Ubuntu, I recently came across this entry that tells how to install Virtual Box on Ubuntu in three easy steps.  As you may remember a couple of weeks ago Sun announced that we would be acquiring the company.  Hopefully the Virtual Box team will also be at UDS Prague and I can meet them there.

And last, but not least, lets not forget Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) aka Hardy Heron.  This is Ubuntu's second LTS release and like the releases before will feature a lot of cool Sun Java Software.   We are about two months away from the April 24 release and counting...

Pau for now....

Ill have to admit, when I heard about Ubuntu's big win last week the first thing I thought was, what clever headline can I create using my limited French (I find using French in a blog adds a certain "je ne sais quoi")?

The gendarmerie's 70,000 desktops currently use Microsoft's Windows XP operating system. But these will progressively change over to the Linux system distributed by Ubuntu, explained Colonel Nicolas Geraud, deputy director of the gendarmerie's IT department. afp.google.com

Unfortunately I got distracted with other work and everyone else used all the good ones:

• Vive la Ubuntu libre! - Desktop Linux 
• Parlez-Vous Ubuntu? - Says the French Police - Softpedia
  
• French police find "Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!" in Ubuntu Linux - Cnet
  
• Police in France say au revoir to Microsoft, bonjour to Linux - Web in France Magazine
  

Wither Macedonia?

Given the above, what I want to know is last Fall when Ubuntu scored big in Macedonia, where were all the clever puns employing Macedonian?  Why in that case did the media opt instead to go with straight-forward, informative headlines e.g.

• Macedonia picks Ubuntu for 20000 PCs - Cnet

As the grandson of Macedonian emigrants, I want answers!

Pau for now.. 

Yesterday Novell officially announced that  Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier, would be the new OpenSUSE community leader.  Zonker will step in to fill a void that was created when Markus Rex was "loaned" by Novell to the Linux Foundation (you can read all about Markus's move to the Foundation in this article by Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier.)  

Yes, until last Friday Zonker was the editorial director at Linux.com.  Besides Linux.com, Zonker has contributed to a bunch of GNU/Linux and tech related magazines as well as written and contributed to books about Slackware Linux, DocBook, Linux Networking, and other FOSS topics.  This type of a background along with the fact that he's neither from Novell nor the community should actually serve him well.  

Good community managers are folks who are into technology but not necessarily uber-hackers themselves, folks who are good communicators and who can deal with, placate and rally a bunch of different egos and styles.  By being from the outside he doesn't come pre-labled as either a Novell guy or a community guy but his background as an industry writer should give him some good insight.

From reading comments on Zonker's first OpenSUSE blog as well as some of the articles, it looks like one of the community's big hopes is that, with his background he will be able to grab more air time and mindshare for the two and half year old distro.  Being a good communicator will also be essential when the topic of the Novell Microsoft patent covenant comes up.  An issue that left many in the community with a bad taste in their mouth.

I noticed in his blog that he will be out at SCALE this weekend.  I hope to get a chance to meet him there and maybe even grab a podcast :)

Pau for now...

As part of our drive to get Sun software into the hands of as many people as possible, at the end of last week an early access version of the Java Real-Time system (Java RTS 2.1 EA) was released for GNU/Linux.

At this point, support and testing for Java RTS 2.1 EA is limited to the SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time10 platform and the Red Hat Enterprise MRG 1.0 release (currently in beta).  That being said, as the Release Notes point out

since this EA release uses the real-time POSIX programming interface, it is possible that other properly configured Linux distributions that implement this interface can also run Java RTS 2.1_EA. Temporal correctness is still being worked on by the Linux community, but currently the OS configuration needs to include a 2.6.21 Linux kernel or later with the latest RT patch and a 2.5 glibc or later. (See the site http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/rt/ to obtain the appropriate RT patch.)

 
If you want to check it out for yourself, evaluation downloads are available here.  And if you have any feedback, the team would love to hear.

Pau for now...

When we last left the Linux kernel maintainers it was early October '07 and 2.6.23,  complete with support for Logical Domains (LDoms) on the SPARC architecture, was rolled out. 

Well now its 2008 and last week Linux kernel 2.6.24 hit the streets.

Here are some fun facts to know and tell that I grabbed from Jonathan Corbet's 2.6.24 statistics article:

• Over 10,000 individual changesets were merged
• There was a net growth of nearly 300,000 lines of code
• 950 developers, representing over 130 companies, contributed this code
• Of the 950, 358 contributed just one patch
• In comparison, for 2.6.23 there were 6,200 patches merged from 860 developers.

To see all the new features and fixes, check out kernelnewbies.org

One feature that caught my eye was the inclusion of Linux Kernel Markers which implement static probing points for the Linux kernel.  In an article I read someone commented on how this got the Linux community closer to Dtrace like capabilities.  I wonder how similar/dissimilar the two are?

Pau for now...

Just a little while ago a link to the final report from DebCon7 arrived in my inbox.  It was a great way to relive the thrills, chills and spills that made up the 8th annual Debian developers conference which took place this summer. 

 
The alley between my hotel and the conference.  Notice the castle in the back.

Over 400 people from around the world attended the event, held in Edinburgh, Scotland, which consisted of talks, hacking, sightseeing and lots of beer drinking.   The 30 page document, complete with pictures and charts, talks about how it all went and what went on both professionally and socially.  It also includes personal impressions from some of the attendees including Sun's very own Tom Marble.  Although my impressions weren't included in the report, I am featured prominently in one of the pictures (I am in the top right quadrant of the group photo, about nine people to the left of the guy on the right with both his hands in the air).

Who Doesn't want to look like the Bay City Rollers?! 

One of the more interesting features of the event was the Debian tartan that started out as a joke and then became a reality to the tune of 6,000 pounds.  The team who designed the pattern thought long and hard about the various choices (whether before or after the tartan was created I'm not sure) but if you read the report you'll find out the significance of the various elected features. 

 
S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y-D-E-B Night!

Probably the tartan's biggest feature is that it "spells out DEBIAN in Morse code (with a correct 1:3 ratio for dots to dashes, and for the pauses in and between letters)."  The report goes on to explain that "the tartan looks fairly conventional, but it is unusual (although not unique) in that it is mirrorsymmetrical on only one diagonal. This is to avoid reversing the Morse section which would otherwise spell ANIVEU."  And to prove this was legit and not a kludgy hack, the resulting tartan is "being entered into the Scottish Tartans World Register as tartan number 3210."

Although the tartans were available to all, they were a bit too rich for my blood so instead I decided to invest in a cool Etch-a-release T-shirt.

Spain via Argentina 

Debconf7 and Edinburgh were a blast and I look forward to Argentina and Debconf8 and beyond that, the recently announced Debconf9 in the Extremadura region of Spain.

Goodbye Edinburgh, hope to see you again soon (I wonder what this tartan spells in morse code?

More pictures from Edinburgh. 

Pau for now...

Well its official, as of the Friday before Thanksgiving,  the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Server (pictured above) and its little brother the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 Server were certified by Canonical on their latest release, Ubuntu 7.10 (nee "Gutsy Gibbon").

At the time of the T5220/5120 launch last month, Gutsy had not yet been released but I gave a heads up that certification would be coming.  Well its here. 

These new systems, based on the T2 processors (8 cores x 8 threads = 64 threads per chip), are uber-beefed up versions of the T1000/T2000 cool-thread servers that Canonical originally certified on.  To learn more about these new systems check out a collection of blogs here.  And if you want to try one for free for 60 days, you can sign up here.

Pau for now...

A while ago when Sun first announced that it was open sourcing the Java platform, Red Hat joined members of the community in voicing their support.  In fact they even put a big thank you on their home page.

This morning they've gone even further and turned their kind words into action by announcing that they have signed Sun's contributor agreement (SCA).   By signing the SCA, all Red Hat engineers are now able to participate in any and all of Sun's Free and open source projects. 

Maybe more importantly, and certainly more timely, in addition to the SCA, Red Hat has also signed Sun's Open JDK Community TCK License and have joined the OpenJDK community.

Iced Tea anyone?

By signing the TCK license Red Hat now has access to the test suite (TCK) to verify that whatever JDK derivatives they create are fully compatible with the Java SE 6 spec.  This is particularly good news for Free Java lovers everywhere since there still remains 4% of the JDK code that is encumbered (i.e. owned by 3rd parties who not agreed to open source their bits).  Over the past months, folks here at Sun have been working quite diligently in clearing these last few hold outs.

At the same time our folks have been burning the midnight oil, a bunch of the engineers with Red Hat/Classpath project have been putting in a lot of time working on their own completely Free JDK  playfully dubbed, "IcedTea."  Now with the TCK/SCA in hand this should drive greater alignment between the two projects and the IcedTea team will not only be able to contribute directly to OpenJDK, but also  test for compatibility.

This is good news for everyone.  The desire for a completely Free JDK, sooner rather than later, is not only of interest to Sun and Red Hat but was a big topic at FOSSCamp last week.  Now with Red Hat throwing their hat in the ring (sorry, I couldn't resist the bad pun) things should start happening a lot sooner to the benefit of GNU/Linux and other Free distros everywhere.

Thanks Red Hat and welcome!