Friday, March 9th, is my last day at Sun. I will be moving to Network Appliance to become the Director of Strategic Technology for the Advanced Development Group.

I can't say enough good things about the Open Source Software group here at Sun. It's been a hell of a ride. I have a brilliant staff that I will miss; I've made a ton of friends at Sun and in the open source community; and I've learned so much in such a short period of time my head is still spinning.

But there comes a time when one needs to try something new. I've been at Sun for 11 years. It's time to stretch my legs and seek other pastures. For better or worse, you have not seen the last of me, but I'm afraid that as far as this blog is concerned, it's time to close this particular door.

Go in peace. Sin no more. I'm outta here.

Today marks the first release of Solaris Express Developer Edition.

We have several release vehicles and they are often confusing, but here's the ordered list starting with the newest, freshest, and riskiest, stuff, down to the most stable, most tested, and slower moving stuff:

Now what's happened is that we're replacing Solaris Express with Solaris Express Developer Edition. The support program is a little different, with the newer one being more appropriate for developers. And we're only releasing it quarterly instead of monthly. That allows us to get more testing in. It also makes it safer for you to run on your laptop or desktop and develop on. You'll also see Sun focusing more of its energies on integrating developer tools and developer-related features. There's a lot of new stuff in this first release, so if you haven't been keeping up with Solaris Express or OpenSolaris, you'll want to install this baby and give it a test run.

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SDN is Sun's Developer Network, the developer portal over on sun.com. This month is a video interview with our own Steve Lau talking about OpenSolaris. It's a great Q&A session and Steve did an awesome job. Go check it out!

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I met Quinn Storm yesterday at the Xorg Developers' Conference (which Sun is hosting). Quinn is the lead of the Beryl project. I got a demo of the window manager, and I have to say that I was mighty impressed.

Will you see Beryl up and running on OpenSolaris anytime in the near future? You can count on it!

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In the last few months I've seen more and more speculation about the prospect of dual-licensing OpenSolaris under GPLv3. In November Jonathan very publically asked Rich if he would look into it, and everyone knows that we are fully engaged in the GPLv3 process. As Rich has made clear, we're looking into it. No decisions have been made. We've seen discussions in blogs (Rich, Simon) and in the news (CNet, eWeek), but I haven't seen much in the OpenSolaris community itself.

I think that we ("we" being all of you) should be asking ourselves what we think about GPLv3. What would it mean to the community if we dual-licensed? It's now a possibility that we could attach an "assembly exception" to the GPLv3 which would let us mix GPL and CDDL code. This could open up a world of possibilities.

But what are the downsides? What does the community, you, think of the way GPLv3 is taking shape? These are important issues and I urge everyone with an opinion to voice it sooner rather than later.

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The next stop on the Sun Tech Days tour is Atlanta. As my hometown, I couldn't stay away, so look for me there.

January 16th is a free OpenSolaris day. The normal Solaris and Java tracks then run January 17-18th. Karen Tegan-Padir, VP of Enterprise Java Platforms, and James Gosling, the father of Java, will be keynoting. Make sure you register soon.

I'll be hanging around the Solaris track with Teresa. Make sure you stop by and say "hello". We're not easily missed. ;-)

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Interview with your's truly by Sean Michael Kerner about OpenSolaris and what's coming from Sun: http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3653196.

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If you don't know what an alethiometer is, you haven't read His Dark Materials, a trilogy by Philip Pullman. But don't worry! Now you don't have to! The movie of the first book, The Golden Compass is currently in production and scheduled for release December 2007. And to make that news even more exciting is the news that the film will star Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.

I was wondering how they were going to get around the controversial elements of the book, but now I see how. The children are kidnapped and experimented upon by a "mysterious organization." In the trilogy, the evil "mysterious organization" is the church, though I don't recall Pullman calling out a specific religion.

His Dark Materials was one of my very favorite trilogies. Next Christmas will be a good time at the movies.....

It's not official or final, but the preliminary results show that our own Glynn Foster has won a spot on the GNOME Foundation Board.

Congratulations, Glynn!

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Sun has released Solaris 10 11/06 today. Internally, we called this "Update 3". The biggie features for this update are Trusted Extensions and Secure by Default. Yes, all of the security features you loved back in Trusted Solaris, are now standard as part of Solaris 10. This isn't just for the feds either. Banks love it. Wall St. loves it. Corporations that need to follow Sarbanes-Oxley love it.

Get it here.

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There's a new JDS desktop in OpenSolaris. We've rev'ved it up to GNOME 2.16, but have also added some really cool features. Check it out and then download it from Build 53 on opensolaris.org.

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Today is World AIDS Day. Take a minute out today to remember the friends and loved ones we've lost to AIDS.

Not really a vacation, but how horrible can a business trip to Buenos Aries be?

For Teresa Giacomini, kinda horrible. While at Sun Tech Days, she had her camera and wallet stolen. Luckily, she was able to post her pictures of OpenSolaris Day before the theft.

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

Each year the Human Rights Campaign publishes their Corporate Equality Index. The index rates American corporations on how they treat gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered employees, customers, and investors. This year, 138 businesses scored 100%, and I'm happy to say that once again, Sun is there at 100%.

Sun has always had a strong record on diversity. It's one of the many reasons why we've been so successful at operating at a global level. When your company supports and encourages diversity, it's easier to open new sites at far-flung places. It also allows you to attract top talent. You don't have to be an LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) employee to appreciate and want to work for a company that respects all employees equally. I'm glad I work for one of those companies.

One thing Sun has done that has been helpful to me and other LGBT employees is establish an employee resource network called GLAF (Gay, Lesbian, and Friends). GLAF is responsible for developing and driving diversity initiatives in Sun, and working with outside groups like HRC. I've been lucky enough to join the GLAF board this year as the Internal Affairs Officer. I'm still working out what my responsibilities are there, but the other board members have been a lot of help so I know it'll be a fun job.

I just got back from Beijing, China, where I spent some good ol' quality time with my JDS folks there. It was nice to finally meet our new JDS manager, Zhaozhou Li, face-to-face. He's doing a fantastic job right out of the gate. Leo Binchy, another JDS manager, has extended her stay in Beijing for another 6 months, and Niall Power, a JDS engineer, is just finishing up his stay there. Mixing up the Irish and Chinese teams a bit is making a big impact. We'll have to see if we can do more of that.

One of my favorite things about visiting Beijing is getting demos of all the projects. I always know what projects are under development, but to actually see a prototype or working demo is really exciting. Of course better performance and more eye-candy is always rolling out, but some exciting new features that are coming out include:

• Vino: Remote desktop take-over

• Better multimedia support: newer Flash, newer Real Player, Fluendo, and Evince, which should resolve the problem of Adobe not wanting to port acroread to Solaris x64.

• SyncIt, a tool that allows sys admins to synchronize directories and files across machines. Useful if you want to replicate configurations. It's also useful to end users: think of it like the old Windows Briefcase, where you want to take files home with you on your laptop.

• OTR (Off-the-Record) plug-in for Gaim. A nice way to use Gaim at work without worrying about evesdroppers.

• Trusted JDS. Government-level security comes to the Gnome desktop. Freakin' sweet.

All of these are pretty far along in development, so you should be seeing them soon. Keep an eye out.... (Sorry, this is as close to talking like a pirate that I'm going to get today. I have some dignity.)

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