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.

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

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!

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

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.

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

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. ;-)

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

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.

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

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.

Technorati Tags: Solaris

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

A shout out to our new friends in Seattle and Shanghai. Both cities now have their own OpenSolaris User Groups. The user groups are a great way to meet other OpenSolaris users, learn about new features, tips, and tricks, and share your ideas.

You can find more information about the Seattle User Group here and the Shanghai User group here (though you'll need to be able to read Chinese).

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

Sun Tech Days are Sun's Developer Conference. They are given around the world. The next one is in Seattle, September 6-8, 2006. If you're a developer, this is a good way to learn about developing with OpenSolaris, Solaris, NetBeans, Java, and all our developer tools.

The first day, September 6th, is devoted to OpenSolaris and NetBeans. The OpenSolaris portion will cover the following topics:

• Building and Deploying OpenSolaris
• Virtualization
• Security
• POD: Performance, Observability, and Debugging

Our own Stephen Hahn will be presenting there, so make sure you get a chance to hear him and meet him. He always wears a tie, so he's pretty easy to spot.

Future Tech Days, with OpenSolaris Days, will be Shanghai September 22-24, and Beijing September 27-29. You can find the full calendar here. (I'll be at the Atlanta one in case you were wondering....)

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

Called "potshots" because they were smoking pot when they made them.

Dan, buddy, you need to go have a talk with that programmer you assigned to watch over us. He's not paying attention. I hate to tell managers how to manage their employees, but really, the guy hasn't looked at opensolaris.org at all. The community sees everything. Our designs are going on in the open -- just look at any of the communities. We even have a site for code reviews. If you can find something we should be doing better, please tell me. We're always looking at ways to improve our site.

The crowning moment of the article, though, is Dan complaining that "Sun holds [OpenSolaris] behind the firewall" in one breath, and then saying that "there would be no point to making AIX open-source" in the next.

Too funny, Dan.

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

Rich McDougall's and Jim Mauro's new book, Solaris Internals: Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris Kernel Architecture (2nd Edition) is now out! If you are finding it hard to slog through the source code, here's a great reference text that explains why things are done. This is the book we give to new employees here at Sun. Check it out....

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

A few weeks ago was the Czech Republic Championship in Programming for Young People. This event is an opportunity for the brightest young programmers in the Czech Republic to get together and talk with engineers from companies such as Sun. Naturally, we had lots to say about OpenSolaris and NetBeans, and the folks were quite interested, particularly in features like DTrace.

Tomas Heran's blog and Roumen Strobl's blog have lots of pictures and a complete description of the event. Check it out.....

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

OSCON, O'Reilly's open source convention, starts next week in Portland, OR. Sadly, I'm stuck here in California, but make sure you catch the following if you go:

• Simon Phipps's keynote address, The Zen of Free (Thursday)
• The session on Sun's Open Source Strategy (Thursday)
• OpenSolaris Virtualization BoF (Wednesday)
• Discuss Sun's Open Source Strategy, the DLJ and Java BoF (Thursday)
• Consolidating Servers with OpenSolaris, ZFS and Zones BoF (Thursday)

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

Good article on page 34 in Brown University's Conduit interviewing Adam Leventhal about DTrace and BrandZ. Now if we could only get Adam to smile.... :-)

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris

Nice summary of why you'll want to use ZFS over on Tech-Recipes. Already in OpenSolaris, ZFS will debut in Solaris in the 6/06 (aka "Update 2") release due out next week.

Technorati Tags: OpenSolaris, Solaris, ZFS