Ken Tomlinson: Engineering Manager, Solaris

I arrived in Frankfurt yesterday morning, Monday Dec. 3d to participate in Sun's Tech Days event.

I presented "What is Solaris Nevada: Nevada at Build 78": this will be later be published on this OpenSolaris Tech Days page, but in the meantime I'm making it available here.

I really enjoyed giving this presentation to such a large and enthusiastic audience of around 100 people.
There were numerous questions, some of which I answered immediately and others after the talk.
I gave out my business card to several people and I'm expecting further clarifications of questions by email.

I'm going to summarize the questions and answers here now, even if some answers will be provided later as I  investigate further.

1. Q: Regarding audio drivers, will Sun replace the OSS (Open Sound System) framework, perhaps with framework X (didn't catch the name!)?
   A: It seems the answer is no. Interestingly, I received a forwarded email report during the evening about some of the driver work at our Bejing China site. They intend to re-energize the OSS framework with 4Front. I hope we'll see more news announced soon.
2. Q: During installation, are there any plans to offer installation target profiles to make the default packages installed better suited to the target machine? For example, a server doesn't need certain Java packages. By the way, it's a nightmare to have 1000+ packages installed: it creates extra work to follow all the required or potentially useful patches. Improvements are requested by a large news service company (name deliberately not published).
   A: There are already some profile type questions available for network based "Jumpstart" installations, where it's possible to choose from among several package cluster choices, anywhere from minimal ones to full package set including OEM packages. On the new installer, I'm not aware of specific plans but I'll give more news later.
3. Q: Is the CIFS code recently released into build 77 all written by Sun or is it a port?
   A: A participant in the audience actually answered this code came from a NAS company Sun acquired a few years ago.
   
4. Q: Will Sun be using the smartcard framework to allow authentication?
   A: I didn't know about this, but I checked with Scott Rotondo who is a senior member of Sun's security team and who was presenting yesterday and today. Scott wasn't aware of any recent work using the smartcard framework. He can remember there may still be a PAM module that provides some features in this area. More details to come...
5. Q: If a vendor of a device (PDA, mobile phone, or other) were to use some Solaris open-source code and then patent his device, how would that work?
   A: I started with a caveat, saying I'm not a legal expert. Patents and open-source are not incompatible, so Sun is actually able to patent some software technology and still open-source it. The vendor couldn't actually patent any "new inventions" that are just uses of Sun's patented technology without infringement. Secondly, on the open-source side, the vendor couldn't take Solaris open-source code and then modify it and keep it proprietary and closed-source without breaking the license (currently CDDL).
   
6. Q: Will Sun sell its own VPN solution? By the way, there is an open-source package called VPNsec (name/site to be checked!).
   A: Internally, we use Cisco VPN software (works on x86 machines for Windows, Linux, Solaris) as well as an internally developed software package called "punchin" which runs on Solaris and uses IPSec tunnels. I personally prefer the later software. I don't think there are plans to make it a commercial product... but if there is enough demand, why not?
   

I'm looking forward to more great talks this afternoon, as well as the pNFS (parallel NFS) and Sun Grid Engine talks tomorrow by my colleague Guenter Herbert.