Forty-Two

So long and thanks for all the fish

Tomorrow I will leave Sun. It has been a wonderful experience. Today, on the openInstaller IRC we were reminiscing about our careers at Sun and it got me thinking I should write down mine.

When I went back to school after a few years of  trying to find my way. I set a goal to graduate with a degree in computer science and have a job at a good technology company before I was 30. Over those years I was fortunate enough to visit San Francisco often and I became enamored. So, I decided to pack up and drive to the bay area. I set a new goal, to go work for Sun, SGI, Apple or HP. What I considered the big four in technology at the time. When I arrived, after skiing my way across the country, I had my first interview at Sun 5 days later. I was psyched. Menlo Park was just finished and the place was buzzing. Well, since I had a degree from a school that was not one of the big 5 at the time I had to wait. So, I borrowed a laptop, and started re-learning Unix. I would call the hiring manager twice a week just to let him know what I was learning. 3 months later, I had an offer and I started at Sun 3 days before my 30th birthday. Goal accomplished!

I started in March 1996 as a Solaris kernel patch test engineer. I was nervous, excited and having the time of my life. I met one of my best friends, Bren, that week. He took me under his wing and really helped me excel. After testing patches for a while I decided I wanted to be a development engineer. My manager had just taken a position in a new group and I was chomping at the bit. I applied for the job, working on Solaris install.

My first project was to move the development effort from our Colorado Springs site to Menlo Park. That was a chore. The site was being shut down and I had to go there and learn as much as I could and gather all the data and receive toi's. After that, I was given my first project. Solaris 7 64 bit install support. I had to dig into the code and figure it out. What fun! From there I worked on the, now infamous, cd0 project. The initial goal was to enable sun4u systems, >200Mhz cpus, to run older Solaris (2.5.1, 2.6 and 2.7) releases. It succeeded and without it we could never have sold as many as we did.  The core technology for cd0 is still used today. I then worked on the new Solaris installer for Solaris 8. That was a challenge. As many know, our support for x86 at the time was less than stellar. We lacked drivers and the disk management interfaces were lacking. They are just now getting addressed with openSolaris and the Caiman project. My final project as a developer was to enable upgrade from systems managed by Solaris Disksuite. Solaris Volume manager was being integrated into Solaris 9 and we needed to be able to upgrade roots with mirrors. I  started that project. About half way through I was given an opportunity to become a manager. I was reticent, but I felt I was cut out for the job.

Sun managers are technical and also get to help their teams in career growth. My first team consisted, mainly, of my former peers. They were great and made the transition very easy. I learned so much from that team. I managed them through Solaris 9 and most of Solaris 10. We delivered Live Upgrade, Solaris Flash, numerous jumpstart enhancements, assisted with the initial BigAdmin site, were initial members of the N1 project and even managed to fix some bugs. It was a tough job, however, since install is often the whipping post for any number of problems. But with a good team you can get through anything and we did.

What is now my last job at Sun has been the most exciting. We were to gather requirements, architect/design, create and deliver a new installation framework. Initially it was to be the unifying framework for Sun. That however was a tough task to accomplish as Sun struggled to regain profitability. The goal had to be reset and the final goal was to deliver a cross os platform installer for Sun's middleware. The project was code named purplehaze. It was often criticized, maligned and snickered at internally but the team we assembled powered through all that. Making it easy to piece together all these disparate products was important. After a year and a half of a piecemeal team working part time on purplehaze and part time on the Java Enterprise System, we were given the green light to grow the team. For the past year and a half we have worked hard and in June delivered openInstaller. The first product shipped using openInstaller last month and others are in the works. So, job accomplished. Another great team, pulling together and getting it done!

So, while I am saddened to have to leave Sun and all the great people I have had the pleasure to work with over the years. I am also excited about the new challenges around the corner.

Thank You Sun and so long and thanks for all the fish!

 Forty-Two

 

Posted at 11:47PM Sep 26, 2007 by Matt Williamson in Personal  | 

OpenInstaller 0.9.4 Released

Version 0.9.4 of Cross platform Install Framework

• Zip Support
  
• Zip based packages for all supported platforms Solaris, Linux, Windows.
  
• Untested on MacOS, AIX
  and HPUX.
• Zip Product Example 
• Cross platform install example using zips as packages
  
• Product Selection
• Create more complex installers comprised of multiple products
  
• New Product Selection UI page created 
• Works with Upgrade 
• Install over HTTP 
• Using Java Web Start and JNLP an http based distribution
  can be created.
  
• User run over JNLP 
• Configuration Heartbeat
• Using JMX a product configurator can provide a heartbeat
  to the progress bar to give accurate feedback to the user.
  

------------------------------------------------------------------

Project openInstaller:
https://openinstaller.dev.java.net/index.html

Available for download:
https://openinstaller.dev.java.net/downloads_index.html

The full release notes are available:
https://openinstaller.dev.java.net/docs/releasenotes/0_9_4.html

Please download and try!

Posted at 01:58PM Sep 11, 2007 by Matt Williamson in Sun  | 

Ah Fantasy Football

It's that time again. The NFL season is beginning right now! If you can't tell, I love the fall season and since I joined a fantasy league I now love the NFL again. This is my 5th year in the same league and the excitement is high among my league-mates. Everyone thinks they are going to win even though I will ;). I drafted Drew Brees, who's New Orleans Saints are playing the champs, Indianapolis Colts. I am hoping for a high scoring, pass fest!

So let the games begin.

Posted at 05:37PM Sep 06, 2007 by Matt Williamson in Personal  | 

Thanks SwiX^ml

SwiX^ml has featured GlassFish and openInstaller on it's site and for that I would like to say Thank You SwiX^ml. As James (aka bytor) blogged when we first released openInstaller 0.9 one of the primary goals of openInstaller was to provide a declarative way to describe install applications and to get UI for "free". One of the key components that has provided a means to meet this goal is SwiX^ml. So again, thank you SwiX^ml community.

Posted at 11:21PM Aug 25, 2007 by Matt Williamson in Sun  | 

New Brand, New Day?

I was sitting in my hotel room from Bangalore last evening when I came across the RSS feed from "El Reg" regarding the change from the SUNW stock symbol to JAVA. My first reaction was, "is this a joke". I immediately typed this thought to my fellow openInstaller community members on our IRC chat channel. We made some jokes and poked a lot of fun at the report, which by then was confirmed by Jonathan's blog entry. We knew there would be mass resistance internally, and probably externally too. Sure enough, for the most part, that has been the initial reaction. Most of the comments are against the change. Is it because this is the usual reaction to change? Maybe. I admit that some of the issues in the comments are constructive.

Since I am no marketing expert, and certainly no financial expert (if you saw my portfolio you would understand),  I will trust  the people who are the experts and are doing all they can to grow awareness of Sun, worldwide. Maybe this change will translate into many new opportunities for Sun. Perhaps from business leaders and decision makers who know about Java by seeing it on their cell phones, or browsers. The new JAVA symbol will lead them to check out all the other goodies Sun has to offer. Also, I place a lot of trust in someone who creates results.  I believe that Jonathan and his team have created some amazing results. Since that team has taken over the helm we have seen way more positives than negatives. Sure, Sun has had to reduce it's workforce in order to keep costs down which does mean letting go of our most precious commodity, very smart, hardworking people. Seeing my friends and colleagues leave saddened me but I understood the need and I know these former co-workers, who are some of the best and brightest, would land on their feet. Many have since come back because Sun provides a great work environment. The changes made by the executive management team have created great results. With Jonathan at the helm we have returned to profitability, shipped an excellent OS in Solaris 10, increased Sun's commitment to community and open source, increased Java usage around the world, built some amazing servers and desktops, changed the face of software licensing and much more. In the end that's what will determine if the change to JAVA was the right thing to do. So, after sleeping on it, really reading Jonathan's blog and many others, I say let's go for it. "Change is good" is my motto and after all I love having a cup of java while the sun is rising.

Posted at 01:03AM Aug 24, 2007 by Matt Williamson in Sun  | 

The source is in erm...out

The openInstaller source is available. Have at it.

 The dev meetings have also been opened up. The first was held today. Read the minutes. If you wish to contribute to the development efforts join dev@openinstaller.dev.java.net and join the meetings.

Posted at 08:05PM May 16, 2007 by Matt Williamson in Sun  | 

Timing is everything

I was able to attend CommunityOne today and was fortunate enough to sit in on the GlassFish day lunch session with Rich and Jonathan. A very good overview of the talk is on Arun's blog. After seeing and hearing what is coming for the GlassFish community I am even more excited to announce that openInstaller is joining the GlassFish community.

See the updated  openInstaller site with the GlassFish logo as well as the new skin. The 0.9.0 binaries have been pushed to the site. The source is coming, as soon as we clear one last legal review. Hopefully this week.

Kudos to the openInstaller team and special thanks go to Manpreet and Rajkumar for the great work they did in getting the site up and running.

 

Posted at 11:40PM May 07, 2007 by Matt Williamson in Sun  | 

Welcome to the openinstaller.dev.java.net community

The openInstaller community site goes live on Monday, May 7. Here is the announcement sent to the community. Please come join the fun!
----------------------------------------
Welcome to the openInstaller, <http://openinstaller.org> &
<http://openinstaller.dev.java.net>, community!

openInstaller is an open source install framework. It's purpose is to
simplify the creation and maintenance of single system product
installers. Build individual product installers or easily combine them
into stacks and suites.

The openInstaller community welcomes developers building installers and
developers who wish to contribute to the framework.

openInstaller 0.9.0 features include:

* Cross platform
    - Native packaging
    - Zip based packaging for cross platform
* Declarative installer
    - Describe the installer
    - No compiling required
* User Interface
    - No coding required
    - Skins
    - Single source for Console or Graphical
    - Silent install
* Initial Configuration Interface
* Install Engine
    - Pluggable providers
    - Advanced logging
* Repair, Upgrade, Uninstall
* Desktop Integration
    - Gnome
    - KDE
    - Windows
* Multiple Installs on a single system
* Developer tools for Netbeans used to create installers


Email lists for support and questions:
    - announce@openinstaller.dev.java.net
    - users@openinstaller.dev.java.net
    - dev@openinstaller.dev.java.net

Join the community and download the source or binaries today.
    - https://openinstaller.dev.java.net/downloads_index.html

Posted at 11:12AM May 04, 2007 by Matt Williamson in Sun  | 

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone!

May 2007 be your best year ever.

Keep an eye out for more on software install, Java ES, Solaris, home repair, sports, wine and restaurant reviews.

Posted at 02:26PM Jan 04, 2007 by Matt Williamson in Personal  |