The MySQL acquisition is quickly changing the perception of Sun's commitment to Open Source. Earlier today I pointed to new efforts in the Health and the Education industries, here are two more stories:

• The University of Tokyo and Sun start Research on HPC and Web-based Languages
• Sun and Chinese Government announce OpenSPARC Collaboration.

Assessing all this, LinuxInsider says: Deals Cast Sun in Role of Open Source Standard Bearer.

I'm not surprised the deal is changing people's perceptions; but I am a bit surprised at how fast and how deeply it changes them. This is going to a be a very interesting year for us.

Virtualization is important to everyone and developers are no exception. Sun has announced today the agreement to acquire innotek, the makers of VirtualBox, an Open Source virtualization software very well suited for desktop usage. Never heard of VirtualBox? Wondering what the relationship is with Sun's xVM hypervisor? answers it best on his blogSteve "Virtual" Wilson and Tim Marsland probably answer both questions the best.

This probably sounds compelling to developers given VirtualBox' open source nature and its ability to handle just about any hosts and guests (listed here) you may require for your Java and Web 2.0 developments.

You're 17MB away from using the software and the website is www.virtualbox.org and is unrelated to this ;-)

Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE), the Sun OpenSolaris-based distribution for Solaris, Java, and Web 2.0 developers has a new release out: 1/08. Ludo has a post about the integrated web stack as well as a 10-minute screencast. After giving SMF privileges for Apache/mySQL servers, Ludo shows how the user can use a very simple graphical tool to start/stop and configure services. He also walks you through a small PHP/jMaki/Ajax pre-packaged demo with a mySQL backend. He finally uses NetBeans' PHP support and auto-registering of the AMP-stack to author and debug a simple PHP application. Pretty slick!

SXDE also comes with the NetBeans 6/GlassFish v2 pre-configured bundle and if you're using the VMWare image, I would recommend upgrading the amount of memory from 512 to 2Gb. And in case you're wondering, the VMWare image password for root is SXDE (see also the FAQ).

Check out also Ludo's previous interview on GlassFish tooling.

Remember Blackbox, the "Data Center in a Shipping Container"? It is now shipping! The official name is Sun Modular Datacenter S20. Read from some Customers or see its World Tour.

If you are a docs.sun.com user, you probably experienced some latency (or even worse) while navigating the site. We're glad to report docs.sun.com now hosted on a Sun external web-hosting environment with much improved performance. Try for yourself with Sun Java System Application Server 9.1 (GlassFish v2) beta documentation. While blogs are great and show up prominently while searching the Internet, some of them become obsolete and official documentation is really what should preempt other content.

BTW - if you're interested in Internet and XML archeology, you can read how Jon Bosak (XML co-inventor, Sun employee) first implemented Solaris documentation about 10 years ago under the name AnswerBook2 with an all-XML background. This later became docs.sun.com.

Project jMaki has just completed a successful .9.3 release (as summarized in Carla's blog). One of the headline items in the release is support for a new "jMaki Extensions" mechanism. Greg has posted a detailed writeup of Extensions, where he describes them as "behavior / functionality that are shared across widgets."

Examples of Extensions, Greg says, could include enhanced debugging support, sound, or application-specific controllers. But for his own sample, he's looking to even fresher ground: Google Gears (which enables off-line webapps by providing a browser add-on with APIs for things like local storage). Seeing how easily Greg creates a jMaki Extension for Google Gears might just inspire you to create some Extensions of your own.

Thanks to Glen for a quick entry describing how to install WebDAV-Servlet on GlassFish. Short and painless... I wish it was always this easy. Check Glen's write-up.

Whether you like the cutting-edge functionality of the GlassFish milestone and nightly builds at java.net or the rock-solid stability of Sun's GlassFish-based distributions, there is always something new to try. But what if you want to upgrade your existing GlassFish installation without losing your existing configuration settings? GlassFish has a built-in "asupgrade" tool which does just that.

Shalini has put together a nice tutorial showing how to use this tool. As Shalini shows, it supports both a GUI and CLI interface and allows either in-place or side-by-side upgrades.

In today's User Experience Meeting, Sreenivas Munnangi will be speaking on Glassfish's add-ons feature. Check out the Addons onepager here. Come and listen from the "source" and feel free to give feedbacks and ask questions.

As a GlassFish community member, you are allowed to dial into the User Experience meeting. Details on how to attend the meeting is at the UE Wiki Page. Please join the discussions and help improve GlassFish!

Want to know more about Grizzly, the HTTP connector used in GlassFish V2? Jeanfrancois Arcand, the person behind Grizzly will be speaking in today's User Experience meeting. Come and listen from the "source" and feel free to give feedbacks and ask questions.

As a GlassFish community member, you are allowed to dial into the User Experience meeting. Details on how to attend the meeting is at the UE Wiki Page. Please join the discussions and help improve GlassFish!

We will have the User Experience meeting tomorrow Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at noon (PT). Ken Paulsen will present on JSFTemplating. Please join the meeting and learn how you can use templating with your favorite JavaServer™ Faces project. JSFTemplating has been used by GlassFish admin console in v2. You may use JSFTemplating with DynamicFaces project to create a perfect Ajax solution tailored to JSF's component architecture! See Ken's blog for more on this.

As a GlassFish community member, you are allowed to dial into the User Experience meeting. Details on how to attend the meeting is at the UE Wiki Page. Please join the discussions and help improve GlassFish!

The next "Ask the Experts" is on the Open Source Java Project. This will give the Java community an opportunity to ask questions about Sun's open source initiatives, including GlassFish. Got a question about Sun's open-sourcing of its Java platform implementations? Read the FAQ . Then post any follow-up questions during this Ask the Experts session, week of Jan. 16-19, and get answers from representatives of Sun's Java platform implementations.

Harpreet reports on the ongoing Java EE 5 SDK Contest. The SDK includes SJS AS 9.0 PE UR1 (Sun's distribution of the final bits of GlassFish V1 UR1), and the contest is to encourage you to fill in a survey to understand better your needs, specially around deployments. As you enter the contest, please also consider adding your site - if applicable - to our GlassFish Adoption Wiki page.

I am looking for two individuals for a combination evangelist / Advanced Development job working with the multiple open source middleware communities covered by TheAquarium. The job requires good verbal and written communication skills, strong team attitude, high energy, good technical background and the ability to travel to a few SunTech days and conferences. I have some leeway to adjust the job depending on the specific individual - the coding can range from full-fledged AD to samples. A short summary is: I want people that visit our communities to react with a: Wow! Cool! I want it!. Your task is to show them what we have and contribute so we have even more cool stuff.

Ideally I am looking for one person in the Americas and one in Eurasia but I have flexibility. My top priority is to hire smart and motivated people. If you are interested let me know.

Now back to the regular news and announcements :-).

Sun has added a new Java EE-related download bundle, the Java Application Platform SDK. This first release of the new SDK adds Access Manager functionality to the traditional Java EE SDK; future releases will add more functionality. With this addition, there are now 3 Java EE 5 related bundles (see at-a-glance) all including an updated Application Server, based on GlassFish V1 UR1. And so are the new NetBeans 5.5 bundles.

Here is a brief overview of the different pieces:

• GlassFish V1 UR1 - This is the community-lead project that delivers the comercial quality App Server that is also the Java EE 5 RI.
• Sun Java System Application Server 9.0 UR1 - This is the Sun-supported distribution of the above. Most people will get this through one of the bundles below but here is a direct link.
• Java EE SDK - The traditional SDK bundle around the above. Most developers will get the AppServer through this download.
• Java Application Platform SDK - Adds additional functionality like Access Manager that is not defined by the JCP specifications but are useful to write Enterprise Applications
• Java EE Tools SDK - This is a full bundle with everything in the Java Application Platform SDK plus all the relevant tools.

Java EE SDK downloads are available from the Java EE Downloads page. NetBeans-related bundles are available from the NB 5.5 Downloads.