Apple kills ZFS at MacOS Forge. The effort had shown signs of stress for a while, so the community reaction ([1], [2]) has been to quickly move to a new site; see Dustin's announcement and MacZFS @ Google Code. See reactions on the web at Engadget, AppleInsider, Gizmodo and Macrumors. The Goodbye message was very terse. Given Apple's usual behavior, I doubt we will get any more details than that. Overall reaction is quite muted - the reaction meter at MR was 85+, 400- but the Discussion Thread is quite mild (and technically uninformed).

MySQL opens its labs to the community. Users who want to test the early builds, before they are released for general availability can get them from MySQL Labs.

There is a detailed announcement that warns against using these binaries in production, but encourages everyone to test them. A companion tutorial explains how to use the snapshots to test the InnoDB plugin, which was released recently, and it is included in the latest MySQL 5.1 binaries.

Let me know if you want to help with the community launch of GlassFish v3 FCS. We will pull together a small coordinating group to work on this in the next few weeks...

If you missed Kaj's announcement in the splashing news commotion at the latest MySQL Conference, then you may be interested to get this information again. There was a piece of news that should be extremely important for all the users. MySQL server binaries used to be split between Enterprise and Community, and they were released with separate schedules. Not anymore. Starting from April 2009, the MySQL Community and Enterprise editions are built from the same code, and they are released with the same frequency.

There were rumors about the two editions being treated differently. Since we are talking about it, let me assure you that this is not the case. Both editions go through the same tests, and even more so now, since they come from the same tree. Until version 5.0.81, there was a separate tree for Community (with extra features), but now there is only one.

For every bug fix release, both editions are released on the same day.

Another difference that has disappeared is the version number. Previously, even numbers were for Enterprise, odd ones for Community. Now, every version number identifies both the Community and Enterprise edition.

Enjoy the best bits from MySQL. download at will!

Wikis and Blogs have been critical to the success of GlassFish. I'm always interested in other tools that leverage self-publishing and social networks and our MySQL relatives just announced the MySQL Librarian, a tool very similar to Slynkr but with additional refinements... and strongly tied to the MySQL community - a tie that I think that is what is missing in SDN Share.

Check it out in Giuseppe's Intro, the Technical Article, or just go play with the Actual Website.

What do you think? We had been playing with using conventions and templates on Wikis to do things like this for the GlassFish Community but we may want to just clone the librarian - after waiting a bit to see how it plays for MySQL.

Ogino reports on two new languages in the GlassFish v3 localization. The current list is: cs_CZ, de, es, fr, ja_JP, ko_KR, no, ru_RU, tr_TR, zh_CN, zh_TW (check ISO 639-2 and ISO 3166-1). The multi-lingual bundle is available here; download it and try it out. I'm surprised there is no pr_BR... where are the brazilians? To contribute check out the Project Home Page.

A call from Ming and Shinya to contribute to the Community Translation project for GlassFish v3. The translation is done using the Community Translation Interface, so contribute to one of the existing translations (zh_CN, zh_TW, fr, de, ja_JP, ko_KR, es - as of writing this note), or start one for your favorite language.

There is now a Community-Driven project that is Localizing OpenDS 2.0 using the CTI. Languages can be added on demand, the current list includes French, German, Japanese, Polish and Spanish. Details in the posts by Hajma and Ludo, in the Wiki page and in this thread. In general, the last couple of months have seen a significant growth on OpenDS adoption (MarkMail). I think this is driven by OpenDS 2.0 and also by additional voices like Matthew.

BTW, I believe that DocWeb, James's JavaDoc-driven community translation tool, is still active. And the NetBeans and OpenOffice folks have been doing community-driven translations for quite a while. I'll try to collect general status and tools used and will report back.

Added - If you are interested in OpenDS, pencil in 11am PT on the 23rd for their online webinar. We will post details at the Webinar Page.

This year's CommunityOne (West) starts a day before JavaOne, which gives us another opportunity to host an Unconference (see 2008 page) down in one of the big rooms at the Moscone Center. The event would be in the afternoon of Sunday, May 31st, so, if you are planning to attend C1 and/or J1 consider arranging your availability and/or travel plans to get there a bit earlier. This year we will cover the full range of projects under the GlassFish Portfolio umbrella (Server, WebSpace Server, ESB, Web Stack, Hudson, Communications Server, Mobility Platform) as well as the Identity projects (OpenSSO, OpenDS, IdMgr, RoleMgr)... Like last year, we will also follow-up with a party at The Thirsty Bear (@GoogleMaps).

Added - The 2009 page is Here.

Marcelo Souza has started a Brazilian Portuguese edition of TheAquarium. With this addition we will have 7 editions: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish. Alexis is planning a french edition and I am going to restart the spanish edition. Please let us know if you are interested in additional editions; due to logistical reasons related to how authoring is managed at Blogs.Sun.Com we can only easily leverage help from Sun employees, but that includes Sun Campus Ambassadors.

Registration is open for the MySQL Users Conference and Expo 2009. The review committee had 350 proposals to choose from, and most of the schedule is already done. The tutorials section is complete, with a juicy choice of topics from popular classics to the newest ones, all of them with some innovative contents, as the theme Innovation Everywhere requires. Register before February 16, and save as much as $200.

I think Tim's was the First Post with (free) advice on the direction that Sun should take, but many others have followed since; enough that Dave decided to track them via a Delicious Tag. No consensus in the recommendations but quite a few mention GlassFish (most on the positive, but some negative, but the spelling is right) - and James Governor even makes an special mention of Hudson. In general, GlassFish seems to have benefit quite a bit from extra attention (and the global financial squeeze) in the last few weeks; check out the google search trend: snapshot, live.

Interesting times indeed! (regardless of whether that is a Chinese Curse).

The Quality Team started the FishCAT program for the GFv3 Prelude release and it has worked very well - 36 members from 18 different countries, filing 125 reports plus much feedback. To celebrate the launch of v3 Prelude, Judy has posted a Thank-You, as well as the series of entries where she introduces key members of the team, starting with Adam (blog, photo), Sebastien (blog, photo) and Kirstian (blog, photo), I'm sure the FishCAT program will be repeated for v3 FCS and we will announce it when it happens. In the meantime, all the members continue to be engaged in GlassFish; for example, Adam is Ready to use GFv3 in production as soon as there is an EJB container ready...

Until a few months ago, the MySQL community had several complaints about the contribution process. The two biggest obstacles were an unfriendly revision control system and a too demanding contributor agreement. The revision control system was changed in June. Exit BitKeeper, enter Bazaar. And now goes the second obstacle. Today, Kaj Arnö announced that MySQL has adopted the Sun Contributors Agreement. Kudos!

There are still a few impediments, but the database group management seems well determined to tackle the problem and become contributions friendly. There is more in the making. Stay tuned!

Hot on the heels of SB2, WebSynergy continues its cadence of builds with the latest, Project WebSynergy Community Build 5 [download]. This build incorporates additional samples, a bridge between JSR 286 events and the built-in services (e.g. the activities service), WSRP improvements, jBPM workflow integration into SAW, and a first cut of SWA. On the development side, Portal Pack 3.0 has a new download page and updated NetBeans and Eclipse plugins. A few articles have been written recently: Maruthi on Presence (and a screencast), Allan on Q&A on Message Boards, and Mahipal on i18n. Can't wait to see the next Stable Build (3) !