Kohsuke and I have been hinting at this for a while (and we pre-announced it at JavaOne) and now it is official: reflecting the continued growth of Hudson Adoption, Sun now provides Commercial Support for Hudson. Formally speaking, the offer is part of the Recently Announced WebStack 1.5 and you buy it via the GlassFish Portfolio Offering. In a nutshell, we are providing sustaining support, with priority treatment for bug fixes filed by customers. We also can provide consultative support for people interested in, say, creating private plugins or improving their internal Agile processes. Kohsuke has collected all the key pointers into this Summary Page.

Additional links include the Features in the Offer, Terms of Support (bottom of main page) and Service-Level Agreement (bottom of main page). As always, we appreciate your feedback to help us continue to improve Hudson and Sun's offerings.

Added - Reports from the web:

• Our team in Hungary

Last month we made available the latest sustaining (for-fee) release of the GlassFish Server. GFv2.1p3 fixes 18 new bugs. GFv2.1p3 is also a patch release (p9) for the earlier GFv2U2; collectively all the patch releases in that family addressed 170 bugs. Sustaining releases are available at the Basic level of Sun GlassFish Portfolio; higher subscription levels entitle different levels of customer support and access to the GlassFish Enterprise Manager

Recall that all our bug fixes also get incorporated into the next public release, in this case GFv2.1.1; patches give our customers the benefits of timely releases and isolated bug fixes; check Sun's GlassFish Support Model for more details.

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!

Two pieces of new of interest to people tracking Oracle and the Sun Acquisition: • Sun's Shareholders Approve the Merger (but still pending regulators approval). • Changes in the Leaderhip of Software Development at Oracle. BTW, I've started posting short posts of this ilk at Twitter.

Added - After the post I realized it might be useful to add some more background on Thomas Kurian, so...

• JavaOne 2006: General Session, day 2 (podcast 1, podcast 2)
• JavaOne 2007: General Session, day 2 (video 1, video 2)
• JavaOne 2008: General Session, day 2 (video 1, video 2).
• Oracle World 2007, Keynote (Keynote)
• Biography at Oracle

Several pieces of good news on Sun's OpenStorage products. Earlier this week the product line was refreshed, both the 7110 and the 7210 offerings. At the same time the SS7000 Simulator has been updated and is now available as an OVF format and can run on the latest VirtualBox (2.2.2). Overall, the product line is doing very well and is the "fastest ramping new product in Sun's storage portfolio ever". Check the Product WebSite for more resources and links.

OpenStorage is an example of the benefits of a Systems Approach to products that leverages both hardware and software, and, on that general topic, check out this Interview with Larry Ellison (available from Oracle.com/sun).

Oracle to Buy Sun Sun and Oracle today announced a definitive agreement for Oracle to acquire Sun for $9.50 per share in cash. The Sun Board of Directors has unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close this summer. More.

Oracle Buys Sun On April 20, 2009, Oracle announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Sun Microsystems (Sun). The proposed transaction is subject to Sun stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently, and it is business as usual. Learn More

The MySQL Campus Tour has come to California. The long trip that Dups started in March from Montreal is near the end. He is getting reinforcements. Five MySQL community enthusiasts are now about to tour the campuses in North and South California, giving free lectures on MySQL. The full schedule is available in the MySQL Forge wiki. Participation is free, and it's an unique chance to get in touch with the MySQL experts and ask the tough questions.

From the Gold Sponsor section of EclipseCon's front page... Spotted by Don Smith.

Today, at CommunityOne East, Sun unveiled more details of its Cloud initiative: A world of many clouds, both public and private, that are open and compatible. The initiative enables the definition and deployment of Virtual Data Centers, leveraging q-Layer, xVM and VirtualBox and components like OpenSolaris, MySQL, GlassFish and Web Stack. For more details, check Cloud@Sun, the Launch Event and this Overview. I also enjoyed reading/watching about the SuperNat center and TheRegister ran an Overview White Paper.

Also check the personal perspectives from Craig and Tim, who were directly involved in defining the RESTful API for manipulating the cloud. The APIS are under Creative Commons license (see Opening APIs) and are available at Kenai, see API home and Hello Cloud project.

Szeretgom.hu is a nice GlassFish adoption story. János Cserép started this local community site back in 2006 and it has grown very nicely: Webreklam reports 250K pageviews/month and 15K unique users/month in a city of 30K! The technology set includes GlassFish v3, Sun Web Server, Apache Wicket, Hudson, OpenSolaris and Sun Fire X2100. For more details, check out the Adoption Story, the Full Questionnaire and János Presentation.

The Sun Identity Team is kicking off a monthly webinar program outlining our overall portfolio and how it can help you solve everyday identity challenges. The first session will be held on February 18 at 8AM PT and will provide an overview around how Sun approaches everyday identity and offer an overview of our methodology to build strong identity foundation that lasts. So . . . what are you waiting for! Register for our life changing webinar now!

Just slightly over a year ago I posted Welcome Aboard, MySQL! from Orlando. Since then we have worked together in many things including GF Bundles, IdMgr, Telco, OSS Price/Performance, Pricing, even Legal. Possibly the biggest impact of the acquisision has been on the non-engineering side: the MySQL team brought an emphasis on volume and that is making a huge difference - I can point to some Isolated deals and to Sun's financials.

I've enjoyed the MySQL team throughout the year and now we will have even more opportunities to work together since the engineering team is going to report into Karen Padir, my manager. As you would expect the news have been reported in the online press and blogosphere. If you are interested, I'd start with Kaj's post, and, if you are attending FOSDEM you may want to attend his Q&A Session. Other reports include ArsTechnica, SJMercury, CW, ITWorld, IW, ZDNet, Reuters, the451group, OWDeveloper and The Register; of these, the post I probably find most interesting is Matt Asay's.

Here are some recent news that will have an impact on many of our GlassFish users:

Since I'm still in the mood for a break (I'm planning to start my holiday break early next week - and I'm not planning to spend it like last Xmas break)... a pointer to Sacha's post: SUN: (Sound?) Open Source Business Model? and John's followup: When you hit them and they smile, you know you did something right . I think Sacha is uncharacteristically off in this one. He uses the pricing for small (up to 1K employees) companies, but, equally importantly, Sun has a lot of software we can sell to these companies leveraging GlassFish (and other entry points). And that without counting on Services and Systems, which also rely and leverage Software.

Docs.sun.com has been around for a long time and its look-and-feel had not been updated significantly for a bit. But today it sports a New Look and it looks very good! Check these out: • GFv2, GFv2 U1/U2, GFv3 Prelude • Portal 7.2, JavaCAPS, MQ, and much more • Nice dynamic browsing and improved searching. • Localized in 12 languages!

Very nice! I would only want to have the ability to annotate the documents, otherwise, this looks very good!

Added - Also check out Susan's Overview of the changes.