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    Sun to Update Solaris, Name OpenSolaris Board Members

    By
    Peter Galli
    -
    April 1, 2005
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      Sun Microsystems Inc. is already hard at work on the feature-set for the next version of its Solaris operating system, which is taking place on a parallel track to the development of updates for Solaris 10, released at the end of January.

      The plan is for new features and technology from the next version of Solaris to be delivered through the Software Express for Solaris program, which gives customers regular snapshots of future software features currently under development at a very early stage, as happened with Solaris 10.

      “In next few months, you will see Sun opening up the next version of Solaris,” John Loiacono, Suns executive vice president for software, told eWEEK.

      Customers using Solaris 10 had asked for a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for DTrace, the facility that opens to developers and system administrators a window into the workings of the operating system and the applications that run on it, Loiacono said, so it was working on that.

      “Customers also want predictive self-healing updates, with a more user-friendly interface to allow less-technical people do this. We are also working on virtualization; we are pushing our container technology to the next level,” he said.

      /zimages/1/28571.gifClick here to read more about advanced partitioning technology in Solaris 10.

      On Monday, Sun is expected to also announce the names of the board members who will establish the rules for community governance around its OpenSolaris project.

      While Sun officials declined to name those selected to the governance board, less than half of them are believed to be Sun staff, with the majority coming from its customer base, the industry and the open-source community.

      The board will be tasked with putting the processes and details in place that will govern how the OpenSolaris community works together.

      Next Page: Delivering source code.

      Delivering source code

      Sun was also on track to deliver all the OpenSolaris source code, which is most of the code for its shipping Solaris 10 product less some third-party drivers and other technology not legally owned by Sun, before the end of June, Loiacono said.

      The move to open Solaris had “largely been welcomed by the silent majority,” Loiacono said; however, the move has been sharply criticized by some in the Linux community because the license that governs it, the CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License), is not compatible with the GNU GPL (General Public License), under which the open-source Linux operating system is licensed.

      /zimages/1/28571.gifRead more here about Sun facing criticism over Solaris software patents.

      Sun had distributed more than 1 million registered licenses for Solaris 10 since Jan. 31, when the software became available on Suns Web site, he said, but he was unable to detail how many of those were paid licenses rather than free downloads.

      The opening up of the code would also result in new customer opportunities, which was reflected in the fact that there are now some 400 non-Sun-certified platforms for the operating system, compared with about 270 before it was released, he said.

      Sun had also been effective in signing up new partners for Solaris 10, including BEA, Veritas, Siebel and SAP, and was not seeing any pushback from them because it had chosen the CDDL, he said.

      With regard to the two pieces of technology that were not included when Solaris 10 shipped earlier this year; the 128-bit Solaris ZFS file system and the Janus technology that allows Linux binaries to run natively on Solaris, Loiacono said both were coming along well and would be available by the middle of the year.

      Some Solaris users, such as Thomas Nau, head of the Communication and Information Centers Infrastructure Department at the University of Ulm, Germany, say they would have liked to see ZFS in the initial release because it is the only bundled file system that supports more than 1TB without introducing limitations.

      Asked about Suns strained relationship with IBM, which has so far refused to support Solaris 10 on its x86 hardware because it had not yet seen the level of customer interest in that operating system to support such a move improving, IBM spokesman Steve Eisenstadt, in Somers, N.Y., told eWEEK that Loiacono said the two forms were “working together.”

      /zimages/1/28571.gifClick here to read more about IBMs lack of support the Solaris 10 operating system on the x86 hardware platform.

      “We are at the table, and I am hopeful that we will have something to announce fairly soon. Some of our enterprise customers have told them that they want choice to Linux. They want alternatives, like Solaris 10 on the x86 platform, and they need IBM applications to make that happen,” he said.

      Influential enterprise customers such as Tony Scott, the chief technology officer of GMs information systems and services group in Detroit, have told eWEEK that IBMs approach was wrong and that the pressure was going to mount on IBM and others to support their applications on that platform, “which is going to have significant market share and has all the marks of a successful, viable, competitive platform.”

      “For companies such as GM, which already has an installed Sun base, this is attractive. In this particular case, I think IBM is being a little shortsighted,” Scott said.

      /zimages/1/28571.gifCheck out eWEEK.coms for the latest open-source news, reviews and analysis.

      Peter Galli
      Peter Galli has been a financial/technology reporter for 12 years at leading publications in South Africa, the UK and the US. He has been Investment Editor of South Africa's Business Day Newspaper, the sister publication of the Financial Times of London.He was also Group Financial Communications Manager for First National Bank, the second largest banking group in South Africa before moving on to become Executive News Editor of Business Report, the largest daily financial newspaper in South Africa, owned by the global Independent Newspapers group.He was responsible for a national reporting team of 20 based in four bureaus. He also edited and contributed to its weekly technology page, and launched a financial and technology radio service supplying daily news bulletins to the national broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which were then distributed to some 50 radio stations across the country.He was then transferred to San Francisco as Business Report's U.S. Correspondent to cover Silicon Valley, trade and finance between the US, Europe and emerging markets like South Africa. After serving that role for more than two years, he joined eWeek as a Senior Editor, covering software platforms in August 2000.He has comprehensively covered Microsoft and its Windows and .Net platforms, as well as the many legal challenges it has faced. He has also focused on Sun Microsystems and its Solaris operating environment, Java and Unix offerings. He covers developments in the open source community, particularly around the Linux kernel and the effects it will have on the enterprise.He has written extensively about new products for the Linux and Unix platforms, the development of open standards and critically looked at the potential Linux has to offer an alternative operating system and platform to Windows, .Net and Unix-based solutions like Solaris.His interviews with senior industry executives include Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Linus Torvalds, the original developer of the Linux operating system, Sun CEO Scot McNealy, and Bill Zeitler, a senior vice president at IBM.For numerous examples of his writing you can search under his name at the eWEEK Website at www.eweek.com.
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