Oracle and SUN Archive

Jonathan Schwartz on the Future of Sun

Submitted by irbis 2007-05-23 Oracle and SUN 32 Comments

After just over a year as chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz is moving into a new phase as the leader of Sun Microsystems. Much of his opening months was spent emerging from the shadow of the highly visible Scott McNealy, boosted by Schwartz's high-profile blog. Now that the introductory period is over, Schwartz is working to show that the Silicon Valley stalwart can regain its former stature.

Sun’s CommunityOne 2007

Submitted by Grant 2007-05-09 Oracle and SUN 1 Comment

"We began our week of JavaOne coverage this morning with some of the information shared during the CommunityOne General Session. Now that the day is winding to an end, we have some additional information to pass along on Sun's first-ever CommunityOne event. Outside of the CommunityOne General Session, other tracks throughout the day were on NetBeans, GlassFish, OpenJDK for mobile & embedded environments, OpenSolaris, Web 2.0, Startup Camp, RedMonk's un-conference, and the discussion of Linux versus Solaris."

Xandros Server Standard Edition 2 Released

Submitted by anonymous 2007-05-08 Oracle and SUN 9 Comments

Xandros today launched Xandros Server Standard Edition 2, a complete, enterprise-grade SMB Linux server package including Xen virtualization and more than 30 other services. The new Xandros Linux server is compatible with existing Windows domain and networking topologies.

Sun Joins Porting Effort for OpenOffice.org for Mac

Submitted by Nimrita 2007-05-03 Oracle and SUN 29 Comments

"I'm excited to let you all know that as of now Sun engineering will add its support to the ongoing Mac/Aqua porting effort. The MacOSX porting history is basically as old as OpenOffice.org itself. Practically from the start there was the plan to have a native version for Mac, however as a first step the community decided to produce an X11 port which - since OOo already had several X11 ports from the start - seemed to be a good way to get a version quickly as temporary solution. As usual the 'temporary solution' tended to be quite long lived."

Submitted by irbis 2007-04-30 Oracle and SUN 60 Comments

"Amid falling sales of its bread-and-butter servers and mounting pressure on Schwartz to cut more jobs and boost a stock price that's dropped more than 22%, to USD 5.26, since early February, Sun is considering its most radical open-source move yet: releasing Solaris under the love-it-or-hate-it GPL. The move could reinvigorate Sun by putting one of its crown jewels into the thick of the open-source movement - or it could diminish the worth of one of Sun's most valuable pieces of intellectual property."

Xandros Linux Server First To Receive LSB Certification

Submitted by anonymous 2007-04-25 Oracle and SUN 9 Comments

Xandros today announced that Xandros Server 2.0 is the first product to be certified by the Linux Foundation through use of the LSB Distribution Testkit. Xandros engineers worked closely with their Linux Foundation counterparts in perfecting the new, automated testing procedures that will facilitate broad application developer support to Xandros Server 2.0 and all other standards-based Linux operating systems.

Submitted by adstro 2007-04-13 Oracle and SUN 18 Comments

"Today Sun extends its position as the top contributor of code to the free and open source software community by donating its storage software code to the OpenSolaris Project. This will enable community members to combine OpenSolaris with hardware from any source to create new storage solutions at a fraction of the price of traditional proprietary storage vendors."

Sun Acquires Java-based Mobile Phone OS

Eugenia Loli 2007-04-13 Oracle and SUN 10 Comments

Sun Microsystems announced today that it is acquiring the assets of SavaJe Technologies and will reveal further details at its JavaOne conference next month. SavaJe's claim to fame is its Java-based embedded operating system, which was shown running in a mobile phone at JavaOne last May.

Sun CEO Shows Off Rock Ahead of Fujitsu Launch

Thom Holwerda 2007-04-10 Oracle and SUN 10 Comments

So, it's April 2007 and Sun Microsystems has just popped one of its 16-core Rock chips on CEO Jonathan Schwartz's desk. Schwartz posted pictures of the Rock silicon on his blog, bragging that 'the chips are running billions of instructions already'. Sun's customers must be encouraged by the Rock display, having suffered from about five years of delayed UltraSPARC chips. Servers based on the Rock family - Boulder and Pebble - should begin shipping in 2008.

The Power of Sun in a Big Blackbox

Thom Holwerda 2007-04-04 Oracle and SUN 5 Comments

"Sun has always been somewhat of a mysterious company, from its humble origins at Stanford University through the dotcom boom and out the other side. Its numerous changes of strategic direction have confounded attempts to pin the company down. One thing almost everyone agrees on, however, is that Sun still makes very powerful server hardware. So when I was offered the opportunity to get a guided tour of Sun's new 'Project Blackbox', I jumped at the chance."

Sun Relaunches Sparc Chip Business

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-27 Oracle and SUN 49 Comments

Sun Microsystems has launched a new business unit to sell its Sparc processors, a return to an idea it had dropped years ago. David Yen, currently executive vice president of storage but previously in charge of Sun's Sparc work, will lead the new group and retain his executive VP status, the company said Thursday.

Xandros Server 2.0 Targets Microsoft SharePoint Shops

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-16 Oracle and SUN 7 Comments

"With the release of Linux-based Xandros Server 2.0 Standard Edition, well-known Linux desktop vendor Xandros offers compatibility and other services that may give Microsoft SharePoint Server some competition. In the new server, due in April, Xandros will include Netherlands-based O3Spaces Workplace 2.0 office collaboration software. With Workplace 2.0, users will be able to use OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, and/or Microsoft Office to work on documents in commonly hosted Xandros workplaces. At the same time, Xandros claims, the system enables everyone involved in the project to track the work being done on it."

Submitted by Francis Kuntz 2007-02-28 Oracle and SUN 44 Comments

Sun Microsystems is the latest company to become a patron of the Free Software Foundation. The FSF's corporate patron program allows companies to provide financial sponsorship for the FSF in return for free license consulting services. High-profile FSF patron affiliates include prominent technology companies like Google, Nokia, IBM, Cisco, and Intel. FSF involvement represents Sun's latest attempt to take a more active role in the open-source software community.

Submitted by geert 2007-02-25 Oracle and SUN 24 Comments

"Microsoft Word users now can easily import and export to the OpenDocument Format. The StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology Preview, a plug-in for Microsoft Word 2003 that allows users of Microsoft Word 2003 to read, edit and save to the OpenDocument Format is now available."

Interview: Simon Phipps, Sun

Submitted by Floris Lambrechts 2007-02-21 Oracle and SUN 15 Comments

"As Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems, UK-based Simon Phipps' job could become ever more tiring, it seems. The biggest step the company has taken so far is definitely the announcement of the Java Development Kit (and Runtime Environment) becoming free software. We invited Simon to keynote at FOSDEM and, due to his busy schedule, interviewed him about Sun's position in the free software universe over the phone."

System Management Suite Bridges Linux, Unix, Windows

Submitted by editingwhiz 2007-02-15 Oracle and SUN No Comments

"Xandros today introduced a new software suite for IT administrators that enables Windows-to-Linux server and desktop integration and management, and deployment of systems that mix Linux, Unix, and Windows platforms, according to the company. Without 'bridging tools', a company spokesperson said, a computing environment can devolve into an unmanageable and costly-to-administer set of silo infrastructure components. Many IT organizations suffer from higher administration costs and inefficient business processes through lack of integration, according to the spokesperson."

Sun Looks to GPL v3 for Java, Solaris

Thom Holwerda 2007-02-09 Oracle and SUN 47 Comments

When it comes to open sourcing Solaris and Java, patents and politics are leading Sun toward a change of heart. The question is which open source licence should govern the building of projects out of the company's technology crown jewels. The open source Solaris project began with a Community Development and Distribution License, and open source Java employs version 2 of the General Public License. Now, though, Sun likes the idea of governing both projects with the upcoming GPL version 3, chief executive Jonathan Schwartz said in a speech and an interview at the company's analyst summit in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Sun, Intel Announce New Partnership

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-22 Oracle and SUN 13 Comments

In their joint announcement, Intel agreed to support the Solaris OS, while Sun will use a number of different Xeon processors in its x86 line of servers and workstations. In a collaboration that one CEO called 'historic', Sun Microsystems and Intel jointly announced a new partnership that will see both companies support the other's technology. The announcement, which had first been reported in the Wall Street Journal and formally detailed at a joint news conference in San Francisco on Jan. 22, will allow Sun to develop x86 servers using Intel's Xeon processors.

Sun Cheers Two SPARC Advances in One Week

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-18 Oracle and SUN 3 Comments

Sun this week announced a speed boost to its 'Niagara' UltraSPARC T1 processor line and confirmed the tapeout of the 'Rock' chips due out in the second half of 2008.

Sun’s Fortran Replacement Goes Open-Source

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-14 Oracle and SUN 18 Comments

Sun took a new open-source step this week, enlisting the outside world's help in an attempt to create a brand-new programming language called Fortress. On Tuesday, the company quietly released as open-source software a prototype Fortress 'interpreter', a programming tool to execute Fortress programs line by line. "We're trying to engage academics and other third parties," Eric Allen, a Sun Labs computer scientist and Fortress project leader, said about the open-source move.