Sun

It’s no surprise that the executive director of the Linux Foundation would see good news for Linux in the unexpected announcement this morning of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, but I do feel it necessary to shed some light on how it may or may not affect Linux.

- Oracle is strategically aligned with Linux: Oracle is a Linux distributor, and all its products are developed and run on Linux. As Edward Screven, chief architect of Oracle, said in a keynote at our Collaboration Summit two weeks ago, “entering the Linux market was the right choice for Oracle.” They are also a major user: Oracle’s entire enterprise runs on Linux, and they are major contributors to the Linux kernel among other Linux projects.

Source: https://fossbazaar.org/content/case-stories-good-and-bad-community-inter...

It is often argued that companies have to work with the FOSS community and there are good reasons for doing so. I've tried to collect a number of case stories of good and bad community interaction that may help as a starting point for further exploration of this topic:

Sep 11, 2008

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/sun_linux_support/

OSCON Sun Microsystems is putting the "L" back into LAMP with plans to support customers running the open-source Apache, MySQL and Perl or PHP (AMP) stack on Linux.

The company said it plans paid, enterprise-level support for AMP on Linux in the fourth-quarter of 2008, in addition to supporting AMP on its preferred platform, of course, Solaris. Support of AMP on Solaris servers is due this quarter.

Pricing has yet to be determined for either, and follows the launch in February 2007 of Solaris + AMP that saw Sun support AMP in development environments on Solaris. Joe McCabe, Sun's web-tier product manager, told The Reg Sun planned to support other operating systems running the AMP combo. Windows is currently in the pipeline.

Source: Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/ubuntu_springframework_glassfish/

OSCON: Exclusive Canonical has been in talks with Sun Microsystems and SpringSource to support one of their open source Java application server stacks in the Ubuntu core, to increase Ubuntu's enterprise adoption.

Canonical told The Reg that it is in the process of selecting which open source Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) framework to make available in the main part of its popular Linux distro. Sun's streamlined GlassFish 3.0 and the modular Application Platform are contenders.

Canonical's Ubuntu server engineering manager Rick Clark called it: "Very, very important to us to get a full Java stack out of the box."

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/22/ubuntu_next_launchpad/

OSCON Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, next week plans a major update to its massive code hosting and project management platform Launchpad.

Version 2.0 will introduce improved support for third-party application lifecycle tools used to find, report and fix bugs in Ubuntu - plus the applications and 6,000 projects in the ecosystem around it. Canonical has been talking up the new service at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON).

Launchpad 2.0 will feature a beta version of a planned API that'll allow third-party applications to authenticate, query and modify data in the massive Launchpad database, without a user needing to manually access the system via a browser.

There's no word on final availability, but this is expected with the next update during the next year.

The VAR Guy picked up the phone and dialed Sun Microsystems Inc.’s investor relations department. When the call went to voicemail, he left this message: “Are the rumors true? Is Sun seeking to replace CEO Jonathan Schwartz?” Here’s more on the rumor, and The VAR Guy’s depressing reaction to it.

Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research wrote in a newsletter that a “search is probably on to find a new CEO at Sun.” The rumor was picked up today by Barron’s Online. Does that mean current CEO Jonathan Schwartz is about to get the boot? Personally, The VAR Guy hopes not. But professionally, he can understand why Schwartz may be on the ropes.

This quarter was all about constructing the fireworks of the future for Linux vendor Red Hat (NYSE: RHT). You don't see much happening at the moment, but all the ingredients for a massive eruption are there.

In its first quarter of fiscal 2009, Red Hat produced $0.08 of GAAP earnings per share on revenue of $156.6 million. That's a 32% sales increase over last year, while profits held steady. But the numbers don't tell the whole story here.