Sun to make Java Enterprise System open-source

Posted by Bill Bradford on Mar 29, 2005

According to this InformationWeek article, Sun plans to make the Java Enterprise System available as an open-source project. In addition, more than a million licenses for the Solaris 10 operating environment have been issued since January 31st.

Interview with Danese Cooper

Posted by Bill Bradford on Mar 27, 2005

Madpenguin.org has a great interview with Danese Cooper, former Sun open-source evangelist who recently moved to Intel.

Sun promotes executives

Posted by Bill Bradford on Mar 22, 2005

Sun today strengthened its senior management team, announcing the promotion of two top managers to oversee services and operations. Effective immediately, Don Grantham, 48, has been promoted to executive vice president of Sun Services, while Eugene McCabe, 52, has been promoted to executive vice president of Worldwide Operations. Both positions report directly to Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer.

How We Work: Scott McNealy

Posted by Bill Bradford on Mar 14, 2005

As part of an interesting series on personal productivity tips, rodcorp has an entry on Scott McNealy, and details on why he banned the use of Microsoft Powerpoint at Sun Microsystems.

Sun restricting access to SunSolve and the System Handbook

Posted by Bill Bradford on Mar 13, 2005

According to this page, “Sun is streamlining online support, and access to information on SunSolve and in the Sun System Handbook will change.”

SunSolve and the Handbook provide information to two different audiences:

(1) the general Sun Community
(2) Sun Service Plan or Contract customers

The type of information available to these two audiences will be changing starting on April 5, 2005. 
The information available to each audience will be based on the following guidelines:

Available to the general Sun Community:
    * On SunSolve: Security Information
    * Resolved Sun Alerts
    * Patch Descriptions (a.k.a. Patch ReadMe documents)
    * Archived SunSolve content
    * Limited Access to the SunSolve Knowledgebase
    * Sun Support Forums
    * Big Admin

    * In the Sun System Handbook: Hardware Specifications
    * Related Documentation
    * Limited Full Component List (FCL) Information

Available to Service Plan or Contract customers:
    * On SunSolve: Everything available to the general Sun Community listed above
    * Full Access to the SunSolve Knowledgebase

    * In the Sun System Handbook: Full access to Sun System Handbook information including:
    * A complete Full Component List (FCL)
    * System Views
    * Component / Device Information
    * Reference Lists
    * Index Pages

Personally, I think restricting access to the System Handbook is a bad idea – apparently someone at Sun wants to go back to the “good old days” of charging almost a thousand dollars for a set of Field Engineer Handbooks – and you can’t even look at PICTURES of Sun systems without having a support contract.

Project Looking Glass 3D LiveCD Available

Posted by Bill Bradford on Mar 3, 2005

Project Looking Glass now has a “Live CD” demonstration availabe for download, based on the Knoppix distribution.