For many years now, Sun provides ISVs with on-line access to Solaris, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Java, Netbeans, compilers, and much more.  This service is named EZQual and is used to evaluate Sun software,  and port and test applications on the Sun platform. To satisfy the demand we must be able to host many ISVs on a single system so we decided from scratch that the service would be implemented using virtualization, just like a cloud. Also, to provide a better user experience we decided to offer a remote desktop feature that, in conjunction with the virtualiztion, really offers what is known as a virtual desktop.

So far virtualization has been based on Solaris containers. Amongst other advantages, containers are easily provisioned by cloning a first template container. This feature is useful when - like us - you provision a …

Savio Rodrigues has published a post arguing that cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure pose a threat to the monetization of open source by specialist vendors.

Savio makes a good case based on the recent launch of AWS’s Relational Database Service, based on MySQL, and Microsoft’s support for MySQL and Tomcat on Azure:

“When Amazon decided to offer MySQL via Amazon RDS, they did so without purchasing MySQL support from Sun. I’ve confirmed that Microsoft Azure is supporting MySQL on Azure without paying Sun for a MySQL Enterprise subscription.”

Clearly there is a threat to open source vendors from cloud-based services. Meanwhile I have previous …

Google launches Chromium project, Terracotta acquires Quartz. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

For the latest on Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL via Sun, see Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

# Google launched the Chromium OS open source project, a prelude to the Chrome OS, while Canonical confirmed that it is contributing to the development of Chrome OS.

# Terracotta …

Raja Srinivasan from Zeus will presenting how to load balance MySQL reads and writes on the Joyent Public Cloud tomorrow in a free webinar taking place at 10 AM Pacific (America). Register here.

Hi,

Support for S3 BLOB storage has now been fully integrated into the PBMS engine. It works in much the same way that I mentioned in an earlier post but with some important changes so I will explain it all again here.

When using S3 BLOB storage with PBMS the BLOB reference tracking and metadata is handled the same as before in that they are stored in the BLOB record in the repository, but the actual BLOB is stored on an S3 server.

To setup S3 storage you need to add an S3 cloud reference record to the pbms.pbms_cloud table provided by PBMS. For example:

INSERT INTO pbms.pbms_cloud(ID, Server, bucket, PublicKey, PrivateKey) VALUES(16, "S3.amazonaws.com", "PBMS-Test", "abc123", "amjr15vWq");

Then you need to tell PBMS which database should use S3 cloud storage for its BLOBs. This is done by updating a couple of records in the pbms_variable table that PBMS provides for each …

Amazon’s SimpleDB isn’t a relational database, but it does provide elastic scalability and high-availability. Amazon’s recently announced Relational Database Services (RDS) is a relational database, but it doesn’t provide elastic scalability or high-availability. If you are deploying enterprise applications on the cloud (including Amazon Web Services), you might want to look at ScaleDB because it is a relational database and it does provide elastic scalability and high-availability.

Amazon describes SimpleDB by comparing it to a clustered database:

"A traditional, clustered relational database requires a sizable upfront capital outlay, is complex to design, and often requires extensive and repetitive database administration. Amazon SimpleDB is dramatically simpler, requiring no schema, automatically indexing your data and providing a simple API for storage and access. This approach eliminates the administrative burden of …

Amazon’s SimpleDB isn’t a relational database, but it does provide elastic scalability and high-availability. Amazon’s recently announced Relational Database Services (RDS) is a relational database, but it doesn’t provide elastic scalability or high-availability. If you are deploying enterprise applications on the cloud (including Amazon Web Services), you might want to look at ScaleDB because it is a relational database and it does provide elastic scalability and high-availability.

Amazon describes SimpleDB by comparing it to a clustered database:

"A traditional, clustered relational database requires a sizable upfront capital outlay, is complex to design, and often requires extensive and repetitive database administration. Amazon SimpleDB is dramatically simpler, requiring no schema, automatically indexing your data and providing a simple API for storage and access. This approach eliminates the administrative burden of …

More interesting topics were discussed both during the scheduled sessions and in open gathering. During …

1. Brown Cloud Marketing -- advertorial "interviewing" GM of a company offering "DNS in the cloud". This might be a worthwhile service, but the way he markets it (by saying open source is "freeware" and the market leader is "legacy") reveals a rich vein of bozo. Freeware legacy DNS is the internet's dirty little secret (actually, it's the reason we have a functioning DNS), Nominum software was written 100 percent from the ground up, and by having software with source code that is not open for everybody to look at, it is inherently more secure. (security through obscurity is equating clothing with being naked yet blind). The Internet kindly did the poor man's homework: screenshot of a cross-site scripting …

CodePlex, patents and Linux code. An interesting few days for Microsoft open source.

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CodePlex, CodePlex, CodePlex!
Microsoft launched the CodePlex Foundation to facilitate open source contributions, and confirmed the departure of Sam Ramji.

Patents, Patents, Patents!
The OIN confirmed the acquisition of 22 patents formerly owned by …