OpenSolaris is here!

Well 2005 has already been a big year for Sun Microsystems. Solaris 10 downloadable/usable for free was a masterstroke. The technological advances within this operating environment are superb; to mention just Zones, DTrace and SMF. Then as a taster of open things to come, DTrace itself was opened, and the promise that Solaris would be Opened in Q2/2005 was made.

OpenSolaris is here! and at www.opensolaris.org

For some months now, about 140 people outside Sun including myself have been working under the shroud of NDA to create a Pilot Community of users of OpenSolaris. Now the shroud is off, and you can join the Community! Whether you are a Developer, SysAdmin, or Student, you can now get the Operating System and Networking portions of Solaris source code (ON, or sometimes OS/NET) and coming along over time, more and more of the Solaris Operating Environment. You can build your own Solaris!

Not only that, but by joining the Community, you will get the ear (as we in the Pilot have had) of the top technical brains in Sun; one of whom is currently chairing the Community Advisory Board (CAB), Casper Dik. And find the blogs of so many other notaries - and little me. One other name-drop is for Rich Teer, the author of the brilliant "Solaris Systems Programming" book at richteer.blogspot.com - a publication that IMO is going to be the essential Solaris Programmer's Bible. Buy it!

Finally, I was especially pleased that on the www.opensolaris.org homepage, the first translation of "open" was otevřený, which is in Czech. Anyone who knows me will know that I have a delightful Czech wife. So I take my hat off to the website designers :-)

Go to www.opensolaris.org now! And get blogging at www.blogspot.com And see you soon.....