Apparently it was Apache Web Server’s 15th birthday yesterday – congratulations to anyone who’s ever been involved in the project. I doubt any would have thought that 15 years on, Apache would have become the dominant Web Server on the Web and the foundation of one of the most successful and recognized Open Source forges. For a history of the Apache Web Server and the Apache Software Foundation, head over to the ASF Blog.

Red Hat has been a supporter of Apache Web Server for a long time and has shipped and supported a version in its Red Hat Enterprise Linux for as long as I’ve been noodling with it. Last year we started shipping a standalone, multi-platform distribution as well – JBoss Enterprise Web Server. Earlier today we released the latest version of it and expanded our support for Apache HTTP Server to 14 different Operating System / architecture combinations. The exact component versions are listed here and there’s more information in the Release Notes. If you’re deploying Apache HTTP or Tomcat at scale – Red Hat also supports management of Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat alongside all JBoss products via JBoss Operations Network.

You’ll learn about all the great tech. that Red Hat and JBoss will be shipping as well as some of the technology still in the labs. But most of all you’ll learn how Red Hat can save you and your organization money – and right now that’s got to be a smart investment.

* travel and accomodation extra

RHEL 5.3 was released this week and one of the major new features is the inclusion of and full production support for OpenJDK. As I mentioned earlier – that’s great news for OpenJDK adoption and great news for RHEL and JBoss customers – Red Hat can now support a full Enterprise Linux and Java stack without having to pass the buck to third party JVM vendors.

JBoss Enterprise App. Platform is now certified with 46 platforms and database combinations and we will be adding additional databases in the coming months.

Note – there is 1 test failure reported (applicable to a very narrow set of use-cases) – see the JIRA to see if it applies to you. This issue will be fixed with the next CP release for EAP 4.2 and 4.3.

Inclusion of OpenJDK : OpenJDK is a high-performance, fully open source implementation of Java SE 6. OpenJDK is based on the same code base as Sun’s JDK, the most widely adopted Java implementation. OpenJDK in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 has passed the full Java SE 6 TCK and is compatible with all applications written for Java SE 6 and previous versions. OpenJDK is fully supported directly by Red Hat. With the integration of OpenJDK, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 is the the first enterprise-ready solution with a fully open source Java stack when combined with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform”

This is good for OpenJDK, good for RHEL customers and good for JBoss (we’ll be announcing support for OpenJDK on RHEL 5.3 for the JBoss platforms real soon) – congratulations to everyone who made it happen.

Just as a reference point for myself I took a quick look at the page view stats from this site and Firefox (all versions) just edges out IE (all versions) – 43.4% vs 43.2% respectively. I assume some of the Gecko (4.4%) numbers may be Firefox as well but I’ve kept it separate.

Page views from Windows (all versions) is 60%, Linux (all distros) is 29% and OS/X is 8.1%.

It will be interesting to see how that changes over the next year.

I promised myself I wouldn’t bite; yet here I am. I’m contributing to the “Here’s what Sun should do meme”. And why not -  I’m as good a keyboard-CEO as the next person and I did work for Sun for almost 9 years.

But first I should note – I think Tim Bray was pretty bold starting this (as he’s still a Sun Employee); and Sun is a pretty unique company in that it’s OK to do what Tim did (assuming Tim didn’t get booted).

#1 Java. I’m part of the Java ecosystem so it’s important to me. Basically, do what James says:

…, at worst go back to SUNW as a stock ticker.”

then do what Tim says :

As for Sun’s role as Steward of Java, and in particular the Java Community Process, let it go already. Java has mostly won and is mostly the establishment, and the community is smart and conservative enough to keep anyone from doing what Microsoft tried last millennium, or in any other way to subvert Java’s interoperability. In 2008, the JCP is costing Sun opportunities and friends and gaining us very little that I can see.

So I’d like Sun to set the JCP free, turn it over to the community, and when we develop some cool Java-based technology in-house, take it to market, try to make some money with it, and after it’s caught on and the bugs are shaken out, consider whether or not it ought to be taken to the JCP.”

But the community is going to have to continue to be smart and I also think that a consortium of interested parties would have to step up and invest some resources in making it work really well. Getting the balance of commercial interest and community is the key – I think Eclipse has it about right. Money makes the world go round – sorry if that offends anyone. Oh and while we’re at it – OpenJDK should be treated like the Linux Kernel – we only need one code base (note IBM and Oracle).

#2 NetBeans

I’ve used both Net Beans and Eclipse (not for a year or two mind) – Net Beans is better, more polished, etc. But it doesn’t matter – it’s not a sustainable product. When Sun stops it’s investment – it will fade away. Eclipse won in mind share years ago; Sun should have recognized this in 2005 – I did. Java needed something like NetBeans in 1999 to attract developers but not anymore.

#3 Solaris

See above. Linux has won. Whatever technical merit Solaris has today will be commoditized next year. The innovation around Linux is relentless.

#4 Middleware

Sun has some great products and technology; some that are popular and fit well with Sun’s demand driven model (eg. Glassfish) and some that make money (Identity Management). Figure out what you need to do #5 – choose the best available OSS solution and run with it.

#5 MySQL

Invest, Innovate. Hire sales people who can sell data-based solutions – steal $1bn from Oracle this year, $2bn next year, repeat.

Demand for storing, archiving, cleaning, replicating and accessing data is going to grow. Forever.

#6 Storage, SPARC, Volume Servers

Keep only what is required for #5.

#7 Open Office

I’m a beneficiary of Open Office – I use it exclusively but have never paid a penny. That’s the problem – I use it because it’s free and it’s the best Office Suite available for Linux. There is no business case here. Thanks for a great product though.

#8 Java FX

Drop it. Nobody will notice.

If this sounds depressing – I’m sorry but it should be clear that Sun isn’t going to be the company it was in 1999. It needs to adjust its cost-model inline with its Open Source strategy; it needs to be much smaller; and needs to do much, much less, much, much more sucessfuly. Even if Sun goes private.

Every cloud has a silver lining. There’s a common opinion that the adoption of Open Source will only increase if the world’s economies continue to weaken. [O'Reilly Radar, Red Hat's Jim Whitehurst]

Colleague Piere Fricke has written a piece for Network World on Open Source SOA – that’s Simple Open and Affordable – not just Service Oriented Architecture.

According to the Linux Foundation – Fedora 9 (the OS of choice for yours truly) would cost $10.8 billion to develop from scratch; and the Linux kernel alone would cost $1.4 billion. The summary of the report is that “Collaborative development creates enourmous economic value”. No shit Sherlock. I wonder how much money Linux or OSS in general has actually saved companies in the last 17 years.

Originally uploaded by sharps

With a bit of trimming, a swap-file and a new build – I now have Fedora 10 running pretty reliably on the OLPC. I wouldn’t call it snappy exactly but it’s a start.

Fedora is running off a writeable live image (using a 4Gb SD Card) which also hosts the swap-file. The poor little XO only has 256Mb RAM and is very low powered so having Firefox eat up 40Mb is a problem – might have to find a replacement

I just signed up for the performance testing team as part of the Fedora on OLPC test effort. Now things are up and running reliably it will be interesting to see what tweaks can be made to improve the performance.

If you’re not already too late – there’s a chance to get your hands on a (mostly) free OLPC if you’re willing to commit to some testing of Fedora on the OLPC. I’ve signed up but fully expect my 7 year old daughter to be doing the testing

The mostly free bit is that you have to provide your own 2 or 4 Gb SD card – if you don’t already have one lying around.

Sign up on the Fedora wiki.

There’s probably a really good, practical reason to run JBoss AS on an iPhone – I just can’t imagine what it is. Here’s how you do it.

Here’s another interesting project – Heiko Rupp has a two part blog (part1, part2) about home automation with RHQ. RHQ is the Hyperic / Red Hat collboration that we use to build JBoss Operations Network.

Bil Burke reports that JAX-RS is almost final. Bill’s RestEasty project is now shipping beta 6 and has been promoted to a new location on JBoss.org.

Matt Asay’s has a couple of positive articles about Red Hat and JBoss on his c|net blog. The first suggests that Red Hat’s superior value proposition will insulate it from any IT spending slow-down. The second is based on a survey from Goldman Sachs that shows some real facts about Linux vendor adoption. Red Hat is way out ahead and likely to grow.

Talking of Linux – I think the London stock exchange