May 2nd, 2008
Will OpenSolaris bring a chill to Sun-Ubuntu romance?
You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.
That seems to be the mantra of Ubuntu and Sun, both open source underdogs whose relationship and mutual platform support has been growing for three years. On the eve of the release of OpenSolaris, both companies are banging the drum that the warm ties continue. But will it?
Canonical announced that its recently launched “Hardy Heron” would be the first commercial Linux distribution to support Sun’s OpenJDK.
Support for OpenJDK and NetBeans in the latest Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is significant because both are available in Ubuntu’s universe repository, which mean they are free of charge. Red Hat’s Fedora 9, which will be introduced later this month, will also feature an OpenJDK implementation — but Ubuntu is the only commercial Linux release that has the support now.
Sun scratched back, becoming the first server vendor to certify Ubuntu’s 8.04 server edition on its x86 servers Sun Fire X2100 M2 and Sun Fire X4150 servers. HP has said it will ensure compatibility of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server edition on its servers, but no certification.
Sun and Ubuntu have a history of cooperation that dates back to 2006, when Ubuntu announced that its 6.06 Long Term Release version of Ubuntu would support Sun’s “Cool Threads” technology and exploit several Sun Sparc-based servers as part of Sun’s OpenSparc Initiative.
And, at the launch of Ubuntu 7.07 last year, Canonical announced that it would support a full Java stack including Glassfish version 1.0 Java, Enterprise Edition 5, Java Platform, Standard Edition (JDK 6), Java DB 10.2 (based on Apache Derby) and Netbeans IDE 5.5.
And Ubuntu’s support for Sun’s openJDK — and Sun’s embracing of Ubuntu server — suggests that the two intend to carry the partnership forward.
Still, there’s little doubt the launch of OpenSolaris next week might dampen that spark. Sun’s open source Unix operating system, after all, will compete head on against Ubuntu Linux. Canonical founder and Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth is no fan of Sun’s CDDL license. In a past post, Shuttleworth said the ZFS and DTrace facilities in OpenSolaris would add value to its Linux distro — but only if it were available under the GPL.
It helps that Debian founder Ian Murdock, the former CTO of the Linux Foundation, heads up Sun’s developer tools and open source community services, including Project Indiana. (Ubuntu is based on Debian). But there’s no guarantee the warmth will continue if Sun’s OpenSolaris takes off. 
Paula Rooney is a Boston-based writer who has followed the tech industry for almost two decades. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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