To many people, it seems that open source software movement begins and ends with Linux. Take, for example, the popular news Web site, NewsForge, which has done a good job of covering the entire open source universe. Last week, its owners, SourceForge Inc. (formerly known as VA Software), announced that it was folding NewsForge into its Linux.com site.

Does that imply that everyone who is interested in news about open source software is focused on Linux? You’d think that SourceForge would know better.

As a fan of open source software, but as someone who doesn’t use Linux on my desktop (I use Mac OS X 90% of the time, Solaris 5% and Windows XP 5%), I guess I find the lofty position of Linux atop the entire open source software movement troubling.

There are many, many open source projects other than Linux, folks. And not all open source projects see themselves as locked in a religious life-and-death struggle against Microsoft Windows.

For example, how about the myriad Eclipse projects? Most people that I’ve seen coding with Eclipse are running it on Windows workstations, and many are targeting Windows servers as a runtime for Java apps built on Eclipse. How about OpenOffice? Sure, it’s a way to bring a first-class Office suite to Linux – but it’s also a way to bring a cross-platform Office suite to Windows and the Mac as well.

Mozilla? Lots of people run Firefox on Windows and Mac. Apache? Many of Apache’s projects are centered around Linux, but many of them aren’t. NetBeans? It’s cross-platform. OpenMake runs on Linux, Windows and Solaris. Speaking of which, you can’t tell me that OpenSolaris is part of the Linux agenda.

Many people like using the gcc/gdb tools from the Free Software Foundation precisely because they’re excellent and cross-platform, not just because they’re available for Linux.

Yet, in many open source projects, there is nothing but contempt for anyone who would use an operating system other than Linux, even if the project itself supports other platforms. I remember, not very fondly, posting a message on a project newsgroup about a problem we had running an open-source package on a Windows server. The sole response advised me to run the package on a Linux server instead. Thanks for nothing.

Yes, Linux is arguably the highest profile open source software project. I won’t dispute that. However, the common belief that it’s at the center of the open source universe (as in NewForge’s mission to be “the Online Newspaper for Linux and Open Source”) does credit to nobody.

The open source community should realize that not every supporter of open source software uses Linux, or even cares about Linux. The open source community, also, needs to be less contemptuous of open source projects that don’t focus on Linux, or which may not even run on Linux.

Equally, of course, enterprise IT managers need to realize that Linux is merely one of many open source projects. You can choose to run Linux, or choose not to run Linux. You can also choose to use other open-source platforms and tools, or choose not to. But your support of open source in general, should be distinct from your interest in Linux. Sadly, this is difficult, since so many open source zealots focus on promoting Linux to the exclusion of the movement’s other success stories.

By pretending that Linux is the epitome of the open source movement, the open source community is acting against its own best interest.

If the Linux community has a hero other than Linus Torvalds, it’s Mark Shuttleworth, a dot-com gazillionaire who started the Ubuntu Project, and who funds it out of his own pocket. If you’re not familiar with Ubuntu, it’s a distro based on Debian Linux, which is designed to offer a one-disc install of everything you need: operating system, device drivers, and lots of free applications.

Unlike many Linux distros, Ubuntu was intended to be used by civilians. Shuttleworth has pledged that Ubuntu will always be free.

I’m a fan of Ubuntu Linux, and think that Mark Shuttleworth is a good guy. However, to many in the Linux community, the South African entrepreneur is a rock star, a god. What’s more, Ubuntu Linux is seen by many as the first, and only, Linux distribution that might have a shot at gaining market share on the desktop. That makes it the only viable open-source alternative to Windows.

No matter whether you like Shuttleworth, or worship him, or hate him, or are fairly ambivalent, there’s no doubt that he’s very influential in the Linux community. So, his keynote address at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit (which I attended on June 13) was worth listening to, particularly because it presented a frank window into the state of the Linux platform.

Shuttleworth, naturally enough, praised the concept of the Collaboration Summit, the first time that such a wide swatch of the Linux community came together ostensibly to find better ways to work together to improve the platform, both technologically and in the marketplace.

“It’s a chance for us to build relationships, and accelerate collaboration,” he said. “I enjoy seeing the extent to which people who aren’t generally ‘free software folks’ are hearing about free software, and are starting to see that this world is more interesting than they thought it was.” (A word of caution: These quotes are based on my real-time notes at the conference, and I can’t guarantee that they’re word-for-word exact.)

Speaking to the non-Linux attendees (such as press and analysts), he said, “It’s not just Windows vs. Mac, there’s a whole other world out there. Many people want it to be Red Hat vs. Microsoft, or Ubuntu vs. Microsoft. but that’s not what it is.”

What separates Linux from Windows and the Mac, he said, is the large number of different parties, and different vested interests, who have come together to make the platform work. “Innovation works best when you have people who are inspired, and you let them work. However, you need a framework for innovation that brings them together.”

Enthusiasm isn’t enough, though, Shuttleworth said. “We have some disadvantages. The other guys can spend more, in hard dollars, than our guys. On the other hand, we have an extraordinarily rich pool of talent, and have the freedom to innovate. Collaboration sounds beautiful, but it’s hard. Collaboration means working together, but that’s labor —that’s real work.”

Shuttleworth warned against pitfalls caused by biases, or lack of knowledge, or the type of unhealthy group dynamic when projects are run by close-knit meritocracies with little patience for those people who are less technical, or who have a different perspective.

“Too often, people say ‘I don’t want to work with that distro,’ or ‘I didn’t know where to send my patch.’ We have lots of tools, like mailing lists. Unfortunately, they shake things up so that the loudest ideas bubble up. Think about poisonous people! How can you run a project so that the best ideas win, vs. the loudest ideas win?”

But even worse than collaboration within a project, he said, is broader collaboration between the myriad projects within the open source community. “We also have version control, wikis, Web sites, lots of tools, but most of those tools focus on collaboration within a project. If you’re in a project, you know where to go, and who to talk to within your project. The big problem is collaboration between projects.”

Shuttleworth pointed out a couple of areas where things fall down, like translations into other languages, bug management and patch distribution.

“One clear thing is that translations fail to move upstream. People translate what they’re using, but it doesn’t move up. It’s not intentional, but we don’t have standard processes or conduits so they can send their translations upstream. The same thing with bugs: You may have people who reported a bug to Red Hat, or SUSE, or Debian, or Ubuntu — but they’re like silos. We need a way to aggregate those eyeballs.”

He added, “It’s the same with patches. A patch solves one person’s need. How can we accelerate the process of moving patches upstream? We need something that’s more of a star topology, to move patches up and around.”

A bigger question, Shuttleworth asked is, “How do we minimize the barriers to participation, and include the v3 guys, and BSD, etc? A central database is not the answer.”

A minor question, which clearly irks Shuttleworth: “Why can’t I programmatically access the kernel development team’s database through APIs?”

Shuttleworth then jumped back to translations. “Here’s the point of friction: The tools are difficult. In order to contribute translations, you have to have Committer access [to a project], and that’s not good. How can we get people to contribute translations without requiring they be developers, or that they use development tools? There are also different frameworks [for localization]. Mozilla’s framework is different than OpenOffice, for example. It’s worth the effort to break down the barriers. We need to agree that the inability for work to flow across projects is a problem.”

On bug tracking, he added, “The biggest problem is the friction to file the bug! You don’t understand the bug tracker, or the project’s conventions, or even know if you would get a response. If you have to have a personal relationship [with someone on a project] in order to get a bug into the project, that ‘s a problem. We should think about federation, and find standard ways to describe bugs, and common APIs for submitting bugs.”

Shuttleworth commented, “In Ubuntu, we took as role models Mozilla because we like their roadmaps, Gnome because of their commitment to release cycles. We like blueprints of specifications, since they let micro communities form around a particular piece of work.”

He pointed out a real problem, that the meritocracies found in many open source projects may help development, but may hinder deployment and adoption. “How do we remove the hard lines between committers and everyone else, i.e., the line between first-class citizens and everyone else? Why is someone who receives a tarball [instead of accessing the source code repository] a second-class citizen? Getting everyone to participate is important.”

Shuttleworth concluded by speaking to people who run projects, and the lack of tolerance found within many projects: “Ultimately, we need to remember that while tools are important, it’s people that collaborate. People, not robots. The decision-making process is important. Unfortunately, meanness spreads: I get disappointed when I hear that if you disagree with me, you’re stupid. We agree on an awful lot. I would appeal to all of you to remember that leadership is important, and collaboration is more important than our differences.”

At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit (which I attended on June 13), Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, accurately portrayed that the Linux movement has changed. He stated that, from the enterprise perspective at least, the days of having to build awareness for Linux, and for open source in general, are long since over. He’s right. Within most organizations, in my experience, Linux is seen as just as viable an option for servers as Windows and Unix (specifically, Solaris). That’s both good –and bad.

We’re past the days of religious wars, and we’re also past the days where Linux is chosen merely because it’s free or because it’s open source. The costs of using and deploying Linux aren’t significantly different than those of deploying Windows or Unix on server. To be honest, the licensing cost of cost of software is only a small part of the long-term total cost of ownership.

However, Linux itself has challenges, which I was pleased that the Linux Foundation meeting was honest enough to admit.

For example, because Linux is developed primarily by individuals working on things that they find interesting, Linux lacks the directed evolution of Windows, Unix, Solaris or Mac OS X. Thus, there were many people at the conference talking about the inconsistent state of power management within the Linux kernel and kernel-level device drivers. Everyone acknowledged that it is a problem – but nobody could do anything about it.

Similarly, there are many views as to the best way to prevent fracturing of commercial Linux distributions around kernel levels, but no agreed-upon way to solve that problem. While the Linux kernel team itself is run as a benevolent dictatorship, most other decisions are left up to the individual commercial distributions, who pointedly do not coordinate with the Linux Foundation or with each other.

Of course, not all the issues facing Linux have to do with process. There’s a lot of dissent within the community regarding licensing. The Free Software Foundation’s General Public License v3 is a huge polarizing factor, and as the Linux Foundation explains, even if the bulk of the community wished to adopt the new license (which is uncertain), the process of moving code to the GPLv3 would be incredibly time consuming. It just ain’t gonna happen, folks.

For now, and for the next several years at least, it seems clear that be three separate Linux worlds:

• Linux on servers: Hugely successful. Because servers typically run on a fairly limit set of hardware; most enterprises choose an operating system when they buy server hardware; and because a particularly server runs only a small number of applications at one time, Linux’ limitations in terms of device drivers and applications are not a significant factor.

• Linux on mobile devices: Hugely successful. As the representative from Motorola, Christy Watt, said during the Linux Foundation meeting, “We believe that about 60% of our base will be on Linux soon. We have shipped 6 million devices on Linux already.” The recompilable kernel, ability to create custom drivers, open-source licensing and cost factors are excellent for phones, PDAs and other devices.

• Linux on the desktop: Not even close. There’s been tremendous strides in this area, but device drivers remain a challenge, particularly for top-end graphics cards. Another challenge is the proliferation of user interfaces. Despite the amazing success of Ubuntu Linux, desktop and notebook PCs will be found mainly in three locations: task-specific desktops (such as cash registers or point-of-sale systems); on machines used by True Believers; and in low-cost desktops, such as those deployed into the third world. For the mainstream home and office market, the world belongs to Windows (and the Mac, as a distant runner up), and it’s going to stay that way for a long, long time.

The software security tools market has been ripe for picking, for two reasons:

• We had a lot of small, privately held companies developing exciting, but in many cases, overlapping, technology, but those companies had trouble finding customers and going to market. Their exit strategy is to be gobbled up by a big fish.

• The big fish were significantly behind the times when it came to integrating security into their developer tools. Their business models favor buy-it instead of build-it for this type of technology, but they weren’t buying.

Until recently, that is. Until this month, none of the big fish, like IBM Rational, Mercury (now part of HP), Microsoft, Oracle, Sun and Borland/CodeGear, had integrated security as part of their IDEs, test/QA tools, or applicaction life cycle suites. The notable exception has long been Compuware, with its DevPartner SecurityChecker. It’s only been a matter of time before the fish starting munching, and frankly, I expected the feeding frenzy to start quite a while ago.

The dam broke a couple of weeks ago, when IBM announced the acquisition of Watchfire. Today, we have the second big move, as Hewlett-Packard today said it will buy SPI Dynamics.

This is only the start.

Microsoft needs to incorporate a top-quality security solution into Visual Studio Team System, encompassing not only the edition for software testers, but also the editions for architects and developers. This is a glaring weakness. While Microsoft could build the functionality itself (as it did with the other ALM tools in Team System), it would do better buying one of the existing players, and that’s what I think the company will do.

Oracle is in a similar situation: It doesn’t have software security functionality, either baked into its tools or as stand-alone offerings. It’s hard to predict what Oracle will do, whether they’ll build it, buy it or ignore it.

Borland and its CodeGear subsidiary are also behind the times. Software is a core part of the application life cycle, but there’s no specific security offering in the Borland pantheon, even in its Silk and Gauntlet tools. As with Microsoft, Borland could build or buy, but I expect them to buy it. I hope whatever they do gets baked back into the CodeGear IDEs; that’s where software security belongs, as tightly integrated into the developer desktop as spellcheck is integrated into a word processor.

The Eclipse and NetBeans projects need to start software security initiatives. The lack of a security project, either as a top-level element or as part of the Eclipse Test & Performance Tools Project, is a huge oversight, but given how the Eclipse Foundation works, it takes a commercial vendor to initiate a project. Now that IBM is buying Watchfire, it’s less likely that Big Blue will push Eclipse in this direction. NetBeans, by contrast, is driven by one company’s strategic vision, However, Sun needs to be more strategic and visionary here, and get on the ball.

Fortunately, there are more software security companies available for purchase. It won’t be long until we see the big fish gobble up Agitar, Armorize, Cigital, Fortify, Klocwork and Ounce Labs. Who do you think will go first?

This morning, CodeGear sent me a new picture of David Intersimone, to replace the several-years-old file photo that I used in my previous blog posting and on our conference Web site. David I, as he’s widely known, is an incredibly well-respected developer evangelist at CodeGear, and is a keynote speaker at EclipseWorld 2007.

So, cast your votes: Which do you like better: New David I (pictured), or David I Classic?

It’s an incredible coincidence. The same day that BZ Media put out a press release about the record-setting June 1 issue of SD Times, CMP Media put out a press release about its continuing shift to an online media company. That involves laying off 200 people, and shuttering three publications. Network Computing and Optimize. Both of them will be folded into InformationWeek, CMP’s newsweekly. SysAdmin is being closed outright.

To quote from the release:

“We found last year for the first time, our non-print revenues outstripped our print revenues,” CEO Steve Weitzner said. “This year that trend is continuing and the gap is actually growing. We want to realign internal resources around these growth areas and look at opportunities in the marketplace and really go after them.”

Consequently, Weitzner said, the company is putting its online businesses “at the center of everything we do and changing how we do print.”

SysAdmin and Network Computing will be missed. (Frankly, I don’t think that Optimize will be: I never quite understood who that magazine was for, and what value it provided.) The inclusion of Network Computing into InformationWeek seems like a terrible mistake – I’m not sure what value it offers either magazine’s subscribers or advertisers.

My own relationship with Network Computing goes back about a decade. That’s before CMP (which published Network Computing) merged with Miller Freeman (which published Network Magazine, of which I was the editor-in-chief).

Network Magazine was, in my opinion, the better-written, and more thoughtful publication discussing the emerging trends and high-level issues around LANs and WANs, SANs and NAS. However, Network Computing pounded us into pudding, with its heavy emphasis on labs-based product reviews. Written very pragmatically, talking to LAN and WAN managers about the stuff they needed to buy, Network Computing was unstoppable.

In September 2005, after CMP and Miller Freeman merged, Network Magazine was renamed IT Architect. The publication shut down after its March 2006 issue. CMP did the right thing in trying to differentiate Network Magazine and Network Computing.

The decision to merge Network Computing into InformationWeek makes no sense. Network Computing is/was a magazine for network managers and senior network administrators, who are solving specific technical problems, primarily around network and infrastructure software, as well as wide-area connectivity. InformationWeek is a news-and-analysis weekly written for CIOs and senior IT managers, discussing the “vital issues of the day” and providing guidance for making strategic IT decisions.

It’s not a fit. InformationWeek’s readers aren’t network managers and network admins. Frankly, looks like a naked ploy to keep some of Network Computing’s advertising revenue. CMP will doubtlessly spin a good tale, of course, as to why this IS a good fit. But if it’s such a good fit, why weren’t those advertisers already advertising in InformationWeek before this?

Steve Jobs’ keynote at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference is sometimes huge with news, sometimes less so. This year’s news was weaker than most. Jobs didn’t unveil new hardware or new developer tools. He didn’t announce new software, but did distribute betas of Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” to paid attendees (not to press/analysts).

The announcement that won the biggest applause from WWDC’s 5000+ developers was that two major game companies – Electronic Arts and ID Software – will be increasing their support of the Mac platform. In EA’s case, a number of best-selling games will be released on for Mac OS X, and in the future, there will be some simultaneous releases for Windows, Mac and game platforms. ID’s game engine, which normally targets the Xbox and Playstation, will soon be available for the Mac.

There was less frequent cheering during Jobs’ demonstration of 10 features out of 300+ planned for Leopard, scheduled to ship in October. The biggest crowd pleasers were a new graphical desktop, an improved Finder and Core Animation.

The audience also liked that there will be more robust 64-bit support in Leopard – and that the new OS will come in a single SKU, priced at US$129, instead of the bewildering number of versions of Windows Vista, and reacted favorably to the surprise announcement of Safari for Windows (a public beta of Safari 3 for Windows and Mac OS X 10.4 is now available for download). The new backup application, Time Machine, also was popular.

The biggest yawner was a tool to let consumers make their own dashboard gadgets by making clippings from Web pages. Snooze.

The biggest disappointment was Jobs’ “one final thing” presentation of Apple’s official way for third-party developers to create apps for the iPhone: write and host Web apps for Safari using AJAX. That was not what this audience had hoped for.

Three elements in the keynote are worthy of additional discussion: 64-bit computing, Safari for Windows, and the iPhone development news.

64-bit computing. Apple has flirted with 64-bit software since the release of the PowerMac G5, but went back to 32-bit with the first Macs running the 32-bit Intel Core processor. Today, however, most shipping Macs today are using the 32/64-bit Intel Core 2 processor. Since Mac OS X 10.4 (and earlier) is 32-bit when running on Intel, the news that Leopard will include both 32-bit and 64-bit kernels is welcome.

What about 32-bit/64-bit interoperability? It’s common for 64-bit operating systems using the x64 platform (like the Intel Core 2 family and the AMD Opteron family) to be able to run 32-bit software. 64-bit Linux and Unix can generally run 32-bit binaries directly; Windows uses a software abstraction layer called WoW64 (which means Windows 32 on Windows 64). Mac OS X, remember, is based on Unix.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the inverse is usually not possible: You can’t generally run 64-bit binaries on a 32-bit version of the operating system, even if the chip is nominally a 32/64-bit chip. The hardware architecture generally can’t handle it, and software emulation would be extremely computationally complex (and would have terrible performance). But that’s what Jobs seemed to imply: that you could run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications on both 32-bit and 64-bit Macs running Leopard.

Jobs wasn’t explicit, in stating that a 32-bit hardware platform (like my first-generation 32-bit iMac Core Duo) would run 64-bit apps under Leopard — but again, he implied it. This is a big question mark, and I have queries into Apple about it.

Safari on Windows. Jobs talked about the market share of Safari at 5% of all browsers, vs. 15% for Firefox and about 76% for Internet Explorer. To boost market share, he announced Safari for Windows, and the company released the public beta for Windows and Mac OS X 10.4.

The only benefit that Jobs presented for running Safari on Windows was speed: HTML rendering with Safari for Windows was about 2x faster than IE 7, and 1.6x faster than Firefox 2, he said. That’s not a reason to change browsers! Security, features and interoperability are ‘way more important than rendering speed.

Sadly, Jobs didn’t mention security, features or interoperability. Specifically, he didn’t discuss the reason why so many Mac users abandoned Safari 2 and embraced Firefox 1.5 (and later, of course, Firefox 2): There are too many Web sites, especially those optimized for Windows or using extensive Web 2.0 functionality, that simply don’t work right with Safari 2, but which work great on the Mac with Firefox.

I would have liked to have heard Jobs pledge to fix those issues instead of implying that only reason to choose a browser is its rendering speed.

iPhone development. Developers have been frustrated by the on-again, off-again rumoring about third-party apps on the iPhone. Looks like “off-again” won, and that’s a shame. Third-party apps are what define a platform and ensure its success. Jobs’ recommendation that developers should just build AJAX applications, and let customers access them via the iPhone’s embedded Safari browser, is a solution that will satisfy nearly nobody.

Sure, Apple has created hooks that would let AJAX apps use built-in iPhone services, like making phone calls or sending e-mail – but that’s not what developers want. They want an SDK. If that’s what Jobs really thinks customers or developers want to run third party apps over using AJAX in a browser, why bother encouraging the development of native Universal Binary software for Mac OS X desktops and notebooks? Running AJAX apps in Safari does not compute.

Not heard at the WWDC. Completely not addressed by Jobs: Application development for Leopard. Nothing about APIs, SDKs or an update of the Xcode development suite. Disappointing. Also not mentioned at the keynote was last week’s leak, by Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz, that Leopard would use Sun’s ZFS file system.

I went home from the Apple WWDC empty handed, both literally and figuratively. Beyond the preview of Leopard, and beta of Safari for Windows, there wasn’t much to get excited about – and neither of those really spoke to developers.

If your house or office is anything like mine, there are dead computer bits lying around everywhere. Desktop PCs, old notebook PCs, the occasional server, monitors, keyboards, even a pile of 36GB Ultra2 SCSI hard drives. I’m buried in computer detritus.

What can you do with it?

• Some stuff gets sold, though it’s hard to get enough money for an old computer to be worth the effort, plus it’s a hassle making sure that the hard drive(s) are sufficiently wiped clean of personal data and commercially licensed software.

• Some stuff gets donated, but that’s not always as easy as it sounds.

• Some stuff gets dismantled by an inquisitive teenager.

• But most sits around, waiting for me to recycle or trash it.

In the town that I live in, the garbage company has an E-Waste Recycling Program. That means, they’ll take the stuff if you bring it to the transfer station, but they’ll charge fees like $25 for a computer monitor or $10 for a computer printer. It’s a good service, but what a nuisance. (Not all local towns are even that accommodating.)

What about computer manufacturers? They’re starting to help.

For example, if you buy a new consumer PC from Dell, they’ll take back and recycle your old PC and monitor for free. (For $5, they’ll also plant a tree for you.) They’ll also take back and recycle any Dell product any time, even without a new product purchase. Dell even pays the shipping.

Similarly, Apple provides free recycling for as many as two devices when you purchase a new computer. A couple of weeks ago, I purchase a new MacBook Pro for one of our BZ Media employees at the local Apple store, and when I got home, there was an email from Apple (pictured) containing two FedEx RMA Shipping Authorization bar codes, ready to be slapped onto whatever products were ready to be disposed of.

I’m delighted to see leading computer providers taking a leadership role in computer recycling. My job is easy: Stop procrastinating, and use those FedEx shipping codes.

It’s time for our regular quarterly look at the SCO Group, which released its fiscal second-quarter financials today. The quarter ended on April 30.

SCO’s revenue continues to fall. Total top-line revenue for this quarter was US$6,014,000, compared to $7,126,000 in the comparable quarter last year. That’s a 15.6% drop, if I did the math right.

But while SCO continues to lose money, the rate of loss is slowing. For this quarter, it lost $(1,143,000), which is a tremendous improvement over the $(4,694,000) loss in the same quarter last year.

According to SCO, “The decrease in revenue was primarily attributable to continued competitive pressures on the Company’s UNIX products and services and the improvement in net loss was primarily attributable to reduced legal costs and operating expenses.”

The company continues to run through its cash reserves, which have fallen to $11,181,000, compared to $12,664,000 six months ago.

The big question remains: Why won’t SCO’s directors exercise their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders: abandon the lawsuit and fire Darl McBride? SCO has significant intellectual property assets (translation: cool technology), which will never flourish until both the lawsuit and McBride are gone.

It’s a good week for developers: Sun pushes its compilers to do more with Linux and multi-core systems, while Microsoft unveiled more about the next version of Visual Studio.

Sun’s developer toolchain for native (C/C++ and FORTRAN) code is called Sun Studio. This is different and distinct from Java Studio, which is an entirely different toolchain for Java development. Both are based on the NetBeans open-source IDE framework, but that’s just about all they have in common. The Sun Studio tools are evolved from the old Forte tools. The announcement on Monday was that Sun Studio 12 is now available.

For a while now, Sun Studio has focused primarily on Solaris on SPARC and x64, but recently also embraced Linux. The new version, Sun Studio 12, improves the support for Linux on x86/x64. But the big changes have to do with tools for debugging, profiling and optimization for multi-core processors.

This is important because, when you’re tuning for top performance, there are subtle differences in the behavior of, say, a server with eight unicore processors, four dual-core processors or two quad-core processors. Yes, all have eight hardware threads, but you’ll have different issues for cache sharing, memory access, deadlocks/races and so-on.

Sun has tweaked the tools to work with the Intel and AMD microprocessor architectures. Both the Opteron and Xeon chips have essentially the same instruction sets, but Intel uses an eternal memory controller with a uniform memory access architecture, while AMD has on-chip memory controllers and uses a NUMA architecture.

Sun’s tools are all free to use. Support contracts range from US$864 to $1,200 per year per developer seat.

Meanwhile, at Microsoft TechEd, Microsoft formally named Visual Studio “Orcas” as Visual Studio 2008. A newly announced feature is the “Visual Studio Shell,” which sounds like elements of the Eclipse platform, as it lets software companies ship their own custom IDEs based on Visual Studio. A second beta of VS2008, with the shell, is supposed to come out this summer.