OStatic

Back in August, in partnership with Sun Microsystems, OStatic introduced its first free hosting promotion. The promotion offered 100 free online hosted accounts for a year to developers looking to build web applications powered by the open source Glassfish Application Server and the open source MySQL database. The response was overwhelming, and the 3-month campaign was sold out 6 weeks early. We have a few more promotions in the works--and here's more on them.

Yesterday Computerworld reported that MySQL cofounder and lead engineer David Axmark has resigned from Sun Microsystems. Axmark indicated that he felt he would be better off in smaller organizations and working with MySQL and Sun on a less formal basis.

Axmark's involvement with MySQL has included heading the engineering, internal IT, and community relations efforts of the project. Since January, when Sun purchased MySQL, Axmark has been working mostly with the press and in community relations.

Sun Microsystems has been steadily shifting its business strategy toward open source for quite a while now. From delivering OpenSolaris, to pushing ahead with MySQL, to virtualization efforts, open source is driving many parts of Sun's business. We caught up with Rich Green, executive vice president of software at Sun, to ask him about what benefits the company is seeing, and what lies ahead.