Best of the blogs: Just about everybody but IBM takes Sun’s open sourcing of Java under the GPL as a good thing. Big Blue, however, is complaining about the decision. “This is a bold, welcome move by Sun, and effectively prevents IBM or any other Sun competitor from hijacking Java. It’s the community’s way or no way,” writes Matt Asay. The Apache Software Foundation, meanwhile, says that if Sun wants to contribute Java to the group, “Apache would be glad to have it,” Paul Krill reports in this TechWatch post. Columnists’ corner: The accidental boss. That’s how this week’s Off the Record author describes himself. Once the second-in-command and, for all purposes, the department techie, he was forced to become a manager when his left. “Unless we put one of the mainframe folks in charge, I was the only reasonable choice.” You get the picture, I’m certain, though it was never to be permanent. Until Naomi showed up, that is. A little unintended sandbagging later and, voila, our writer was back on top. “I swear, taking over was the last thing I had in mind.” Podcasts: David Linthicum recaps our SOA Executive Forum, before returning to basics and talking about semantics. “Users are becoming more progressed,” he explains. “SOA ultimately has a lot of value. The value is in reuse and making the company agile. However, in order to get the value an awful lot of work has to be done and an awful lot of money has to be spent.” Tune into the SOA Report. The news beat: Hewlett-Packard unwraps three new servers using Intel’s quad-core Xeon chips and, in so doing, joins IBM and Dell in giving Intel a head start over AMD in the quad-core realm. Microsoft says that the third and final beta of Longhorn will become available in the first half of next year, insisting that the server remains on pace for its oft-postponed release by the end of 2007. And IBM reveals plans to invest $100 million in 10 new business opportunities. Technology Industry