FOSS News: Latest Developments and Breakthroughs
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-11 10:24:23 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-11 13:47:03 UTC
Free Software/Open Source Software
Can you really do DevOps without sharing scripts or code? DevOps manifesto proponents value cross-functional teams, symbiotic relationships, and continual feedback loops. Effective DevOps initiatives create engaged communities where team interactions amplify personal actions. When technology teams find adopting a DevOps culture is more difficult than using DevOps tools, suggest the open source way as a path forward.
WANT to save money on software? While it's hard to beat premium industry products with all of their bells and whistles, many small firms could be using free (or almost-free) open source rivals that can do the job just as well for a fraction of the cost. Here's a look at popular alternatives to the best known premium design and editing tools: Photoshop and InDesign.
So usually this column features nifty art in machine embroidered form. Today brings something a bit more behind-the-scenes, but if you’re as into shaking up the machine embroidery world as we are, this’ll be relevant to your interests.
The new OSI Board will be meeting soon in Boston to make plans for the coming year. During this meeting we'll welcome the new Directors, select a President for 2014...
Going forward, having open source skills will be imperative for partners. For partners to evolve an open source practice they will need to come out of the comfort zones of the vendor brands. Many open source practitioners opine that to embrace open source the management of a partner organization needs service-centric mindset.
Events
Open source in the enterprise has changed dramatically since Pivotal Software's Head of Product James Watters worked on the OpenSolaris operating system for Sun at the start of the new millenium. Back then companies used open source software mainly for the cost savings and didn't see much benefit to participating in the open source community, he said in his ApacheCon keynote in Denver this week.
Beaver Bar Camp 14, an informal conference where participants can explore anything from science to art, technology, food, culture or other topics is scheduled for Saturday, April 12, at Oregon State University.
I have just returned home from this year’s Libre Graphics Meeting, which was held in Leipzig, Germany. As always, it was a great event, which is somewhat unique in bringing together art and design practitioners with programmers and engineers.
Hilary Mason at ApacheCon in DenverData science still has a long way to go in developing systems that solve real-world, human problems, said Hilary Mason, data scientist in residence at Accel Partners, in her keynote at ApacheCon in Denver today. The open source community will be key to helping big data evolve into a more accessible technology, she said.
OpenDaylight
OpenDaylight, the open source software-defined networking (SDN) project sponsored by the Linux Foundation, turned one year old this week. And in the hope of celebrating many more birthdays to come, the project has announced a summer internship program designed to help grow the next generation of open source SDN developers.
Internet
Sharing has many meanings in an open source ecosystem. It can mean sharing skills, sharing knowledge, and modifying those processes and bits of information to innovate new ways of doing things. The Internet has helped remove barriers to production and cooperation that has made creating in the open possible on a global scale.
SaaS/Big Data
The CloudEthernet Forum unveiled the Open Cloud Project at Interop this week, and the industry organization is working with the MetroEthernet Forum to make it happen. Together, the two organizations are hoping to create an open test and iterative standards development program for service providers, vendors and over-the-top cloud services providers.
That's according to Michel Isnard, VP southern Europe, Middle East and Africa, Red Hat. In an interview with ITWeb, Isnard noted that most of the cloud infrastructures in the world are open source.
This past week, the OpenShift Origin repository on Github saw some major code merges from external contributors that added MSFT .Net functionality to the OpenShift Origin platform. Thousands of new lines of code were tested and merged successfully into the OpenShift Origin codebase, which was then instantly made available for anyone to download and deploy.
Executives from Microsoft, Red Hat and Hewlett-Packard debate the definition and future of the platform-as-a-service model.
As you will know, in computing terms we talk about real time processing (or perhaps "computer responsiveness") as being that level of compute power and speed such that users PERCIEVE that the systems they use are operating at the same speed as human (or indeed machine-based) life events.
OpenStack
When reading a recent article by Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, I was struck by a comparison made between OpenStack and the interstate highway system. The article in Wall Street and Technology, called "OpenStack: Five things every executive needs to know," mostly focused on the high points of where OpenStack is in its development cycle. But the highway analogy stuck with me.
Welcome to the Short Stack, our weekly feature where we search for the most intriguing OpenStack links to share with you. These links may come fromtraditional publications or company blogs, but if it's about OpenStack, we'll find the best links we can to share with you every week. If you like what you see, please consider subscribing.
OpenStack, the red hot open source cloud platform, has been a generator of a lot of top tech jobs for some time now, and we've been chronicling the new training and certification programs arising around it. If you have OpenStack skills, you can work for big companies doing cloud deployments or startups focusing on OpenStack managed services.
A few weeks ago we entered the Icehouse development cycle feature freeze. But with the incredible growth of the OpenStack development community (508 different contributors over the last 30 days, including 101 new ones!), I hear a lot of questions about it. I’ve explained it on various forums in the past, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to write something a bit more definitive about it.
McKenty was, of course, one of the initial project drivers for OpenStack, and he knows the platform's roots as well as its roadmap. There have been many recent initiatives surrounding structured compatibility testing for OpenStack, and Red Hat, among others, is certifying technologies for compatibility with OpenStack.
OpenStack engineers make nearly 40% more than other cloud engineers
Hadoop
Continuuity CEO Jonathan Gray says it is a byproduct of the company’s effort to provide an application development environment for Hadoop that can be deployed on a private or public cloud. As customers began to build applications on the Continuuity platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment, it became apparent they needed help with the DevOps elements of Hadoop.
Initially, Continuuity tried to use scripts and Chef open source tools to solve that problem. But Gray says it quickly became apparent that providing an orchestration tool in the form of Loom that leverages application programming interfaces would be a simpler and more elegant approach to solving the problem.
Commercial applications written in Java have plenty of parallel tasks that can be accelerated through the use of GPU coprocessors. IBM is very keen on leveraging the combination of its Power processors, which have high memory and I/O bandwidth, and Tesla GPU coprocessors from Nvidia, which have lots of cores and high memory bandwidth as well, to gain back some market share from X86 systems. The software stack for the Power-Tesla combo, and at the GPU Technical Conference last week in San Jose, IBM showed off a prototype Hadoop setup that got a significant performance speedup from running portions of its code on Tesla engines.
Hortonworks
At Index Ventures, we have been investing in open source for 12 years, and we’ve never seen such a “perfect storm” moment for open source companies to make the jump from scrappy-and-free to large-and-profitable. With today’s news that Hortonworks, one of our investments, has raised another $100 million in funding, it’s clear that the industry is finally ready to accept and value open source startups as real businesses poised for long-term growth.
Hortonworks, the company focused on the open source Big Data crunching platform Hadoop, has been making waves for some time now, and now the company has announced that it has raised a whopping $100 million in an investment round led by BlackRock and Passport Capital managed funds. The company was formed in 2011, and previously got a hefty $120 million round of financing. Even more notably, this level of funding for Hortonworks, along with a number of other cash infusions for companies focused on open source, is being heralded as a "perfect storm" moment for commercial open source.
Cloudera
Everyone heralded a new era for commercial efforts surrounding open source when Red Hat became the first open source company to hit $1 billion in revenue. Now it's time to mark another milestone as Cloudera, the pioneering startup focused on enterprise analytic data management powered by Apache Hadoop, has announced a staggering $900 million round of financing with participation by top tier institutional and strategic investors. You read it right: $900 million.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Using SLAPPs to Cover Up Sexual Abuse and Strangulation
- The exact same legal team of the Serial Strangler from Microsoft and Garrett already has a history fighting against "metoo"
- Adding the Voice of Writers to UK SLAPP Reform
- The journey to repair antiquated (monarchy era) laws will likely be long
- Slopwatch: A Cause for Hope, the Hype is Dying
- For about a month we showed that becoming a slopfarm - for several weeks - resulted in utter failure and ruin for BetaNews
-
- Links 12/07/2025: Birdwatching and Fake/Misleading Wall Street 'Valuation' Figures
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 12/07/2025: How to Avoid Writing, Apps for Android
- Links for the day
- EPO Staff Committee on Harassment in the Workplace
- slides
- EPO Takes More Money From Staff for Speculation (Pensions), Actuarial Study Explains the Impact
- "The key change in this year’s Actuarial Study, due to cascading the new “risk appetite” from the financial study, is a significant increase of the total pension contribution rate of 5.7 percentage points, up to a total of 37.8%. This is driven by an unprecedented decrease in the discount rate of 105 bps down to 2.2%."
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 11, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, July 11, 2025
- Microsoft - Like IBM - Does the "Relocation" Tricks (Start Over Elsewhere, Then Get Sacked by Microsoft)
- It is a "low blow" or a "dick move"
- After the Free Software Foundation's Campaign to Raise Money Let's See Campaigns to Finish Off Microsoft (Vista 11, GitHub etc.)
- Microsoft is in effect collapsing
- Your Publications Have No Major Impact Unless or Until You "Get Some Heat"
- we're on the right track
- Links 11/07/2025: Censorship Worsening, 3D Printing Success Stories, UK and France Unite Around Nukes
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 11/07/2025: Zorin OS and Scriptonite Updates
- Links for the day
- Links 11/07/2025: Hardware, Russia, and China
- Links for the day
- Links 11/07/2025: Intel Collapsing and Microsoft Resorts to Bribery to Push Slop Via Obligatory Education
- Links for the day
- The EFF Sided With the Team That Strangles Women and Tells Women to Kill Themselves
- They say that apathy and inaction are a form of a "stance"
- "Nat [Friedman] and [the Serial Strangler From Microsoft] Were Always Exceptionally Close," Says Former Housemate and Colleague
- Now Alex (hiding behind another name when that suits him) not only attacks women but also people who merely report what he did to women
- Exemplary List of Things That Are Not Artificial Intelligence or Even Intelligence
- The "age of AI" or "era of AI" or "AI revolution" mostly boils down to rebranding, just like "the cloud"
- New Letter From the European Patent Office Explains How the Office Plots to Grant Many Illegal Patents, a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of 'Growth'
- Open letter to Mr Rowan (VP1) and Mr Aledo Lopez (COO)
- Abuse of Process
- 5RB is employing people who help violent men
- What Microsoft's Nat Friedman and Microsoft Lunduke Have in Common
- "Get in da car; No time to explain, loser"
- Microsoft and IBM Don't Have Much of a Future (They Mostly Pretend at This Point)
- IBM and Microsoft are in some ways alike but in many ways different
- It's Not Just Twitter (or X.com) That's Dying, Microsoft's Equivalent is Dying Also
- Unable to find a business model
- GitHub Copilot Can Cause the Bankruptcy of GitHub to Come Sooner and GitHub to be Shut Down Just Like Skype
- Some publicly available information suggests that even for each paid subscriber for plagiarism (LLM 'coding') GitHub Copilot still loses more money than it makes
- Wayland is Bad for the Planet
- If you use Wayland, it'll take you longer to accomplish tasks and you will consume more energy (or battery life)
- Legitimising Those Who Sabotage You
- Microsoft is a very malicious company
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 10, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, July 10, 2025
- On Microsoft Layoffs
- we might be looking at about 60,000 Microsoft layoffs since 2023
- EPO Management Already Breaks Its Own Promise (Lie) on "Bringing Teams Together"
- This gut-punching move happened just 2 days ago
- Gemini Links 11/07/2025: Occupation of 2025 and "Old Man Yells At Soundcloud"
- Links for the day
- Our Lawsuits Against the 'Cancel Mob' (Ringleaders) Helped Reduce Anti-Free Software Online Abuse
- That's not to say that lawsuits are the best way to handle terrible people. But that can help.
- Tomorrow is the Last Day of the Fund-Raising Campaign of the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
- They will probably extend the date, as usual
- Fixing Patents in Europe, Little by Little (by Transparency and Reporting of Suppressed Facts)
- Tomorrow and throughout the weekend we shall focus some more on the EPO
- The Two Lies Microsoft is Telling in "the News" This Week (to Distract From Layoffs and Decreased Interest in Slop/Chaff)
- Microsoft is run by liars and frauds who SLAPP critics
- Tux Machines Already Destroyed SLAPPs
- Attacks on the mere publication of GNU/Linux news won't be tolerated
- PCLinuxOS is Available for Download Again
- PCLinuxOS is important to us also because its founder, back then the partner of Susan, helped create Tux Machines more than 21 years ago
- Links 10/07/2025: Microsoft E-mail 'Services' Collapse Again, "Yet Another Strava Privacy Leak"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 10/07/2025: Automating Git Repo Updates and Small Web 'Zine'
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux Leftovers
- mostly Linux stuff
- Audiocasts/Shows: Going Linux, FLOSS Weekly, and RHEL Clones
- 3 new picks
- We Are Already Fighting - With Considerable Success - SLAPPs in the UK
- we intend to tell the full story
- Bullies With Pens and Papers (or Apple Macs With Templates)
- Not all barristers are evil, but there are perhaps "rotten apples"
- Slopwatch: webpronews.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com
- a pile of trash disguised as 'articles'
- Links 10/07/2025: Linda Yaccarino Divorces MElonazi Site, Wildfires Hit Syria
- Links for the day
- The History and the Policy of the EPO's Stance on Breastfeeding (Corporate Monopolies Versus Babies' Health)
- "The Case for Introducing a Breastfeeding Policy at the EPO"
- Gemini Links 10/07/2025: Inventing Chords and "Nightmare Boss"
- Links for the day
- Igor Ljubuncic Once Again Shows That for Technical Reasons Wayland Still Sucks, Performs Considerably Worse Than What Existed for Decades
- That is aside from compatibility factors and other crucial factors
- Links 10/07/2025: "Apple Vs The Law" and Twitter Became Full Nazi Bar
- Links for the day
- Unable to Find Anyone to Work as Their Media Lawyer, Brett Wilson LLP Will Continue Losing Female Staff
- What sort of sick person would wish to join Brett Wilson LLP to carry this baton?
- Microsoft-Sponsored Propaganda Site Has Removed False 'Hit Piece' About Dr. Stallman (With Fake and Misrepresented Imagery) But Only After 4 Years
- So they only removed that page some time around 2025, i.e. about 4 years after it had been published
- Always Check Your Inputs
- Garbage in, garbage out. Or wrong assumptions, wrong corollary.
- Dan Neidle Said That Tax Evasion Facilitator Mr Zahawi (Working to Silence Bloggers Through Brett Wilson LLP) Targeted Not Only Him (But The Others Kept Quiet)
- "Mr Neidle said after repelling Mr Zahawi he was contacted by bloggers and tweeters who had received similar threats. They deleted their work “and in most cases never commented publicly on anything again”."
- SLAPP Funding Transparency Urgently Needed in the UK and Elsewhere (in Practice, Not Just in Theory)
- Writing about crime - including Microsoft crime - is not a crime
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 09, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, July 09, 2025
- Elodie Bergot Still Doing Illegal Things at the EPO, Based on the Local Staff Committee Munich
- They keep taking away from the staff while compelling the staff to do illegal things