News Roundup: Free Software/Open Source Software
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-10 09:33:39 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-10 09:33:39 UTC
Summary: Reverse-chronological news summary with headlines of interest about Free/Open Source software
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Deb Cinkus is the CEO of Polished Geek, a Raleigh, NC-based Joomla CMS web development company. Opensource.com community manager Jason Hibbets interviewed Cinkus about project management tips and open source project management tools during the 2013 All Things Open conference in Raleigh, NC.
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Kickstarter just passed $1 billion in pledges. While it's great that Kickstarter corralled 5.7 million people to help fund a heck of a lot of documentaries, tech startups, and more, $1 billion isn't what it used to be.
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The applications and benefits of open source will continue to evolve and grow. Educators are using open source programming as a way to interest, involve and inspire up and coming technologists. It enables students to learn by doing and to become more engaged. With a next generation of minds focused on next-generation technology challenges, open source will continue to revolutionise the way we overcome obstacles and create new opportunities.
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ThoughtWorks has recently open sourced their Continuous Delivery (CD) tool, called Go, having its origins in CruiseControl and providing a pipeline process that covers the entire code development process: continuous integration, testing and deploying.
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I am aware of situations where Open Source companies based out of US can’t offer free software to those countries which are in US’s embargo list, but something interesting popped out today when FESCo debated the issue whether Fedora should allow ‘contribution’ from such countries. Fedora’s sponsor Red Hat is a US based company and thus has to adhere to US laws so it’s tricky whether they can use the free software contribution from embargoed countries or not.
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People should be asking why states didn’t partner up on this using an open source model of development. Why do states and cities have to purchase systems for 10s or 100's of millions of dollars? How many water billing systems are out there in the United States? Can't we collaborate and come up with a couple good ones? What did Kentucky do right? These are the questions we should be asking.
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The Moodle community has a tool called “code checker” which is packaged as a Moodle plugin, and allows developers to analyse their code to ensure it meets the project’s coding style. This allows them to quickly identify and fix any issues before submission, and allows reviewers to quickly direct them to instructions on how to fix any discrepancies.
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This week during Mobile World Congress 2014, Buffalo Americas launched three high speed AirStation Open Source DD-WRT wireless routers: the AirStation AC 1750 WZR-1750DHPD, the AirStation N600 WZR-600DHP2D, and the AirStation N300 WHR-300HP2D. The AC 1750 model is on sale now, while the other two won't arrive until early March.
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Cisco has released open source security software designed for building secure corporate Internet firewalls called OpenAppID.
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Since the OpenNI work was published as open source, it can still be distributed, and as I Programmer notes the files will also be available on GitHub. It's also feasible that other backers of the project will revive it in some form.
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Getting started with new software can be overwhelming. It's even more frustrating when you transition from one tool to another, because you have to unlearn some habits in order to make room for new ones. But, there are huge benefits to switching from closed software to open source alternatives.
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Having acquired the security firm Sourcefire last October, Cisco is using this week's RSA Conference as the showcase for how Cisco's security products are being integrated as well as detailing how it will cut an open-source path for the next-generation application-layer firewall/IPS.
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Graylog2, based on Java and Elasticsearch, provides a increasingly useful alternative to commercial log analysis tools
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Intrusion detection software is meant to monitor network traffic or host activities for malicious actions, such as successful or unsuccessful intrusion attempts, hostile traffic (i.e., malicious scans and denials of service), unauthorized configuration changes, malware symptoms, and user policy violations. An intrusion detection system (IDS) typically can produce reports describing the details of the potentially hazardous activity which generated alerts. OSSEC is particularly useful in this context for many reasons. First, it is an established, reputable product with a proven track record (OSSEC was first released in 2004 and has been owned by Trend Micro since 2009). Second, it is free and open source. Third, it is compatible with most modern operating systems such as Linux, Windows (Server 2008, Server 2003, 7, Vista, XP, 2000) BSD (Free/Open/Net), Unix (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX), and MacOS.
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In January 2013, I started exploring open source solutions to help implement my business idea. I used Wordpress, Joomla, and OpenShift to create FilmBoxFestival, a platform for streaming documentary films. Note: It is still in the testing phase.
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One alternative to buying expensive storage-area networks or other hardware-based dedicated storage is to deploy open source storage software on existing server hardware. For this test, we evaluated three such open source storage products, GlusterFS 3.3, Ceph 0.72 and Apache Hadoop 2.2.0.
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Open source software in healthcare has been instrumental for sharing common tools and increasing adoption of emerging medical information technology (IT) standards. By leading the effort to digitize health data, imaging informatics has set the precedent for the adoption of the technology industry's best practices and subsequently open source software.
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What opportunities does Open Source provide if you’re really looking to go big? Aiming to become “the next Red Hat” is an idea flawed from the start, as former XenSource CEO Peter Levine explains in his recent TechCrunch article. So what’s left if business models focussing on selling support and services all have a relatively low limit to their growth?
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Open Source Security Information Management (OSSIM) updates alongside its commercial cousin for better security visibility.
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My introduction to open source software began when I was sitting on a server room floor, with my head in my hands, completely frustrated with a Windows 2000 server. Every night there were some services that would crash. Every morning I would get yelled at by my over-bearing boss. I was new to the company, it was my first IT job fresh out of Network Admin college, where I graduated at the top of my class, but I couldn't fix this problem because it was a "known Microsoft issue," and I just had to wait for the update.
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Imagine what Puerto Rico would be like, if free software could become a movement for social justice on the island. Well, on Tuesday, February 11th, 2014, the Institute for a Free Puerto Rico planted the seed for this movement. In honor of Aaron Swartz, and in conjunction with the world-wide campaign to end mass surveillance, the Institute is happy to announce the creation of the Libre Planet Puerto Rico team.
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Facebook looks and feels like a single application, like Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop. But behind the scenes, in the company’s data centers, you’ll find that the world’s most popular social network is really a multitude of different applications working in concert.
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A few years ago, a global analyst firm went so far as to describe open source as the ‘hype du jour’ and some people even labelled it as something destined for the student and hobbyist market.
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Lead developer Gavin Andresen chided the commercial bitcoin community for not getting involved enough in core bitcoin development and testing this week. In a mail to the bitcoin developers list updating the community on some bug fixes in the code, he called companies out for not giving back.
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There are many open source software projects out there today and any list of open source licenses alone shows you how much project diversity is out there. Just take a look at Github, Apache, Eclipse or The Linux Foundation and you’ll find thousands of developers collaborating on the software that literally runs the world.
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