Free Software/Open Source Software News
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-31 16:09:40 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-31 16:40:21 UTC
Nuxeo
Xen
Army
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has initiated a program to develop approaches for fixing software flaws by using big data analytics principles, GCN reported Monday.
DARPA intends for the Mining and Understanding Software Enclaves program to boost the reliability of building, verifying and maintaining software systems, according to the report.
Security
GlobalSign has offered to give a free wildcard SSL certificate for qualified open source projects, as a way of supporting open source and as a way to encourage adoption of industry best practices.
The project must have an OSI-approved license, be actively maintained, be non-commercial, and pass some simple requirements, all of which are desirable conditions.
Tor
Almost three months after being alerted to its presence, Apple has taken down from the App Store an allegedly fake Tor Browser containing adware and spyware.
It's notable that according to recent statistics available through Tor Metrics Portal there has been a large 1increase in the number of Tor clients used and more than a million users are now connecting to the network. Tor, from the Tor Project, is one of the most powerful and flexible open source solutions for online anonymity, and it's clearly gaining popularity.
Blender
Blender is perhaps open source's biggest poster child for years now. And in every year or two, Blender foundation showcases the product's 3D graphics capabilities by releasing animated movies created exclusively using Blender software. They are called "open movies" and you're free to download and reuse the movies the way you want, standing true to its open source credentials. We have featured each and every Blender "open" movie ever released here and here. Now its time for the fifth one codenamed "Gooseberry", and unlike its predecessors, the project's goal would be to produce a feature length animated film.
Out today is another big update to the open-source Blender 3D animation software.
New features include initial support for volumetrics in Cycles, and faster rendering of hair and textures. The motion tracker now supports weighted tracks and has improved planar tracking. For mesh modeling there are new Laplacian deform and wireframe modifiers, along with more control in the bevel tool. The game engine now supports object levels of detail.
Sony
Sony is making it Authoring Tools Framework product available to programmers for free under the Apache 2.0 open source license.
The Authoring Tools Framework (ATF) will be free to download and use.
Industry commentators have suggested that this may now create an incentive for independent third-party developers to start developing games (or indeed porting existing games) to the PlayStation.
Misc.
The main question behind open source software is: Why would developers want to create software or contribute to another piece of software for free? For a lot of developers the answer is easy. They rely on some piece of open source software for their business so they have an active interest in supporting the community around that software.
If you enjoy making music you might be interested in a new open source midi keyboard kit called the Kyub which offers users a feather touch three-dimensional midi keyboard which is supplied as a kit.
Jacie Buckner and Alexis Wills are teenagers. Both grew up in the same Appalachian region of North Carolina. Jacie describes herself as quiet. Alexis says she is a rebel. They met in middle school, when they ran into each other in the lunchroom. " I looked at Jacie and thought 'oh my goodness, she’s going to hate me!'"Alexis says.
Tajo, a big data open source project predominantly developed by domestic developers, has gotten recognition from developers around the world.
The open source project Tajo, an on-going project led by domestic big data company Gruter, was chosen as a “top level” project on March 23 by the Apache Foundation, the world’s biggest open source organization. Tajo made its introduction in the Apache Foundation in March, last year.
The announcement at the turn of the year that a bunch of seventies and early eighties videogames were being released to play for free in a web browser was met with something of a sneer in some quarters. If you missed it, this is the latest work from the Internet Archive, which kicked off its latest project, The Console Living Room, with games for five different machines. Two of them were Ataris, while titles from the ColecoVision, the Magnavox Odyssey and The Astrocade were also featured. All you now have to do if you want to play one of the available games is to head to Console Living Room, click on your machine of choice, and pick a game – but don’t blame me if you overrun your lunch hour.
Irish 21-year-old who founded CoderDojos after-school clubs tells of huge impact on young worldwide
There’s an ongoing conversation about the shifting role of developers and what that means for IT departments. They’re now shaping product and user experience with such great influence that businesses must understand their importance in order to be as successful as possible.
Which open source software should you consider for your business? Here, Steve Nice from Reconnix reviews three of the leading providers.
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- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
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