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Links 3/5/2017: Wine Staging 2.7, Nextcloud 12 Beta, GCC 7.1, LibreSSL 2.5.4 Released





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • 3 steps to secure, open source DevOps
    Nobody really writes their own code anymore, right? We go out to GitHub, download some libraries, avoid recreating unnecessary wheels, and package those wheels together along with our own glue to create new software. Then we download a half dozen front-end frameworks to make it all pretty and responsive and we're off the races. In my review of apps, both in my company and others, I've found that more than 90% of the code that makes up an app these days is something we borrowed, not wrote ourselves.

    Most of us scan our own code for flaws with static analysis tools, but what about all the stuff we didn't write? How do we know what's actually there? Once you find out what's in there, what actions do you take to either clean it up or keep it fresh? How do you avoid getting pwned because you let a nasty in the backdoor with that whiz-bang library that does the really cool thing you couldn't live without?


  • Open Source Test Suite Adds to Broad Toolset for Heterogeneous System Architecture Development
    The HSA Foundation through its member companies and universities has also released many additional projects which are all available on the Foundation’s GitHub site...


  • Nextcloud 12 Hits Beta, Introduces Push Notifications and Many Cool New Features
    The Nextcloud development team announced today the release and immediate availability of the Beta build of the project's next major milestone, Nextcloud 12.

    A lot of goodies are about to hit Nextcloud 12 in the coming weeks, but those who can't wait until then to get their hands on the cool new features implemented so far can fetch the Beta milestone right now from the usual places and discover that it introduces push notifications that notify you instantly of shares, comments, calls, etc.. Client support should also be available in the final release.


  • BitPay enters open source blockchain security development agreement with Bitmain
    Atlanta-based bitcoin payments provider BitPay announced today that it has entered into a multi-million dollar development agreement with China-based Bitmain Technologies, the foremost provider of the “mining” hardware used to secure blockchains. Over the course of its multi-year agreement with new customer Bitmain, BitPay will create advanced open source software for the miners, mining pools and full node operators which maintain and secure blockchain transactions.


  • IBM Open Sources their API Microgateway
    IBM has recently announced that they've open sourced their API Microgateway. This means that any developer/business can now take advantage of this software in their own computing projects at no cost.

    An API gateway is a software layer between one to many API services and their consumer applications. The purpose of this software is to provide a variety of common services useful for all APIs. Examples of such services are security, rate limit, and change management tooling. IBM's Microgateway is written in Node.js and utilizes the Swagger 2.0 spec. The open sourcing of this software is a huge boon to the development community as API gateways from major corporations such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. are usually licensed. The IBM Microgateway is not to be confused with IBM's DataPower Gateway, which is a different Enterprise solution which has a greater emphasis on security.


  • Deep Information Sciences Goes Open Source, Relaunches as Deep Software Foundation


  • Events



    • Disruptive Collaboration: The Next Generation of Network Software and Hardware
      About 10 years ago, mobile networks began experiencing massive increases in demand with the launch of the iPhone and the introduction of other smart phones. In a keynote at the Open Networking Summit, Andre Fuetsch, President AT&T Labs and CTO, AT&T says that the demand increased over 250,000% in the past 10 years. What AT&T quickly realized was the hardware-centric approach they’d been taking for decades wasn't going to be enough, and they believed that shifting to software was their best bet to meet this accelerating demand. However, individual companies working alone tend to build similar solutions and duplicate effort, so AT&T isn’t doing this alone. They are collaborating together with other companies in a consolidated effort around ONAP, Open Network Automation Platform.


    • Catch Up With The Linux Foundation at OpenStack Summit in Boston
      The Linux Foundation will be at OpenStack Summit in Boston -- one of the largest open cloud infrastructure events in the world -- with many conference sessions, intensive training courses, giveaways, and a chance to win a free OpenStack training course or a Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kit.


    • OpenStack Charms in Boston




  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Firefox Containers Feature Now Lets You Assign Websites to Specific Containers
        Have you heard about Firefox containers? Until today neither had I. But this neat experimental feature recently picked up a neat new feature, so it feels like a good time to mention it. Firefox Containers Firefox containers is an experimental feature that let you segment tabs in to separate silos while you browse.






  • SaaS/Back End



    • How will OpenStack find the next generation of leaders?
      OpenStack has evolved over the past several years to serve as the de facto standard for open source cloud computing. But what makes an open source project deserving of a superlative?

      Recently, the various groups that govern OpenStack—the Technical Committee, User Committee, Board of Directors, and the staff of the OpenStack Foundation—gathered to have a conversation about the future of the project and assess its health. To begin, they took some time to analyze the status of the current community. Is it growing or shrinking? Is it sufficiently diverse? And is it cultivating the next generation of technical and non-technical leaders who will keep the project evolving and adapting to tomorrow's challenges?


    • Economic realities make open platforms a part of the future


    • Does OpenStack have an advantage over proprietary cloud solutions?
      The intent behind Rackspace Inc. and NASA’s OpenStack project was to build a community around the first fully open-source cloud platform towards the creation of cloud infrastructure. At the time in 2010, development resources were split between both public and private cloud solutions, pitting OpenStack against market giants like Amazon Web Services with their own proprietary solutions.

      But today, while Rackspace still supports the OpenStack public cloud with innovations and seemingly endless scalability, the focus for the company has shifted to primarily work with private cloud solutions because that’s where they have seen the most growth, according to Bryan Thompson, general manager, OpenStack Private Cloud, at Rackspace.


    • A tale of two networks: Open-source, 5G race toward a connected world
      Day one of Red Hat Summit in Boston, Massachusetts, brought together major open-source contributors in a keynote address to discuss how open-source collaboration and the 5G network are combining to manifest a hyper-connected world.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • LibreOffice crash reporting – An update
      Nearly a year ago I wrote a blog post describing the LibreOffice crash reporting setup and how the crash reporting code works. Since then we have released two minor versions with the crash reporter enabled (5.2 and 5.3) including many bug fix releases and release candidates. According to the crash reporting server a total of 27 versions are recognized and it is time to list some of the statistics surrounding the crash reporter.




  • Education



    • Evolving with Open Source Software at the iSchool
      I’d been using primarily Linux and open source software for only 4 months when I started at Syracuse University. I started with Linux Mint, a distro (slang for distribution or operating system) focused on easing the transition to Linux. It does this by pre-installing necessary open source software alternatives for the average user – i.e. GIMP image editor, Banshee, and VLC media players, Firefox web browser, and LibreOffice, and Mozilla Thunderbird email client.




  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)



    • What it's like to report in one of the world's deadliest places for journalists

      Since 2000, 124 journalists have been killed in Mexico, according to the National Human Rights Commission, the government’s independent watchdog. Article 19, a nonprofit that advocates for media protections in Mexico, recorded 426 threats or attacks against the press last year, including beatings and torture.

      Only Syria and Afghanistan surpassed Mexico in the number of journalists killed in 2016, according to Reporters Without Borders.



    • Calls for safety of Indonesian, West Papuan journalists to be prioritised

      There were 78 violent attacks on journalists in 2016, up from 42 attacks in 2015 and 40 in 2014. The AJI found only a few attackers from those 78 attacks had been brought to justice.

    • URGENT: 200 West Papuans arrested, stabbed, 26 tortured, journalist attacked; all 2 days before World Press Freedom Day


    • Morning star rising

      Ever since Indonesian troops first marched into West Papua in 1961, the government has sought to tighten its grip on this resource-rich, lushly forested territory. This has involved military occupation – at least 15,000 troops are stationed in West Papua1, making it one of the most militarized zones in Southeast Asia – and also the transmigration of Indonesians into West Papua. In several key regions, the Indigenous population is now outnumbered by Indonesian settlers. ‘In 1999, Indonesia had set up just nine regencies [local administrative areas] within West Papua,’ says Octovianus (Octo) Mote, Secretary-General of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). ‘Today, they have 43, and are planning to expand to 73, each with its own police stations and military base. This is all to accommodate new settlers and further outnumber our people. The kind of colonial history that took Western powers many years to carry out is happening here at high speed.’

      [...]

      Dissent is often met with violence and arbitrary arrest. According to Jason Macleod of the University of Sydney: ‘Acts of state violence occur all over West Papua and are carried out by all parts of the security forces. [Human rights violations] include killing, torture, sexual assault and deprivation of liberty.’



    • Lenovo Expands Commitment to Open Source [Ed: but excludes GNU/Linux, then censors people who talk about it]


    • Datto Hires Open Source Expert Markus Rex [Ed: Markus Rex left Novell and then ownCloud. The press release foolishly cites this FUD source, Black Duck.]


    • Why Some Enterprises Don’t Do Open Source [Ed: talking points from the likes of Black Duck basically]
      As everyone knows, the code for open source software (OSS) is made available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change and distribute the software to anyone for any purpose. OSS is typically developed in a collaborative public manner, relying on the intelligence and creativity of crowdsourcing to create platforms, applications and infrastructure that in many cases rivals that of its proprietary, closed-source cousin.

      While smaller companies can quickly adopt open source products, many larger enterprises are laggards due to structural constraints. Though a group within an enterprise may use an open source solution, the tools rarely end up being deployed enterprise-wide because open source solutions are built to solve a specific problem for a specific line of business. If another line of business struggles with the same problem, they can’t simply adopt the same solution – they need to spend time setting up initial configurations and establishing the right IT support mechanisms. Bottom line: most large enterprises don’t do open source.


    • Think open source is a meritocracy? It is, but only if no one knows you're a woman [Ed: FOSS basher Liam Tung (there's track record) plays along with the misleading headlines. It's not a FOSS issue, it's a programming/CS issue. If anything, FOSS has made it easier to see women's contributions and analyse these, highlighting an issue proprietary software hides.]


    • Study Finds Gender Bias in Open Source Community [Ed: No similar stories/studies about proprietary software where the same problems prevail.]


    • Airbnb acquired its React Native partner Deco Software, Deco IDE goes open source [Ed: one problem is, React isn't quote FOSS. There is a patent sting.]
    • Black Duck Hub Open Source Security and Management Solution Integrated with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform [Ed: here they go again, doing the usual.]




  • BSD



    • Tab completion in OpenBSD's ksh

      One of the features OpenBSD’s ksh shares with its more popular friends is user definable completions! Something that sets it apart, however, is the simplicity of these completions.





  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • GnuBee: Personal blobfree NAS/Cloud server for hackers
      GnuBee is a personal NAS (Network Attached Storage) cloud server that is currently being funded on crowdsupply. It is a low-cost, low-power, NAS device that runs GNU/Linux and it is claimed to be based on free, libre, and open source software. No proprietary drivers needed to use GnuBee.


    • GCC 7.1 Released
      We are proud to announce the next, major release of the GNU Compiler Collection, 7.1. This year we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the first GCC beta release and this month we will celebrate 30 years since the GCC 1.0 release.


    • GCC 7.1 Compiler Released
      The GNU Compiler Collection 7 (GCC 7) stable release is now available with today's announcement of GCC 7.1.

      GCC 7.1 features experimental support for all of the C++17 draft, various performance improvements, improved debugging/diagnostics, optimization work, various hardware-specific improvements, OpenMP 4.5 offloading to NVIDIA PTX, and much more. More details in Changes To Find With The Upcoming Release Of GCC 7.


    • GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) 7.1 Released to Celebrate 30 Years Since GCC 1.0
      Jakub Jelinek happily reports today, May 2, 2017, for the GCC project on the general availability of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) 7.1.0, the latest and most advanced release of the open-source and free compiler for the GNU system.


    • GCC 7.1 Released




  • Programming/Development



    • Learn how to fix a Django bug from beginning to end
      For those who are starting to code and want to make open source software, sometimes starting is hard. The idea of contributing with that fancy and wonderful library that you love can sound a little bit scary. Lucky for us, many of those libraries have room for whoever is willing to start. They also give us the support that we need. Pretty sweet, right?






Leftovers



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