Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Sustainable open source projects are those that are capable of supporting themselves. Simply put, they are able to meet their ongoing costs. However, from the viewpoint of selection and procurement, sustainability also means that the project is capable of delivering improvements and fixing problems with its products in a timely manner, and that the project itself has a reasonable prospect of continuing into the future. Elsewhere on our site you can find articles describing some of the many formal approaches to evaluating open source software as part of the Software Sustainability Maturity Model.

Amazon is one of the most technically influential companies operating today – but you wouldn't know it, thanks to a dearth of published research papers and negligible code contributions to the open-source projects it relies on. This, according to multiple insiders, is becoming a problem. The corporation is described as a "black hole" because improvements and fixes for the open-source software it uses rarely see the light of day. And, we're told, that policy of secrecy comes right from the top – and it's driving talent into the arms of its rivals.

Back in 2006, Italian embedded Linux manufacturer Acme Systems shipped a penguin-shaped Tux Case for its original Fox single board computer (SBC). The new Arietta G25 computer-on-module (COM) is equipped with the same Atmel AT91SAM9G20 processor used by an updated Fox G20 SBC, as well as a newer 24-Euro Aria G25 COM that is more closely related to the Arietta G25 (see farther below). The Tux Case is still available, as well.

The cash-strapped OpenBSD Foundation has raised $100,000, potentially saving it from the brink of oblivion. The Foundation has had pledges of "around" $100,000 from individuals and organisations following its appeal to cover a $20,000 server electricity bill.

In December, the Italian government issued final rules implementing a change to procurement law that now requires all public administrations in the country to first consider re-used or free software before committing to proprietary licenses. Importantly, the new rules include an enforcement mechanism, which can, at least in theory, annul decisions that do not follow these procedures.

If you're looking around for 3D printers that are both inexpensive and open source friendly, the Printrbot Simple Kit will probably catch your attention. This Kit sells for close to $300, and for our team required a full-day of DIY assembly, though skilled makers might be able to put it together in four hours or so. Our team was made up of three PhDs and two R&D engineers, and it took us close to eight hours to complete the assembly, which of course included some philosophical and licensing discussions and a couple of trips to the hardware store. It was indeed a lot of fun!

In addition to the annual Embedded Linux Conference, Linux Kernel Summit, and LinuxCon events in North America and Europe, the LF’s 2014 events include a Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, an Android Builders Summit, and an expanding series of events focused on networking, cloud services, virtualization, and other specialized technologies. This year’s LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America will be co-located with the Linux Kernel Summit, while LinuxCon and CloudOpen Europe will co-located with the Embedded Linux Conference, KVM Forum, and Linux Plumbers Conference.

"It is a miracle that curiosity escapes formal education." These words by Albert Einstein reflect a lot about the current state of education. It also captures the need for overhauling the fabric of our school system. Society needs technology solutions that extract the best out of all the stakeholders in education—students, teachers, and parents. And we need enterprises that revolutionize the learning ecosystem. inBloom is one such company that utilizes and integrates massive amounts of data to change the landscape of the education sector.I talked to Vincent Mayers, open source community manager at inBloom, to learn how the company is changing school systems and how open source technologies aid in its mission.

The line between traditional, paid advertising and organic editorial content on the Internet can sometimes be hazy. A recent stealth promotional campaign between Microsoft and Machinima highlights just how hazy that line has become, and how behind-the-scenes payments can drive ostensibly independent opinion-mongering on by users on services like YouTube.

A recent Georgia Tech study found that Kickstarter projects often find success thanks to the use of effective marketing buzzwords like “guaranteed.” That word never shows up the Rex project’s Kickstarter page, which is perhaps one reason why this promising project has yet to reach a third of its $90,000 funding goal, with less than two weeks to go. We think Rex is worth a closer look. (Satisfaction guaranteed!)

For those users of the Phoronix Test Suite Git development code, over the past few days I have been transferring the Git repository to GitHub. The Phorogit repository location will still likely be updated in tandem with the GitHub repository for those that don't update their pull locations immediately, but the Phorogit interface has fallen badly outdated and its interface code hasn't been touched in about five years. GitHub is a much more pleasant experience in browsing the commits, branching, etc.

The Linux 3.13 kernel that will be released in the very near future is very worth the upgrade if you are a RadeonSI user -- in particular, the Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs and newer on the Gallium3D Linux graphics driver -- but other open-source graphics driver users as well may also see nice improvements in the new kernel release. Here's some benchmarks showing off the gains found with the Linux 3.13 kernel for Radeon HD and R9 graphics cards.

The world’s first tablet to run the open source Linux based Firefox OS was informally unveiled by Mozilla developer Asa Dotzler on his eponymous blog site. Dotzler posted some basic specs in the announcement, picked up first by Liliputing, as well as a screenshot photo of the tablet.

The recommended reforms to National Security Agency snooping announced by President Obama today are not likely to stem the recent trend of tech products promising to keep data secure from prying governmental agencies. The latest, greatest device promising to NSA-proof your digital life is the Blackphone, a collaboration between Firefox OS phone vendor Geeksphone and Silent Circle, a cryptography software development firm that counts PGP creator Phil Zimmerman (pictured at top) as its President.

Recently, the United Kingdom's Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG) ran a series of tests to find out which operating system would be the most secure platform for the UK government. The test consisted of the following categories..

The project behind OpenBSD risks going dark after receiving a crippling server electricity bill which it needs help to pay off. The OpenBSD Foundation has revealed it needs to stump up $20,000 in the second appeal for help it has issued since December. It seems the first appeal didn't net it enough to settle the bill in full. The Foundation wants somebody to not only pay the bill but also to permanently take on the cost of running its servers – otherwise it risks going out of business.

Last October, our last look at graphics focused on the plans laid at September's X Developer's Conference. In the three months since then, these plans have come to fruition, reasserting the continuing relevance of X.org compared with Wayland and other compositing display servers.

For months now the Debian Technical Committee has been tasked with deciding between systemd and Upstart for the future init system of the Linux distribution that also has a FreeBSD kernel port, etc. The debate has been long and ongoing. Among other opinions, Ian Jackson of the committee came out last month in favor of using Upstart while Russ Allberry came out in favor of systemd.

Based in part on MontaVista’s GENIVI-compliant in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) distribution, the Mentor Embedded Automotive Technology Platform (ATP) was released in April. In September, it was updated with an integrated version of Jungo Connectivity’s multimedia player middleware, and in October, Mentor Graphics announced a related Mentor Embedded Hypervisor that can work together with ATP and other IVI and telematics systems to enabled multiple VMs running on each core of a multicore SoC.

In this week's edition of our open source news roundup, you'll learn about some new partnerships that could lead to some new open source tech. Here's what we found: