Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Scientific software tools have long lived in the conflict zone between open source ideals and proprietary exploitation. The values of science (openness, transparency, and free exchange) are at odds with the desires of individuals and organizations to transition scientific tools to a commercial product. This has been a problem in neuropsychology and neuroscience for decades, and extends outside the bounds of software.

Imagine the Web as an open gaming platform for the world. Where game players seamlessly become game creators. Where your favorite games work on any device, anytime, anywhere. And where your own personal web-based creations earn you internet fame, fortune and the adulation of gamers around the world.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced the program and dates for its annual ApacheCon North America conference. The main conference will take place between 26 and 28 February 2013 in Portland, Oregon under the general theme of "Open Source Community Leadership Drives Enterprise-Grade Innovation". The two days before the start of the main conference will be filled with training as well as barcamp and hackathon style events, beginning on 24 February. After the main conference, sprints and workshops will be held until 2 March when the event officially concludes.

They're not our favorite movie quotes but I've caught myself saying some of the more popular open source phrases more than once. It might be an analogy that we use to describe what open source is or perhaps a conversation starter.

As we consider a number of key trends in enterprise software and systems, it's clear how critical cloud computing is to the industry. The strong connection between Linux and cloud computing will continue to fuel Linux throughout 2013 with public clouds, private clouds, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS all contributing to broader and greater use of Linux.

Slax 7.0, code-named "Green Horn", includes a kernel based on Linux 3.6, a suite of development tools and an up-to-date KDE 4 desktop that fits into a 210MB ISO images. Optionally, users can purchase a copy of the distribution on a 16GB USB stick for $25. The extra space on the thumb drive does not go wasted as the module system allows users to customise and extend their Slax image with a lot of additional software. Additionally, the distribution implements an optional persistent storage option that enables users to preserve their installed software and data on the live system across reboots.

For those that are new to open source, understanding the intricacies of how open source communities share, communicate, and govern themselves may take a while to understand. Each community is different, but there are a few commonalities between them that lay the foundation for a successful project. If you’re just getting into open source, be sure to read more about the different tools that organize communities of practice in The Open Source Way book.

LXer Feature: 09-Dec-2012

The latest installment of the Weekly Roundup. Enjoy!

The creators of the Creative Commons licensing suite are celebrating the licences' tenth birthday. As part of the festivities, local groups are organising events all over the world from 7 to 16 December. The organisation behind Creative Commons was founded in 2001 and produced and published the first set of licences in December of the following year. The organisation was founded by, among others, law school professor and political activist Lawrence Lessig, with the goal of giving both creators and consumers of content more freedoms than are usually afforded under traditional copyright licences.

This is a personal post and does not neccessarily represent the views of Canonical or the Ubuntu community.. Today Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project and Free Software Foundation wrote a critical post accusing Ubuntu of shipping spyware (which is referring to the online search capabilities of the Ubuntu dash). He goes on to suggest “in your Software Freedom Day events, in your FLISOL events, don’t install or recommend Ubuntu. Instead, tell people that Ubuntu is shunned for spying.“. This is FUD.

One of the major advantages of free software is that the community protects users from malicious software. Now Ubuntu GNU/Linux has become a counterexample. What should we do? Proprietary software is associated with malicious treatment of the user: surveillance code, digital handcuffs (DRM or Digital Restrictions Management) to restrict users, and back doors that can do nasty things under remote control. Programs that do any of these things are malware and should be treated as such. Widely used examples include Windows, the iThings, and the Amazon "Kindle" product for virtual book burning, which do all three; Macintosh and the Playstation III which impose DRM; most portable phones, which do spying and have back doors; Adobe Flash Player, which does spying and enforces DRM; and plenty of apps for iThings and Android, which are guilty of one or more of these nasty practices.

Canonical may have ultimately changed its mind about "Avoid the pain of Windows 8" -- the slogan that accompanied the original launch of Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" earlier this fall, but like so many deeply compelling notions, it seems to have staying power here in the Linux blogosphere. That indeed is why more than a few Linux fans have viewed Windows 8 with jubilation rather than dread.

We are now more than a decade into the technological revolution that turned the music industry upside down. Initially, it felt like there was so much possibility, that the internet might be the great democratizer, that it could empower artists to take more control over their careers, and ultimately allow them to see more of a percentage of income from their music. There have been some success stories, but it seems the vast majority of artists today are struggling even more, making less money yet paying more middlemen.

An Intel developer has proposed a migration tool based upon LLVM's Clang tooling library to auto-convert C++ code to take advantage of new C++11 features in an automated manner...

The recently released update for the free DNS server closes a security hole that could be exploited for Denial-of-Service attacks. The only servers that are affected use DNS64, an option intended to help with migrating to IPv6

Today, Mozilla and the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center are pleased to announce the recipients of the first-ever Open(Art) Fellowships. Together, these creative technologists will be exploring the frontier of art and the open web as part of our new Open(Art) program.

Vaadin, the company behind the GWT-based web framework of the same name, has published a report on the future of Google's Web Toolkit (GWT), a Java-based web framework that includes a Java-to-JavaScript compiler. Google had appeared to scale back its own GWT development efforts following its shift in focus towards Dart as an alternative to JavaScript and, earlier this year, had promised to create a more open development process. This resulted in the formation of a steering committee, which includes Google representatives as well as developers from Red Hat and Vaadin and which will be responsible for the future development of GWT.

Puppy Linux lead developer Barry Kauler has announced the release of Slacko Puppy 5.4. The Puppy Linux family sets out to create small, lightweight, live-CD versions of various Linux distributions. Slacko Puppy, as the name suggests, is built from Slackware, specifically the packages of Slackware 14, and is binary compatible with the venerable distribution. This gives users access to Slackware repositories in Slacko. The Slacko Puppy distribution is one of the more popular offshoots of the minimal Puppy Linux distribution, or as Kauler puts it: "one of our flagship puppies".

Let's say you're a big company in a competitive industry. One who innovates and succeeds by creating software. Not extending COTS, not adapting existing code. Generating fresh, new code, at your full expense. The value the company receives by investing in the creation of that software is competitive advantage, sometimes known as the profit-motive. You’re an executive at this company. Creating the software was your idea. You are responsible for the ROI calculations that got the whole thing off the ground.

If you're starting a new open source project, or open sourcing some existing code, you'll need a publicly accessible location for the version control system holding your code (if you're not planning on setting up a publicly accessible VCS, reconsider; no public source control is a red flag to potential contributors). You could set up your own repository hosting, but with so many companies and groups offering existing setups and services, why not use one of those and save yourself some time? Here's an overview of some of the more popular options.