Category Archives: Open Source Software

The Inescapable Logic of Language Localization

Posted on by

By Jack M. Germain LinuxInsider 05/20/14 7:57 PM PT

Machine translation tools have been shown to be quite effective at translating certain types of text, but "you almost certainly can't use a tool like that for customer software -- not unless your main aim is to alienate your potential customers," said Translate House CEO Dwayne Bailey. However, "you might succeed in creating an international meme like, 'All your base are belong to us.'"

Tailoring language translations for software documentation and graphical user interfaces can make or break an open source project. Localizing language is a unique undertaking, with a number of moving parts.

Developers often have to choose between tight development cycles or less harried ones that might let competitors advance first. The process of translating language in releases for different target markets can be a complicated part of the developmental process. It presents costly cultural and language translation barriers that often are beyond the financial abilities of the open source community.

Smaller open source projects often lack the manpower or financial support to apply human editing to translations. The only option is to rely on machine translation services. That solution often delivers poor, even embarrassing, results.

The same language and cultural barriers open source developers face with multilanguage software documentation are also present in localizing websites. Poorly handled translations can very quickly give potential software users a glaring impression of amateurism.

The software project might be a fantastic product. Still, first impressions formed by language translation goofs are difficult to change.

Typically, software developers get more than 50 percent of their revenue from non-English speaking countries, according to Renato Beninatto, chief marketing officer and vice president of marketing and business development at Moravia

"If you want to convince somebody to buy your product, you have to speak to them in their own language," Beninatto told LinuxInsider.

How to localize language translations effectively on the cheap is a particular problem for open source software developers, said Ian Henderson, chief technology officer and cofounder of Rubric.

Link:
The Inescapable Logic of Language Localization

Red Hat brings OpenShift closer to the enterprise

Posted on by

Red Hat continues to enhance its software portfolio for helping organizations run and manage cloud services in their own data centers, adding more features to its OpenShift Enterprise software package to accommodate enterprise requirements such as policy orchestration and multiregion availability.

OpenShift Enterprise 2.1, available now, also includes new releases of the latest open source software used in the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) hosting package, such as PHP and MySQL.

Although it gets less attention than the IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service)-style cloud services, PaaS services can be valuable.

IaaS provides a complete OS within a cloud-based virtual machine, into which a user can install software programs. PaaS services, on the other hand, free organizations from maintaining the underlying operating systems, middleware or other underlying components that run an application. PaaS providers maintain the OS, and offer specific supporting programs, such as a database or programming language runtime, that developers can use to build their cloud-based applications.

Google, IBM, Microsoft and Safesforce.com all offer PaaS services.

Red Hat launched OpenShift Enterprise in 2012 as a version of its online OpenShift PaaS that could be run by an organization within its own data center. OpenShift Enterprise could be used as a foundation for hosting providers to offer PaaS to their customers, as well as for large organizations that may want to run PaaS services in-house.

Running OpenShift Enterprise is also designed to provide an organization an easy way to transfer their workloads over to Red Hats own OpenShift cloud offering, for purposes of disaster recovery or workload balancing.

The new version of OpenShift Enterprise, currently available, offers a number of new features to better help incorporate PaaS into the workplace.

A new plug-in will help organizations incorporate OpenShift services within their own policy orchestration engines, allowing them to incorporate services built on PaaS into their own complex workflows spanning multiple business units.

The software introduces the concept of zones and regions, allowing organizations to make their systems more reliable, but spreading out resources across multiple geographic areas. If a service stops running in one geographic area, due to a natural disaster, a duplicate of that service in another zone can pick up the work.

Read more:
Red Hat brings OpenShift closer to the enterprise

Blender 3D Tutorial – ToolShelf Tabs Custom Add-On Panel is Missing Buttons by VscorpianC – Video

Posted on by


Blender 3D Tutorial - ToolShelf Tabs Custom Add-On Panel is Missing Buttons by VscorpianC
Blender open source software; Loading factory settings after customizing Toolbar Tabs makes the Add-On panel buttons disappear...here #39;s how to fix this. VscorpianC.

By: VscorpianC

Follow this link:
Blender 3D Tutorial - ToolShelf Tabs Custom Add-On Panel is Missing Buttons by VscorpianC - Video

OpenStack Summit opens with an open-source gospel reading

Posted on by

Summary: Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, believes the future belongs to those in any company who can embrace not just the OpenStack cloud, but the open source method and its hyper-accelerated rate of IT change.

ATLANTA, GAJonathan Bryce, executive director of theOpenStack Foundation, kicked off theOpenStack Summitwith about 4,500 developers, end-users, and executives with a sermon on the gospel of open source software development.

Bryce opened with a pep talk to the OpenStack faithful. He talked about how the open source method had enabled OpenStack to hit its release dates for its latest version, Icehouse, while bringing in thousands of developers from hundreds of companies. At the same time, he mentioned the Internet is what enables programmers and reviewers to work in real-time.

From there, he said that software is now enabling everything. "We're living in a software-defined economy. Every company competes with a start-up. The barrier of entry is now very low. The technology shift of development to open source and the Internet has made it very cheap to build new software and this, in turn, is increasing the velocity of money." In short, "Any organization's ability to do great things with software is arguably its core competence, no matter the industry, vertical, or category," argued Bryce.

He added that "real business is being done on OpenStack today." OpenStack commercial users are embracing this agile infrastructure. They are not just buying software for a three-to-five year cycle. They, especially the "super-users," are now getting involved in creating software rather than just buying it.

In Bryce's view, super-users are those individuals who "make their organizations competitive in a software-defined economy. Super-users are change agents who enable their organizations to build deeply strategic software. Super-users are uniquely effective because they understand the power of great software in context."

These super-users may work in technology companies like Cisco, Dell, or Netflix, but they also work in businesses such as Bloomberg, Comcast, Walt Disney, and Wells Fargo Bank. These companies take advantage of OpenStack, and other open source software stacks, not simply to cut IT costs but to get exactly the features they need from their software.

Walt Disney's director of cloud services and architecture, Chris Launey, a super-user in Bryce's view, came on stage and said that in a world where "people can now set up a WordPress-powered content site in 20 minutes with a credit card are not going to settle for an IT environment where they have to put in tickets." Disney wants to make it as easy for their staffers to work at the office with their corporate programs as they do from their home with public cloud services.

Launey added that at Disney, and he thinks, at any forward thinking company, you should not have to choose between good, fast, or cheap. Instead, today, "it's fast, fast, fast. We change little bits all the time. It's all about faster pizza with an extra helping of faster." For example, Disney went from playing with OpenStack to deploying pilot projects in three months.

"When you get tech people together, they talk about shadow ITas a bad thing. It's not," commented Launey. "Shadow IT is great, it shows where the problems are and where your people are finding problems. You shouldn't put obstacles in front of people." Instead, Bryce added: "We need to use more carrot rather than stick in corporate IT."

Original post:
OpenStack Summit opens with an open-source gospel reading

HP pivots, says open sourcing SDNs is right

Posted on by

Seven months after dismissing OpenDaylight, HP has raised its membership in the vendor-driven open source SDN consortium to its highest and most expensive tier.

HP is now a Platinum member of OpenDaylight, raising its status from a lower tier Silver member, which it has been since the consortium formed a little over a year ago. HP has upped its investment and participation in OpenDaylight because open source software-defined networking is "completely consistent" with what HP has been doing in terms of openness, interoperability and standards, says Sarwar Raza, director of cloud networking and SDN, HP Networking.

"OpenDaylight is at a stage where the collaborative approach provides a great forum to promote interoperability and openness," Raza says. "Our strategy is to drive an open ecosystem...and embrace open source as a way of getting things done."

+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Everyone wants open source SDNs +

What's interesting is that just last fall, HP dismissed open sourcing SDNs, and OpenDaylight. Ex-HPer Mike Banic had said when he was vice president of global marketing for HP Networking that open sourcing SDNs was "wrong" because it means passing the burden and investment of ensuring enterprise-class functionality, reliability and performance onto the customer.

And Bethany Mayer, formerly senior vice president and general manager of HP Networking (who has transitioned to a new role at the company), said at that time she didn't know why customers would use an OpenDaylight controller.

"Using an open source controller in the enterprise can be tricky and dangerous," Mayer said at last fall's Interop New York conference.

(Mayer's former role in HP Networking has reportedly been filled by Antonio Neri, previously senior vice president of technology services.)

Raza says HP's heightened role in OpenDaylight is not a reversal of the company's viewpoint on open source SDNs and OpenDaylight. Rather, Banic and Mayer's comments were misinterpreted.

"I think that those comments were taken out of context," Raza says, even though HP did not express such sentiments at the time they were published. "There is no fundamental shift on HP's part" with regard to open sourcing SDNs.Raza says there is nothing wrong with open source itself. But customers are not willing or comfortable with downloading an open source controller.

See more here:
HP pivots, says open sourcing SDNs is right