April 24, 2014, 9:03 AM The open source software development model has proven itself time and time again over the years. Now scientists at the Open Source Seed Initiative have actually taken that model and used it to create seeds for crops for the benefit of everyone. Yes, they have created the first open source seeds to be used in providing plants for food.

According to NPR:

A group of scientists and food activists is launching a Thursday to change the rules that govern seeds. They're releasing 29 new varieties of crops under a new "open source pledge" that's intended to safeguard the ability of farmers, gardeners and plant breeders to share those seeds freely.

It's inspired by the example of open source software, which is freely available for anyone to use but cannot legally be converted into anyone's proprietary product.

These days, seeds are intellectual property. Some are patented as inventions. You need permission from the patent holder to use them, and you're not supposed to harvest seeds for replanting the next year.

More at NPR

What a fantastic idea! I was aware of the issues of seed control and the creation of "franken-seeds" by large companies, and how that can negatively affect farmers and consumers. But it never occurred to me that someone would basically open source seeds to promote sharing and to protect everyone from narrow-minded and profit-driven corporations. Kudos to the folks that thought this one up.

Linux Foundation and companies announce Core Infrastructure Initiative The Linux Foundation and companies such as Amazon, Google, VMWare and others have joined together to provide funding for core open source projects in the wake of the Heartbleed bug.

According to The Linux Foundation:

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Scientists create open source plant seeds to battle corporate shop of horrors

Blender 3D Tutorial - Grease Pencil, How to Edit Animation Key-Frames by VscorpianC
Blender open source software; this beginners tutorial shows how to add and edit grease pencil animation key-frames. VscorpianC Blender 3D Modeling and Animation program can be downloaded and...

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Blender 3D Tutorial - Grease Pencil, How to Edit Animation Key-Frames by VscorpianC - Video

Apr. 24, 2014 - 2:50 PM PDT Apr. 24, 2014 - 2:50 PM PDT

A handful of Twitter employees who work on the companys open source software projects took to Reddit for an Ask Me Anything on Wednesday. The questionswere wide ranging, from questions about specific projects to how to get a job at Twitter. Here are some of the highlights.

Here are some detailed reasons why to open source code:

The whole thread is available here.

Using open source in the beginning was just practical when youre a small scrappy startup. Since the first Tweet was sent, Twitter has been built on top of open source software (see opensource.twitter.com). Our early stack was mostly MySQL, Rails and Memcached. But then we then rapidly evolved from a simple application into a service-oriented architecture, leading us to integrate even more open source technologies such as OpenJDK (JVM), Netty, Apache Lucene, Apache Thrift, Apache Hadoop and Redis. This had to happen to allow us to scale and we discussed some of this in this blog post: https://blog.twitter.com/2013/new-tweets-per-second-record-and-how”

The whole thread is available here.

Generally we look for strong candidates. It is hard to give a recipe for interviews. Everyone must be able to code well. After that, some know more math, some are stronger with systems, some have more DB experience, some are functional programming PhDs. Find your niche and be great in your niche, BUT eagerly learn new things that inspire you.

That whole thread is available here. Heres anotheron the same topic.

Apache Mesos is one of the bigget parts of Twitter infrastructure. It currently powers our compute cloud (with Apache Aurora) and part of our real time analytics (with Storm on Mesos). Almost all new services at Twitter are being written on top of Mesos. Twitter has been recently investigating/using YARN but its use case so far has been targeted towards Hadoop based work loads. In contrast, Mesos has been running in production at Twitter for more than 3 years now and has been thoroughly battle tested to run at Twitters scale.

The whole thread is available here.

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Twitter did a Reddit AMA about open source. Here are some highlights

Blender 3D Tutorial - Grease Pencil, Sketching with Reference Image Planes by VscorpianC
Blender open source software; this tutorial shows how to trace a reference image to create animations, flip-books etc. VscorpianC Blender 3d Modeling and Animation program can be downloaded...

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The world's biggest technology companies are donating millions of dollars to fund improvements in open source programs like OpenSSL, the software whose "Heartbleed" bug has sent the computer industry into turmoil.

Amazon.com Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, Facebook Inc, Google Inc, IBM, Intel Corp and Microsoft Corp are among a dozen companies that have agreed to be founding members of a group known as Core Infrastructure Initiative. Each will donate $300,000 to the venture, which is recruiting more backers among technology companies as well as the financial services sector.

Other early supporters are Dell, Fujitsu Ltd NetApp Inc, Rackspace Hosting Inc and VMware Inc .

The industry is stepping up after the group of developers who volunteer to maintain OpenSSL revealed that they received donations averaging about $2,000 a year to support the project, whose code is used to secure two-thirds of the world's websites and is incorporated into products from many of the world's most profitable technology companies.

"I think we get complacent as an industry when we see something as working well or working 'well enough.' We sort of see it as a 'maintenance job,'" said Chris DiBona, director of open source and engineering with Google. "We have to be a bit more vigilant."

The Heartbleed bug has likely cost businesses tens of millions of dollars in lost productivity as they have had to update systems with safe versions of OpenSSL, according to security experts. Also, it has already resulted in at least one major cyber attack: the theft of data from Canada's tax authority.

The non-profit Linux Foundation, which promotes development of the open source Linux operating system, organized the group, whose formation it announced on Thursday.

It will support development of OpenSSL as well as other pieces of open source software that make up critical parts of the world's technology infrastructure, but whose programmers do not necessarily have adequate funding to support their work, said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation.

Heartbleed is a major bug in OpenSSL encryption software that is widely used to secure websites and technology products including mobile phones, data center software and telecommunications equipment. It makes systems vulnerable to data theft by hackers who can attack them without leaving a trace.

Open source software refers to programs developed by groups of developers spread across the globe, who seek community involvement to improve the code. Companies are typically free to incorporate such code in their products without paying any fees to volunteer developers who maintain the code.

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Big Tech Firms Offer Millions After 'Heartbleed'

Internet and technology giants are uniting to support critical' open source projects in the aftermath of the Heartbleed OpenSSL crisis.

Amazon Web Services, Google, Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Facebook, Dell, VMware, Rackspace, Fujtisu, Qualcomm and NetApp are backing the Core Infrastructure Initiative', which is formed and run by The Linux Foundation.

The aim of the initiative is to enable technology firms to collaborate so that they can identify and fund open source projects that are in need of assistance.

When Computing questioned who was to blame for the Heartbleed bug, the consensus was that many of the big companies that were using the OpenSSL code for their own benefit weren't funding or helping to maintain and test the software.

Despite a recent Coverty Open Scan study of software quality suggesting that open source code quality is superior to proprietary code quality, it has grown in complexity and therefore needs support.

The first project under consideration to receive funds from the initiative will be OpenSSL, which to date has only received about $2,000 per year in donations. Support from the initiative can include funding for fellowships for key developers to work full time on the open source project, security audits, computing and test infrastructure, travel, face-to-face meeting coordination, and other support.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation, said that the organisation will now be able to support additional developers and maintainers to work full-time supporting other essential open source projects.

The importance of open source software was highlighted by several of the founding members of the programme.

Facebook's engineering director of traffic and edge, Doug Beaver, said open source "makes today's computing infrastructure possible", while Dell Software CTO Don Ferguson emphasised that protecting the work of open source developers and projects is "of the highest priority".

Meanwhile, Colin Kincaid, VP product management and architecture at Cisco, stated that supporting dedicated open source collaborators and contributors is "vital to the success and growth of innovation".

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Google, Facebook, Amazon unite in a bid to ensure Heartbleed doesn't happen again

SAN FRANCISCO, April 24 (UPI) -- The Linux Foundation announced an initiative involving major tech companies that will support open source code that underpins the Internet, such as OpenSSL.

The Core Infrastructure Initiative will include companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Cisco Systems, Dell, Fujitsu and Intel among others. These companies have agreed to provide $100,000 a year for a minimum of three years to strengthen open source software, code that can be modified by and used by individuals and companies for free.

"I thought, 'Where did we go wrong?'" said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. "There are numerous open source projects that are not in line with the same kind of support that supports Linux."

While the sum may seem paltry compared to the billions these companies generate in revenues annually, it is still sizable for developers who work on open source software, mostly for free and on their own time.

The first project for the initiative will be the strengthening of OpenSSL, which had major security vulnerabilities brought to the fore by Google and Finnish security firm Codenomicon. OpenSSL is used by so many sites that it has become the de facto spine of the Internet, and news of the Heartbleed security breach sent waves of panic across the Internet.

ModSSL, PGP and OpenCryptolab are other projects the initiative might consider supporting.

Zemlin said the foundation was only a place to hold the money and that members will decide how best to utilize it. He hopes that members will meet frequently to decide on new priorities and take decisions proactively.

Zemlin said he hopes the initiative will support encryption experts working on open source software, the same way the foundation was started to help Linux's creator Linus Torvalds work solely on the open source operating system.

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit group that advocates for the growth of Linux and collaborative software development.

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Major tech companies join forces to prevent next Heartbleed bug

INTRODUCTION TO WAMP SERVER (Open Source Software)
wamp server project for managing IT.

By: Mohamed Rashid

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INTRODUCTION TO WAMP SERVER (Open Source Software) - Video

KUALA LUMPUR (April 23): Provider of open source software solutions, Red Hat Inc, is targeting a double-digit growth in the current financial year ending Feb 28, 2015, fueled by strong subscription growth for its Linux operating system.

For the just-ended financial year ended Feb 28, 2014, revenue increased to US$1.53 billion, from US$1.33 billion chalked up in the 2013 financial year.

For the fourth-quarter ended Feb 28, 2014, Red Hat's revenue rose 15 per cent to US$400 million, from the same quarter last year.

Asean Senior Director and General Manager, Damien Wong, said the company saw significant upturn in Malaysia, in terms of customer's interest, awareness and demand for Red Hat products and services, especially for its flagship product; Linux.

"Adoption rate is higher, since large organisations and enterprises have greater acceptance towards open source system," he told reporters, during a briefing on Red Hat's Business Performance and Strategic Initiative.

Meanwhile, Country Manager for Malaysia and Brunei, David Yap, said the company planned to expand its partner landscapes, which included resellers, original equipment manufacturers and system integrators in Malaysia.

"We are currently aiming for more independent software vendors to become our partners, in the near-future," said Yap.

The company also aimed to implement open and hybrid clouds systems, together with its next generation datacenters in Malaysia next year, in order to continuously improve customer support, to gain trust from local clients.

Red Hat provides innovative solutions to more than 90 per cent of the fortune companies, across several verticals, including financial services, technology and media telecommunications, service providers and government entities.

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Red Hat Inc eyes double-digit growth in next financial year

Morse View - 5 WPM and 15 WPM real-time Morse code decoding
Morse View is an open source software project to convert audible Morse codes to text messages. This application is capable to convert Morse codes from wave files or from the audio line/microphone...

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Morse View - 5 WPM and 15 WPM real-time Morse code decoding - Video