The descriptor open source is primarily associated with software, the source code of which is freely accessible for examination, use, and expansion by users other than the developer. The practice started among early academic, corporate and government adopters and hit a major milestone in 1991 when Linus Torvalds released the Linux kernel.

Fast forward to the present and Torvalds open source operating system has been adapted for use in embedded components, routers, access points, devices and data center applications all important aspects of generating, transmitting and receiving the huge amount of data produced by the booming Internet of Things.

One of the most important things to understand about how open source software (and hardware more on that later) is a good fit with IoT is in the approach. Think of open source as a little bit like crowdsourcing information. Take Wikipedia, for example; the idea is that with numerous sets of stakeholders with different experiences, interests, and expertise, all working on the same problem, the outcome will improve.

As IoT products are developed, connectivity experts provide the modem, a focused security firm provides the protocols, a vertical-specific outfit develops the form factor, and so on.

A successful product results from a partner-driven, ecosystem approach just like with open source software. Similarly, from standards to market share, the IoT space is fragmented, so a unified, consortia-type treatment could help the entire IoT value chain better serve the vast addressable market.

IoT services are built on platforms that allows a sensor or other device to connect to a network, to a centralized cloud-computing platform, to an edge processor or some combination of these. The sensor or device can then transmit and/or receive data.

Other platform elements make sure data is secure from the endpoint to the cloud and back, while others manage billing, location, monitoring and other crucial functions.

While there are a lot of platforms around, including proprietary plays like Thread (a group led by a Google subsidiary) or Microsofts Azure, open source platforms have drawn investment from major IoT companies.

Linux Torvalds creation gave rise to The Linux Foundation, a major figure in the open source/IoT world. The group brings together different consortia and alliances into one framework for sharing software and ideas, in-person events, and accessing relevant trainings class and materials, among other activities. Leading corporate members include: AT&T, Qualcomm, Samsung, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Huawei.

In addition to the broad OCF reference architecture, The Linux Foundation also hosts an open source project designed to bring interoperability to the network edge, where critical field devices are deployed and inputs set off a chain of efficiency-building data analysis insights and actions.

Seeded by some 125,000 lines of code developed by Dell, the EdgeX Foundry launched with the goal of building interoperable edge components in an effort to speed time to market, drive scalability and leverage existing standards to simplify what is inherently a complex, fragmented market.

For industrial IoT applications like defect detection on an assembly line or remote monitoring of equipment, the edge is a very important point of decision making.

If a sensor is deployed in the field to alert technicians at a control center of an equipment malfunction based on various data points, the sensor only needs to send a message if there is a problem. That means an IoT gateway or other edge device has processed the sensor data and determined all conditions are normal.

This is a more efficient process, it saves on cloud computing- and bandwidth-related fees and keeps technicians available to address urgent matters rather than wait for intermittent all-clear messages.

In the data center, where the cloud services live, open source software is present in the majority of high-performance systems. Similarly, the open source approach to software has been adopted by hardware makers who have begun sharing designs and specifications to drive down the cost of data center equipment and increase the efficiency of components like switches, servers, racks and power-related infrastructure.

Founded by Facebook, The Open Compute Project, serves as The Linux Foundation equivalent for hardware. As IoT expands and permeates every level of enterprise, there will be an acute need for data centers to provide the flexible, on-demand, and distributed compute infrastructure the Internet of Things will need.

If you pull the lens back even further, open source underpins one of the most important ongoing efforts in telecom network automation as a function of network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN).

As networks evolve to keep up with IoT and the coming 5G New Radio standard, the sheer level of complexity requires automation. AT&T developed its Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management & Policy (ECOMP) architecture and had virtualized 34% of its network by the end of 2016.

In China, Huawei developed the Open-Orchestrator Project (Open-O) framework for NFV/SDN transformation. Last year those two initiatives merged under the new name Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), which is managed by, you guessed it, The Linux Foundation.

In May 2017, Sprint stirred the alphabet soup with its own NFV/SDN reference solution dubbed C3PO, Clean CUPS Core for Packet Optimization, with CUPS meaning Control & User Plane Separation.

Sprint COO Gunter Ottendorfer said the new architecture, revolutionizes the network core and its part of our expanded toolbox of solutions to meet the coming wave of data in the years ahead. C3PO is an important part of NFV and SDN initiative, enabling Sprint to adapt more quickly to market demands and scale new services more efficiently and cost-effectively.

So, whats the big picture for network automation and IoT? Network slicing, which will give operators the automated ability to create bespoke, cross-domain data pipes capable of connecting any device to any cloud or edge device or data center with bandwidth provisioned in a way that meets the specific requirement of any enterprise or industrial IoT use case. All made possible with open source.

Last Week in the Future is our weekly newsletter, covering the latest and greatest in IoT, AI, and other tech fields from last week.

See the rest here:
Open Source Software and Hardware for the Internet of Things - IoT For All (blog)

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Todays world runs on open source software. The web, smartphones, the Amazon Echo, your careverything high-tech depends on open source these days. Where free, collaborative software projects were once the flags flown by indie developers bucking corporate computing, today even companies like Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart, and Wells Fargo are releasing their own open source tools.

Still, even though users of the open source software present in countless products and services are now as diverse as the internet itself, the open source development community remains startlingly white and maleeven by the tech industrys dismal standards.

GitHub, the worlds leading repository of open-source code, surveyed 5,500 open source users and developers from around the world on a range of topics. It also asked for demographic information. And it was informative. Of that randomly selected cohort, a full 95 percent of respondents were male. Only three percent identified as female and one percent as non-binary. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 22.6 percent of professional computer programmers are female. About 16 percent of respondents said they belonged to ethnic or national groups that are in the minority in the country they live in. Black, Asian, and Latino programmers account for a total of about 34 percent of programmers in the US, according to the bureau.

The survey-conducted by GitHub in concert with partners in academia, business, and the open source community-wasnt all bad news for inclusion. About 7 percent of the survey respondents identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, or another minority sexual orientation. According to Gallup, about 4.1 percent of the US population identifies as LGBTQ. But its clear that open source has work to do.

Beyond the consequences for open source projects themselves, the communitys diversity problem could actually make the larger tech industrys entrenched imbalances worse. According to the survey, about half of respondents said that their open source contributions were an important part of landing their current jobs. If women and people of color arent contributing to open source, these already under-represented groups could find themselves frozen out of the high-tech job market.

Open sources diversity problem has long been obvious to anyone whos ever been to an open source software related conference or meetup. But the broad ranging surveywhich isnt limited to just GitHub usersdoesnt just quantify the problemit points to some of its causes and potential solutions. In appropriate open source fashion, the researchers have released the data under an open license so other researchers can mine it for insights.

Frannie Zlotnick, the GitHub data scientist who lead this research project, says one important thing companies can do to ensure more diversity in open source is to make sure that all of their employees have a chance to contribute to open source on the job. About 70 percent of the survey respondents were employed full or part time. Of these, 65 percent contribute to open source in some way as part of their job.

Open source has a reputation for being aggressive. We collected, finally, some hard data on that.

Theres also plenty that the managers of open source projects can do. One thing many respondents said drives them away from open source projects are negative interactions such as rudeness, name-calling, stereotyping, andat the more extreme end of the spectrumstalking and outright harassment.

Open source has a reputation for being aggressive, Zlotnick says. We collected, finally, some hard data on that.

About 18 percent of respondents had experienced negative interactions with other open source users. Zlotnick says thats similar to what youd expect to see in other communities. But these interactions dont just affect the people involved in them. Around 50 percent of respondents had witnessed bad behavior in open source, and they said thats often enough to keep them away from a particular project or community.

Creating clear guidelines for behavior, such as a code of conduct, is one important way to address this issue. Women in particular were more likely to contribute to projects that have such codes, the survey found. Nadia Eghbal, who works for GitHubs open source team, says that community leaders should make it a point to call out bad behavior when they see it, to let people know thats not normal or acceptable behavior. Giving people the tools to block or hide problem users instead of having to wait for moderators to step in also helps.

Open source teams can work too on fostering more positive interactionsone of open sources true strengths: Eghbal points out that nearly half respondents had given or received help from a stranger.

See more here:
Diversity in Open Source Is Even Worse Than in Tech Overall - WIRED

The GNU General Public License, or GPL, played a key role in the development of free and open source software. Today, however, many programmers and companies are passing on the GPL in favor of alternative open source licenses. Are they relegating the GPL to the past?

The GPL is designed to ensure that the source code of a program will always be available. It also requires that programmers who make changes to a GPL-licesned program and release that program publicly share the source code of their modifications.

When it originated in the 1980s, the GPL was a huge innovation. It wasn't the first software license that protected source code, but it was the first to do it in a legally sophisticated way.

The GPL also said nothing about preventing programmers from charging money for software. That was important because many other early free software licenses -- such as the one that protected the trn program, and the original license of the Linux kernel -- required that developers not attempt to profit from a program.

By allowing programmers to charge money if they wished yet requiring them to keep source code open, the GPL laid the foundations for the thriving commercial open source channel that exists today.

Along with closely related licenses, like the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and Affero General Public License (AGPL), the GPL became the legal tool that helped major free and open source software projects to thrive in the 1980s and 1990s. It protected most of the utilities that comprised the GNU operating system, including tools that were widely used outside the GNU project, such as GNU compilers.

Linus Torvalds adopted the GPL in the fall of 1991 to protect the Linux kernel, which had been governed for the first few months of its existence by a crude license Torvalds had written himself.

The GPL also protects software like GNOME, a widely used desktop environment for Linux-based computers, and MediaWiki, the software engine that powers Wikipedia. Even Android phones contain a fair amount of GPL-licensed software, particularly because part of the Android codebase is derived from Linux.

Today, three decades after its birth, the GPL is proving much less popular.

While the GPL or closely related licenses continue to govern important GNU utilities and the Linux kernel, the developers of most major open source projects that have emerged in recent years have opted for other licenses.

Hadoop is licensed under an Apache 2.0 license. So is Apache Spark and most of the other big-name big data projects.

Most parts of Docker's software for creating application containers are licensed under Apache and MIT licenses. All of the major container orchestrators -- Swarm, Kubernetes and Mesos Marathon -- are Apache-licensed as well.

The key difference between the GPL and Apache and MIT licenses is that the latter licenses are more liberal. They generally allow programmers or companies to make modifications to an open source program without having to share the source code of the updated version.

There are two main explanations for why the GPL is no longer as popular as it once was.

The need for commercial support

The trend away from the GPL is especially salient among open source platforms that are commercially important. Smaller projects, or those with little commercial promise, are more likely to use the GPL.

This suggests that business calculations are behind the move away from the GPL. Developers (or companies that employ them) who want to benefit from the support and momentum of commercial investment in their open source projects stand a better chance of getting that investment if their code is licensed under a liberal open source license, rather than the GPL.

This doesn't mean the GPL is not good for business. The commercial success of Linux proves that that is not the case. But perceptions may not align with realities in this respect: Developers or employers think the GPL doesn't work for commercial platforms, so they shy away from it.

The desire to be "open," without GPL baggage

Also important is a shift in thinking about open source -- and openness in general -- within the software world. In the GPL's heyday, open source code remained the exception. It was still proving itself.

But today, being "open" is just the thing you're supposed to do. If you want to succeed in the tech world, it's important to cultivate an aura of openness in some way or another.

Some companies are projects do this by making their APIs open, or complying with community standards. They stop short of open-sourcing their code.

But in cases where companies want to commit to fully open source code, licenses like Apache 2 allow them to do so without the political and ideological baggage that is associated with the GPL. They get to call themselves open, but they don't have to handle the perceived constraints imposed by the GPL.

Whatever the reasons behind the change, the GPL's heyday appears to have passed. The GPL is not going anywhere -- there is no reason to think the licensing of projects like Linux will change -- but it is unlikely to play as important a role in the future of free and open source software as it has in the past.

Link:
The Past, Present and Future of the GPL in Open Source Software - The VAR Guy

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The D language, long an underdog among programmers, got a significant boost this past week when its developers received permission to relicense its reference compiler as an open source project.

DMD, the reference compiler for D, has been encumbered by legacy licensing, courtesy of Symantec. The license made it problematic to distribute the compiler in conjunction with other open source software -- for instance, in a Linux distribution -- and often sparked confusion about what it permitted.

All that changed when Symantec finally gave permission to allow DMD to be relicensed under the highly permissive Boost License.

Two other open source D compilers exist, GDC and LDC, but both have typically lagged in terms of their feature support for the language.

DMD's licensing is one likely reason why the D language, originally created as an evolutionary expansion of C/C++, has not enjoyed wider adoption. Most other recently created languages, such as Go and Rust, have their reference implementations available as open source projects.

Supporters of D cite many features that put it in the same class as Rust and Go in terms of convenience and safety: fast compilation times, garbage-collected memory management (with manual memory management also available), and strong interoperation with C/C++. But it stands out thanks to its static introspection functions and code-generation features, which allow compile-time optimizations that would be difficult in other languages.

Freeing up DMD means one fewer obstacle to wider acceptance of D, but not automatically so. D co-creator Andrei Alexandrescu has cited three key obstacles D would need to overcome: How its use of garbage collection by default alienated many C/C++ programmers, its "historical lack of vision," and the fact that it remains minimally used though it's been around for years. Relicensing DMD can address the first of those by allowing a broader base of developers to build more standard-library additions that don't depend exclusively on D's garbage-collected memory management.

But D also faces strong competition from other languages. Much of the potential user base for D may already have made commitments to Rust and Go, and newcomer languages like Nim are seeking their own comfort zones between security, speed, and convenience. Still,D can potentially make a case for itself in the face of those odds, and it has now added one more way to do so.

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Free at last! D language's official compiler is open source - InfoWorld

These are full-featured open source software products, free as in beer and speech that I started to use recently. Vivek Gite picks his best open source software of 2013.

Replicant is entirely free and open source distributions of Android on several devices including both phones and tablets. I have installed it on an older Nexus S. You can install apps from F-Droid store a GPLv2 client app that comes configured with a repository hosting only free as in freedom applications.

This is an open source, cross-platform application to convert videos from and to various formats, including formats suitable for devices such as Android/iOS phones. It is simple and easy to use software to convert almost any video to MP4, WebM (vp8), Ogg Theora format. Miro Video Converter is based on FFMPEG and act as a front end to FFMPEG command line tools.

I was looking for an alternative to Dropbox to run cloud on my own server at home and office. This software is open source software, and it is self hosted. I dont have to trust third party with my data. I found this software easy to install and quite useful. I started to use it for syncing files and other data. I have been using for couple of months and it has been proven reliable alternative to Dropbox. There are clients available for MS-Windows, OS X, Linux, and mobile apps for iOS and Android devices (or simply access data using the ownCloud web frontend).

The FreeBSD jail provides an operating system-level virtualization partition a FreeBSD-based serve into several independent mini-systems. You can do the same with Linux using OpenVZ. Linux Containers (LXC) is a virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux systems. Docker extends LXC. It uses LXC, cgroups, Linux kernel and other parts to automate the deployment of applications inside software containers. It comes with API to runs processes in isolation. With docker I can pack WordPress (or any other app written in Python/Ruby/Php & friends) and its dependencies in a lightweight, portable, self-sufficient container. I can deploy and test such container on any Linux based server.

Adminer is a full-featured database management tool written in PHP. Conversely to phpMyAdmin, it consists of a single file ready to deploy to the target server. Adminer is available for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS SQL and Oracle. I usually install this for clients who are new to PostgreSQL/MySQL. The software acts as a drop-in-replacement for phpMyAdmin with a better user interface, better support for MySQL features, higher performance and more security.

MariaDB is a community-developed fork of the MySQL server. MariaDB is going to be default in many popular Linux distro and open source project. Red Hat will switch the default database in its enterprise distribution, RHEL (including its clones such as CentOS), from MySQL to MariaDB, when version 7 is released in 2014. I started testing MariaDB and found no problems at all. The speed is same or better in some cases.

I wish I discovered RackTables earlier. It is is a datacenter asset management system. With this software one can document hardware assets (such as server, workstations, routers, switches and more), network addresses, space in racks, networks configuration and more:

Apache Cordova is a free and open source framework that allows you to create mobile apps using standardized web APIs. You can create apps that work on iOS, Andriod, BlackBerry, Windows, Ubuntu and other phone based operating systems. You write code once and run on selected mobile platforms with little or no change at all. PhoneGap uses Apache Cordova.

Nmap is an open source security tool for network exploration, security scanning and auditing. ipscan (Angry IP Scanner) is an alternative to nmap command. It is also an open-source and cross-platform network scanner designed to be fast and simple to use. It scans IP addresses and ports as well as has many other features.

Drupal, Typo3, WordPress and many other content management system (CMS)/blogging software dynamically create feature rich content. However, you may not need all the all features and complexity offered by modern CMS based systems. For example, a WordPress based blog like nixCraft requires multiple VMs, CDN for static assets, caching engine such as memcached, PHP, mysql database, comment moderation, and on going updates. A growing trend is to keep your blog simple by avoiding CMS and use static HTML generators that offers the following benefits:

You can setup a open source software such as WordPress, Drupal, ZenCart, and over 100+ other software easily with TurnKey Linux. It is a virtual appliance library that integrates and polishes the very best open source software into ready to use solutions. Each virtual appliance is optimized for ease of use and can be deployed in just a few minutes on bare metal, a virtual machine and in the cloud/in physical server. TurnKey Linux is based on Debian 7.2 with automatic security updates for all packages. It also includes a web management interface, web shell, and simple configuration console. I often use this to deploy development server in the cloud.

DokuWiki is a simple to use and highly versatile open source wiki software that doesnt require a database. Easy to install on Linux or Unix-like operating systems with the following features:

I use this on my laptop to keep notes about various projects.

GNU MediaGoblin is free software, decentralized media publishing platform. You can host and share videos, music, and images using MediaGoblin. It is an alternative to major media-publishing services such as Flickr, deviantArt, YouTube, Soundcloud, etc. It is written in Python and SQL.

Scrollout F1 is easy to use and setup email firewall gateway system. It includes anti-spam and anti-virus protection for Microsoft Exchange, Postfix, Exim, Sendmail, Qmail and others. It runs on Debian and Ubuntu Linux operating systems. This is perfect software for filtering incoming messages and other features are as follows:

Observium is free and open source software written in PHP/MySQL. It collects data from devices using SNMP and presents it via a web interface. It includes support for a wide range of network hardware and operating systems including Cisco, Windows, Linux, HP, Dell, FreeBSD, Juniper, Brocade, Netscaler, NetApp and many more. I use this software along with Nagios to get better understanding of certain devices and technologies. It provides historical and current performance statistics, configuration visualization and syslog capture.

It is a web based invoicing system. It helps me to create quick and nice looking invoices without having to set up too much services on server. All you have to do is install the SimpleInvoices software, enter a biller, a customer details and go creating invoices. You can easily track your finances; send invoices as PDFs and more. It is the best invoicing set up for my independent IT consultancy business.

I sometime use and recommend the following software for MS-Windows/Linux users due to simplicity and ease of use features. Here is the list of the other best and FOSS apps of 2013:

This is a perfect open-source FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) client for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux. It has the following features that new users might find useful:

It is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows. Its main function is the secure file transfer between local and server under your control. Most new MS-Windows user find WinSCP an easier to use as compare to putty and friends.

I give this software to many developers. They can easily setup Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl to deploy and write an application on their own desktop. No need to install virtual machine and Linux server. Just focus on development and skip real server management job to pros.

Many users only use 2% of the features of a program like Microsoft Word. No need to spend money or time on Microsoft Word. I personally use Abiword due to:

LESS extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, mixins, operations and functions. LESS can run on the client-side and server-side or can be compiled into plain CSS.

Cinnamon is a GTK+ based desktop environment and a fork of the GNOME Shell. It was initially developed by Linux Mint. It offers a user interface with the following features that I needed most:

Tmux is terminal multiplexers for Unix-like platforms. tmux offers several advantages over GNU/screen:

It is a simple and straightforward software that offers the following features:

Zentyal is a full-featured Linux server for small and medium businesses that you can set up in less than 30 minutes. It is a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Small Business Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. It is easy to use software. Zentyal is based on Ubuntu and it can be installed either from Ubuntu repositories or from Zentyals own installer.

ack-grep is a grep like tool, optimized for programmers. This tool isnt aimed to search all text files. It is specifically created to search source code trees, not trees of text files. It searches entire trees by default while ignoring Subversion, Git and other VCS directories and other files that arent your source code.

ditaa is a small command-line utility, that can convert diagrams drawn using ascii art, into proper bitmap graphics. I use this tool all the time to draw diagrams and forwarding them via email or chat session.

GNU parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. If you like xargs command, try GNU/parallel utility. It can run command/script/job on all available CPUs or on multiple computers.

luckyBackup is an application for data back-up and synchronization powered by the rsync tool. It is simple to use, fast, safe, reliable and fully customizable backup software. I often set and recommend this too for new Ubuntu/Fedora desktop users to backup their own files.

OpenShot Video Editor is a free and open-source non-linear video editing software package for Linux. I use this tool to create videos for my youtube channel. It is a stable, free, and friendly to use video editor on Linux.

This is my personal FOSS software list and it is not absolutely definitive, so if youve got your own software, share in the comments below. Also dont forget to check out our previous years 15 greatest open source terminal applications of 2012.

[ Happy New Year to all nixCraft visitors. I hope that 2014 proves to be just as awesome for Linux & FOSS enthusiast everywhere. ]

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30 Cool Open Source Software I Discovered in 2013 - nixCraft

Recently, I received a fresh new laptop from Dell. Upon receiving it, I did the traditional installation of Windows from scratch on it to remove a lot of the garbage that is preinstalled on Dells. Then I got really busy installing tons of great software that takes care of pretty much every software need I have. Not only was all of the software free, every piece of it was open source, which means that the code is peer-reviewed; no spyware here!

What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages.

Now, if only there were an open version of The Sims 2, I might go the whole way and switch to Linux

Replaces Internet Explorer If you havent switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better. I could evangelize all day about Firefox, but one things for sure: the first thing I do on any new Windows machine is run Internet Explorer just long enough to download Firefox.

Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: its free, its full featured, its lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If youre not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.

Replaces Microsoft Outlooks calendaring functions Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundations calendaring program. Its extremely easy to use (I figured out everything I needed in a minute or two) and easy to share your calendar with others. I consider a calendaring tool to be essential if youre using a laptop, and this is no different.

Replaces Microsoft Word Want a good word processor but find Microsoft Word too expensive? AbiWord is my favorite replacement for Word. Its lightweight (meaning it runs quickly) and includes pretty much every feature that I use regularly in a word processor, plus it can save files in formats that you can exchange with Word and WordPerfect users, plus open any of their files, too.

Replaces Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint If you want to replace the rest of the Office suite, your best bet is OpenOffice. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and PowerPoint (and workable replacements for Access and other Office elements). In fact, I actually prefer their Excel and PowerPoint replacements to the real thing.

Replaces Norton AntiVirus or McAfee ClamWin is a slick anti-virus software thats quite easy to manage and is unobtrusive while keep your system free of viruses. Thats pretty much all I want from a package, so why pay money for McAfee to keep bugging me all the time?

Replaces AIM, Windows Messenger, etc. This is a very clean instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows (MSN) Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger simultaneously with one program. There are other free packages that do this, but Gaim is stable and clean and simple.

Original but essential From their website, BitTorrent is a peer-assisted, digital content delivery platform that provides the fastest, most efficient means of distributing, discovering, and consuming large, high-quality files on the Web. Our mission is simple: to deliver the content that entertains and informs the digital world. In other words, BitTorrent allows you to download large media files and also use your bandwidth to help others download these files. Search for media files you want and download em.

Replaces Adobe Photoshop This is a version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that does a pretty solid job of imitating Adobe Photoshop a regular user of Photoshop (like me) can adapt to it quite quickly. Its very richly featured and runs quite well in fact, I see no reason to ever go back, even if Photoshop were free.

Replaces LimeWire, BearShare, etc. Sure, LimeWire and BearShare are free, but why not just get the same basic software without all of the spyware? Gnucleus is pretty much identical to those software packages but without all that extra junk that slows down your computer.

Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc. If you get tired of having tons of media players on your computer, get this package that runs pretty much every media type youll run across without breaking a sweat.

Unique but essential Juice lets you effortlessly subscribe to podcasts, organize them, and listen to them at your convenience. In conjunction with PodNova, I find it easier to use Juice to organize podcasts than using iTunes itself.

Unique but essential (for some) If youre interested in recording your own podcast (or just want to make your own voice recordings for whatever reason), Audacity and a microphone are pretty much all you need to get the job done. Im not much for podcasting (lets just say I dont have a radio voice), but I use Audacity for other voice recording purposes.

Unique but essential RSSOwl is one of many open source RSS readers. In other words, it enables you to use one program to keep track of the content of a lot of different blogs; if you read a lot of blogs, its the only way to keep tabs on all of them without devoting hours jumping from site to site. If you have a laptop, its preferable to using sites like Bloglines, but if youre on a desktop, a web-based feed manager might be better.

Replaces WinFTP Many people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers; if you ever have the need to transfer files in such a fashion, FileZilla will do the job slickly and quickly.

Unique but essential Keynote is basically designed specifically for the task of taking notes on a laptop. If you ever find yourself in a meeting or a presentation with your laptop open and want to jot down notes and organize them just a bit, Keynote is unquestionably the program for you. Its not good at quality word processing, but thats not the point. In my professional work, I find myself using Keynote almost as often as any other utility.

Replaces iTunes If youre not already committed to downloaded music from the iTunes Music Store, then MusikCube is the best choice available for a music organizer and player. It organizes your mp3s, makes it really easy and really fast to find them, and allows you to make some incredibly clever smart playlists.

Unique but essential Handbrake enables you to stick a DVD in your DVD drive and have the contents of that film stored to your hard drive in a form that can be read by pretty much any media player. I often use it to put a few movies on my laptop for travel purposes, so I dont have to worry about keeping track of DVDs while on the road.

Replaces mIRC X-Chat is a free IRC client. For those unfamiliar with IRC, its a place for technical people (and, as my wife loves to point out, nerds) to meet and discuss topics in an open environment. I often find it very useful when piecing through difficult technical issues.

Unique but essential KeePass is a program that securely stores and manages the abundance of passwords we all use on a daily basis. I have literally hundreds of usernames and passwords spread out all over the place; KeePass keeps them all for me and keeps them safe.

Unique but essential TrueCrypt enables you to convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device, meaning that you can store personal data on it without worrying about losing it and having personal information get out and about. I use it to keep some of my most personal data off of my laptop and strongly secured, just in case.

Replaces Adobe Acrobat PDFCreator creates a virtual printer on your computer that, if you print a document to it from any program, creates a PDF of that document that can be read on any computer with Acrobat Reader on it. After installing PDFCreator, all you have to do is print like normal and out comes a PDF!

Unique but Essential Freemind is a mind mapping software program. In essence, it enables you to brainstorm and link together ideas quickly, creating maps of concepts similar to what you might do on a whiteboard. I find it incredibly useful when putting together ideas for new posts or planning small projects or assembling the backbone of a writing project.

Replaces Google Earth WorldWind is very similar to Google Earth in that it allows you to browse the globe. While it isnt strong for creating maps (but why not just use Google Maps for that?), it is utterly incredible for viewing three-dimensional landscapes of any place on earth.

Replaces Notepad Notepad2 is a replacement for the traditional Windows Notepad that just adds a few sweet little features: multiple documents; line, word, and character counts; and some highlighting of tags. In fact, Im using Notepad2 as I draft this post (after using Freemind to organize it).

Unique but useful HealthMonitor enables you to keep an eye on the health of your computer. It identifies slowdowns and other system issues quickly and lets you know (for example, it gives a popup if your system memory gets to a certain percentage of fullness, or if your hard drive has only 10 GB free). This can keep you out of trouble and also give you clues to problems your machine might be having.

Unique but useful Sometimes late into a writing session, my wrists get sore from too much repetitive movement. Workrave basically jumps in before this happens and locks down the computer for a while, preventing me from working too much and causing repetitive stress injury. Since Ive started using it, it hasnt significantly hurt my productivity at all and my wrists are thanking me!

Replaces Microsoft Project If you do any project management (or have a need to dip your toes in the water), GanttPV does a brilliant job of managing the task quickly, easily, and freely. If you need to move to MS Project later, you can export from GanttPV to Project, but once you start digging into GanttPV, youll likely have no reason to use Project.

Replaces Microsoft Money or Quicken GnuCash is a slimmed-down version of the bloated Microsoft Money and Quicken packages, but it contains all of the features I want for managing my money. The interfaces are incredibly simple it functions much like a checkbook ledger on your computer but theres a lot of meat hidden throughout the software.

Replaces Quake IV, Halo, etc. After all this downloading, youre going to need to blow off a little steam, and Ive yet to find a more enjoyable free game than this one. Its basically a third person combat game, but the graphics are spectacular and the game is quite engrossing.

If youve downloaded and installed all of these, youve got access to all the productivity software youll likely need, clean and open and best of all free.

A brand-new computer comes with a host of pre-installed software, some of which are only accessible as limited free trials. Fortunately, many of the best open source software are not only able to completely replace their paid counterparts but they also (arguably) perform better since they are peer-reviewed. If youre on the hunt for the best free software, start with our open source software list below:

Replaces Microsoft Office Apache OpenOffice provides word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, a formula editor, and database management applications, all of which generally offer the same functionalities and features as MS Office.

Replaces Internet Explorer A popular alternative to Chrome, more than 30% of web users use Firefox as their browser. Firefox stops annoying popups and has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web more personalized and efficient.

Replaces Internet Explorer Google Chrome isnt an open source software but its a viable alternative to Firefox (if that isnt your thing). Its free, fast, and efficient and comes with an abundance of add-ons so you can customize it to your liking. Theres even an option to open an incognito window, which doesnt save your cache or browser history if prefer to keep things more private at home or in the office.

Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it: its free, its full-featured, its lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If youre not already using a web-based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client.

Replaces Microsoft Calendar Meant to be used with Thunderbird, Lightning enables you to organize your schedule and important events in a calendar thats fully integrated with your email. You can manage and share multiple calendars, create recurring events, add to-do lists, invite friends to events, and subscribe to public calendars, including holidays.

Replaces Adobe Acrobat PDFCreator creates a virtual printer on your computer that, if you print a document to it from any program, creates a PDF readable on any computer with Acrobat Reader installed. It supports many Adobe PDF options, including password protection and 128-bit encryption. All you need to do is print and it creates a PDF!

Useful If you have multiple instant-messaging accounts, use Pidgin to use them all at once. It supports AIM, ICQ, Google Hangouts, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, MXit, Novell, and more.

Replaces Microsoft Project If you do any project management (or need to dip your toes in the water), GanttPV does a brilliant job of managing the task quickly, easily, and freely. If you need to move to MS Project later, you can export from GanttPV to Project, but once you start digging into GanttPV, youll likely have no reason to use Project.

Useful Mind mapping is a key process in many businesses, and this mind mapper does a great job providing an easy-to-use hierarchical editor and other tools to help organize your ideas into one coherent overview.

Unique but essential (for some) VirtualBox is a desktop virtualization software, which functions to separate your physical desktop from your desktop space and applications so you can access it from anywhere. It also makes recovery of lost files much easier since all the components are saved in a data center. VirtualBox comes with impressive processing power so your desktop isnt slowed down.

Replaces Microsoft Windows Notepad Notepad++s minimalist, user-friendly style is pleasant to use and comes with features such as multi-view, multiple tabs for separate documents, word auto completion, zoom functions, and bookmarking. On top of that, their systems minimize carbon dioxide emissions by using less CPU power!

Useful With Greenshot, you can take full or partial screenshots and add text and shapes to it so your colleagues quickly understand what youre visually describing. Greenshot supports several image formats.

Replaces WinFTP Many people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers. FileZilla will do the job slickly and quickly, especially with their simple drag-and-drop functionality. FileZilla is especially efficient for batch transfers.

Replaces Quicken TurboCASH 5 is a small-business accounting package that includes such functions as invoicing, debtors, creditors, VAT accounting, balance sheet and income statements, and reporting. Its accessible to multiple users and companies.

Replaces Microsoft Money or Quicken GnuCash is a slimmed-down version of the bloated Microsoft Money and Quicken packages, but it contains all of the essential features for managing money. The interfaces are incredibly simple it functions much like a checkbook ledger on your computer but theres a lot of meat hidden throughout the software.

Replaces BitTorrent Ares Galaxy is a BitTorrent and chat software program with an easily accessible interface and a built-in audio/video viewer. You can share any types of digital file and publish your them through their own peer-to-peer network.

Replaces BitTorrent eMule is a peer-to-peer file-sharing client that includes robust search features, checks for file corruptions during downloads, and previews of downloads.

Replaces BitTorrent Tribler enables its users to discover and share video, audio, photos, and other files.

Replaces Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the most popular free alternative to Photoshop. It is known for its versatility, as you can use it as a simple Paint program or for more sophisticated capabilities, such as photo retouching, layering image rendering, and format conversion.

Replaces Maya, 3DSMax Blender is a 3D graphics-creation program that enables you to perform animation, modeling, rendering, post-production, real-time interactive 3D, and much more.

Replaces Microsoft Visio Very similar to Visio, you can use Dia to create a wide variety of diagrams, such as flowcharts and relationship charts. You can save your pieces to an XML format and export them to EPS or SVG formats.

Replaces Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw Inkscape is a vector graphics editor that includes features such as shapes, paths, markers, clones, text, gradients, and patterns while supporting functionalities such as layers, node editing, bitmap tracing, and more. You can import JPEG, TIFF, and PNG files and export as PNG or other vector-based formats.

Replaces PageMaker, InDesign, QuarkXPress Scribus, a desktop publishing application, supports many major graphic formats as well as SVG import and export.

Useful VLC is a fast and powerful multimedia player that supports various audio and video formats, including but not limited to MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, and MP3, as well as DVDs and VCDs. It plays almost any file, CD, DVD, webcams, and other devices.

Useful SMPlayer is a free media player with the added ability to play and download YouTube videos. On top of that, if youre the type not to sit and commit to an entire movie, SMPlayer will simply replay where you left off, which is perfect for busy folks.

Unique but essential Handbrake enables you to stick a DVD in your DVD drive and have the contents of that film stored to your hard drive in a form that can be read by pretty much any media player. This is awesome for travel since you can store all your movies in your laptop instead of carrying around DVDs.

Unique but essential (for some) If youre interested in recording your own podcast (or just want to make your own voice recordings for whatever reason), Audacity and a microphone are pretty much all you need to get the job done. Audacity is also very useful for other voice recording purposes.

Useful Media Player Classic plays a wide swath of audio and video formats, including MPEG/MPEG-2/MPEG-4, DivX, Xvid, and CD/VCD/DVD media.

Essential KeePass is a lightweight and intuitive password manager for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and mobile devices. Your passwords are kept safe in an encrypted database, which you can quickly access with a master password.

Replaces BitLocker TrueCrypt enables you to convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device, meaning that you can store personal data on it without worrying about losing it and having personal information get out and about.

Replaces Norton Antivirus You can hardly tell Bitdefender is running, as it works quietly but efficiently. Its excellent at blocking and removing malware as well as protecting your computer from phishing.

Useful HealthMonitor enables you to keep an eye on the health of your computer. It identifies slowdowns and other system issues quickly and lets you know (for example, it gives a popup if your system memory gets to a certain percentage of fullness, or if your hard drive has only 10 GB free). This can keep you out of trouble and also give you clues to problems your machine might be having.

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30 Essential Pieces Of Free (and Open) Software for Windows ...

Answering the question What is open source? used to be a lot simpler than it is today.

Open source began as, and for the most part still is, software created by a community of people who are dedicated to working together in a highly collaborative and evolutionary way.

The most important difference between software created by the open source communities and commercial software sold by vendors is that open source software is published under licenses that ensure that the source code is available to everyone to inspect, change, download, and explore as they wish. This is the essential meaning of open source: the source code--the language in which the software is written and the key to understanding how the software works--can be obtained and improved by anyone with the right skills.

More precise definitions extend this basic concept by adding provisions concerning derivative works, the rights to use the software for any purpose, the rights of the original author, and prohibitions against discrimination.

For those new to the idea of open source or unfamiliar with the way software gets developed, here's how it works most of the time:

One or more developers--meaning people who have the skills to create software--get an idea about creating software to solve a problem.

The developers start writing code to create a solution. This is frequently called "scratching an itch."

The developers put this code where other developers can find out about it, download it, and play with it. There are many locations, such as SourceForge.com, where people post their projects.

Usually the source code is published under one of several popular open source licenses that ensure that the source code and any derivative works remain open source.

Through an informal process of sharing ideas, fiddling with each others' code, and trial and error, the software gets better and better, sometimes changing direction to solve new problems as new people discover the software.

At some point, the software gets finished or doesn't. It becomes popular, stays obscure, or fades away. Programs like Linux and Apache have had thousands of contributors. Other projects have been created by one or two people.

As time goes on, developers come and go, and projects become active or dormant.

A huge amount of amazing software has been created through this loose process. While much of open source development has focused on creating tools for software developers, an increasing amount of effort is being put into creating programs to solve less technical problems like publishing blogs or keeping track of skydiving activity.

While this explanation is sufficient for most purposes, such a simple answer is really no longer accurate. The right answer today depends on your perspective. To really understand the question What is open source? in a complete and useful way, we must know who is asking the question. For example, if we asked Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, or Bill Gates, we might get very different answers. Here's what open source means to a variety of different groups.

For users of software who have the skills to download and install software, open source means choice and freedom.

The choice comes from the huge amount of programs available. Some programs like Firefox (the smoking-hot browser from Mozilla.org) or OpenOffice.org (a suite of word processing, spreadsheet, and related programs) can be downloaded and used by just about anybody. Other open source projects such as Babeldoc or Axkit are mostly useful for software developers.

None of this open source software costs money. Some programs charge subscriptions for support, updates, documentation, or premium versions, but most of those are usable without paying a fee.

The freedom comes from the fact that the source code is available. If you want to change something, then you can, if you have the right skills. Only a handful of the people who download and use open source ever actually change it. Most use it as intended, but they have the freedom to modify it if they want.

For developers and engineers, open source has many additional meanings. To those who found a successful project, open source can mean fame, recognition, and sometimes even money from consulting or other sources.

Other developers see in open source a masterful software development methodology founded on the virtues of collaboration, incremental evolution, and working code.

For most developers, open source is a both a source of tools to help solve problems and a constant source of exciting new things to learn.

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What Is Open Source - O'Reilly Media - ONLamp.com

Providing Actionable Insight at Massive Scale

Telemetry and metrics play a critical role in the operations of any company, and at more than a billion metrics per minute flowing into Atlas, our time-series telemetry platform, they play a critical role at Netflix. However, Operational Insight is considered a higher-order family of products at Netflix, including the ability to understand the current components of our cloud ecosystem via Edda, and the easy integration of Java application code with Atlas via the Spectator library.

Effective performance instrumentation allows engineers to drill quickly on a massive volume of metrics, making critical decisions quickly and efficiently. Vector exposes high-resolution host-level metrics with minimal overhead.

Outside of the operational domain, cost management and visibility into where our resources are used in the cloud is a multi-million question to be answered; we've built Ice as a way to expose ongoing cost and and cloud utilization trends to engineers so they can have a better understanding of the footprint of their applications in our environment.

Finally to validate reliability, we have the Simian Army which tests our instances for random failures.

See original here:
Netflix Open Source Software Center

For third party technology that you receive from Oracle in binary form which is licensed under an open source license that gives you the right to receive the source code for that binary, you can obtain a copy of the applicable source code from this page. If the source code for the technology was not provided to you with the binary, you can also receive a copy of the source code on physical media by submitting a written request to:

Oracle America, Inc. Attn: Associate General Counsel Development and Engineering Legal 500 Oracle Parkway, 10th Floor Redwood Shores, CA 94065

Or, you may send an email to Oracle using this form. Your request should include:

We may charge you a fee to cover the cost of physical media and processing. Your request must be sent (i) within three (3) years of the date you received the Oracle product that included the component or binary file(s) that are the subject of your request, or (ii) in the case of code licensed under the GPL v3, for as long as Oracle offers spare parts or customer support for that product model.

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Source Code for Open Source Software Components

edit Some major free and open source software projects

Main Page > Open collaborative design > Free and open-source software > Examples of free and open-source software

This page lists good quality free and open-source software that anyone can download at no cost and use or modify freely. Plenty more quality open-source software exists this is just an introductory sample. Most of these programs are cross-platform, meaning they can be installed on MS Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

The software below is not freeware or shareware, which are both significantly different to open source.

See more open-source CMS software here