Category Archives: Open Source Software

How open source delivers for government

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Amid the well-deserved hype around the impact of cloud technology and big data analytics, it is possible that casual industry watchers may have missed the real story behind the recent wave of IT re-architecting.

Enabling many of these recent, powerful trends is a newly validated embrace of open source software technology. The movement to OSS solutions is empowering system designers and solution architects to re-examine methodologies that evolved out of the legacy proprietary, closed source software license model. Put simply, OSS allows developers of IT systems to create better results and cut costs.

Enterprise IT leaders in business and government have taken notice of the benefits of OSS. For example, the recently launched U.S. Digital Service published a Digital Services Playbook that urges agencies to "consider open source software solutions at all layers of the stack." The General Services Administration extended this thinking in the recently introduced Open Source First policy as part of its effort to modernize its organization, processes and technologies. Defense policy makers have gone further, directing those within the Department of Defense to identify barriers to the effective use of OSS within the DoD so that the military can continue to increase those benefits.

Better Outcomes

One of the key drivers of OSS adoption has been cost. But while the savings can be dramatic, cost reduction is not the whole story. OSS also creates the possibility of more reliable, more trustable, more functionally appropriate, and just plain better solutions.

Historically, companies needed to factor in the cost of closed source software at peak license distribution even if they routinely needed a smaller number of licenses. On top of that were support fees tied to the peak distribution. Solution designers had an incentive to constrain distribution of software even if the use case was under-served.

This is clearly not so in an open source world. Both the solution architect and budget manager need only to consider the support costs, not licensing costs; and outside vendor support is generally more cost effective than internal capability. In the case of a distributed database solution, the difference in cost can really add up.

A simple example of how the move toward OSS can improve IT architecture is by thinking about database backups. In the legacy regime of licensed closed source software, each license of an incremental database came with a cost -- often a steep cost. In the world of OSS, enterprise users are able to maintain replicas of databases as backups with no incremental license cost. The more copies of the database software you have, the more options you have when things go wrong. The more copies of the data management or analytics software you have, the more choices you have to efficiently move your data around.

Security and Reliability

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How open source delivers for government

Embedded Engineers: 10 Skills You Need Now

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From getting familiar with open source software to developing apps, industry professionals are urging embedded engineers to get out of their comfort zone and acquire new skills to stay relevant.

Back in the early days of embedded in the 1980s, the guy (and it was mostly guys then) who designed the mixed signal circuits, the guy who connected the microcontroller, the guy who wrote a bunch of low-level assembly code, and the guy who got the prototype out the doorwell, it was all the same guy.

One engineer pretty much did it all.

Then, as embedded systems became bigger and more complexmillions of lines of code now ship with devices--embedded skill sets became partitioned by discipline: hardware developer, firmware developer, software developer.

In many big companies that is still the case. But the pendulum appears to be swinging back, as more and more companies are consolidating engineering roles, looking for developers who are fluent in both hardware and software, and trying to accomplish more with less. Certainly a bigger percent of engineers say they work on both hardware software, as compared to the group that only does one or the other.

Given that its not possible to keep up with everything embedded, how do you make sure that the new skills you acquire are the most relevant?

EE Times turned to nine embedded professionals and a recruiter and asked them to tell us what they think are the most important things engineers should learn now.

Though opinions differed on the specific skills that are most important, they all agreed on one thing all engineers should do: Never stop learning.

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Embedded Engineers: 10 Skills You Need Now

Infrastructure that Matters – IBM Systems Sean Flanagan 1Q’2015 – Video

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Infrastructure that Matters - IBM Systems Sean Flanagan 1Q #39;2015
If you #39;re using open source software solutions, you probably running on some form of Linux. IBM Power Systems provide an outstanding infrastructure for open source solutions. IBM #39;s Flash...

By: IBMSystemsEurope

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Infrastructure that Matters - IBM Systems Sean Flanagan 1Q'2015 - Video

Google Open Source Blog

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The time has finally come to announce the Google Code-in 2014 Finalists and Grand Prize Winners. With 658 students completing a whopping 3,236 tasks in the seven week open source contest, this was the largest and most exciting contest to date. Students wrote code, added features to software, fixed bugs, created documentation, designed logos, and found fun new ways to introduce other students to open source software development. The quality of the work the teens submitted was as inspiring as it was impressive.

A big congratulations to all of the students who participated in this years contest! We hope you enjoyed learning more about the open source organizations you worked with and will continue contributing to open source in the years to come.

The 24 Grand Prize Winners are listed below alphabetically by first name with their home country and the organization they worked with during the Google Code-in 2014 contest.

Aleksandar Ivanov, Bulgaria - Mifos Initiative

Anurag Sharma, India - Sahana Software Foundation

Chaitya Shah, United States - OpenMRS

Danny Wu, Australia - Wikimedia Foundation

Dariel Kremov, Bulgaria - Copyleft Games Group

Getulio Sanchez, Paraguay - Drupal

Ignacio Rodrguez, Uruguay - Sugar Labs

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Google Open Source Blog

Balancing Diversity and Creativity in the World of FOSS

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The Linux community is filled with friction and diversity. One of the advantages of open source software is the diversity that leads to innovative approaches to improve the computing environment.

But can the diversity go too far? Is it a defining characteristic that kills programming creativity?

The news cycle surrounding open source technology is fed by ongoing arguments about PulseAudio versus ALSA Sound in one Linux distro or another. Hotly debated discussions ensue about the merits of Systemd replacing init. Some disputes lead to key developers forking a project. Others force particular project developers or contributors to quit.

"I don't think you can have too much diversity of opinion. It only makes the product better. Having more people explaining what they need and what something should do always leads to good conversation. In a monoculture of people always in agreement, yes things can move quickly, but what if they are moving in the wrong direction?" Todd Ross Nienkerk, Managing partner at Web design and development firm Four Kitchens, told LinuxInsider.

Some open source contributors caught in the fray of diversity may not welcome the idea of never having too much diversity of opinion. Take, for example, an experience within the Nools community.

C2FO open sourced Nools, which is a JavaScript rules engine that runs on Node.js. Node.js is the open source JavaScript engine.

The Node.js community recently lost its longtime project leader Isaac Schuleter, who worked for Joyent, the company that sponsors and maintains Node.js's development. He is creating his own Node.js-related product under a company he started called NPM Inc. C2FO has no connection to Joyent.

"We have seen that a lot in the JavaScript community with dissension over the way syntax is done. You see a lot of this in the Github community where there are flame wars over which way is better to do something," Doug Martin, Principal Engineer at C2FO, told LinuxInsider.

Dissension causes a lot of stress in the community. In the end people look at the coding skills as an art. That can deter people from trying to contribute to your product, he explained.

"There can be fear that a contribution can be rejected over something as silly as a syntax. There can be too much emphases over a discussion on something that was trivial to begin with," he said.

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Balancing Diversity and Creativity in the World of FOSS

Open Source at the Front of the Class

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Open source is sitting at the head of the class in a growing number of schools with all levels of education. Its no-cost starting point and use-it-your-way flexibility gives open source technology an advantage over proprietary solutions with its no-license and no-fee lesson plan.

Don't think so? LinuxInsider spoke with several technology administrators around the country who gave their open source experiences a solid A+.

Penn Manor School District in Pennsylvania gives each student a laptop powered with Linux and configured with root access. The experiment provides a soup-to-nuts education where students handle the laptops from box to classroom.

The school system created a student-run computer help desk, which enabled the students to work together to unbox, label and inventory the laptops.

Oakland Unified School District in California is another of many schools making a big move into instructional technology using open source. In that school district open source is widespread. The students participate in the active programmers community and get to see much of the process first hand.

"There is a big push in the district to get students technologically literate. Open source software is ideal for meeting our goal of differentiating instruction for each student," Tierre Messa, dean at Oakland Unified School District and a technology teacher, told LinuxInsider.

For many education outlets looking to bring a fresh approach to technology, open source is an easy selling point. In fact, for many open source adopters at schools, open source technology sells itself.

Todd Ross Nienkerk, managing partner of Four Kitchens Web Design, uses open source software almost exclusively in designing systems for education users. He sees an increasing adoption of open source technologies in that market.

"We usually do not have to sell people on using open source. By the time they contact us, they already decided on using open source," Nienkerk told LinuxInsider.

His company addresses the use of open source in three key areas: multi-media publishing, non-profit and education. The company works with education reform groups in elementary and high school education. It also consults on web technology issues at major universities.

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Open Source at the Front of the Class