Category Archives: Open Source Software

Systemd Dev Slams FOSS Culture

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The open source community is "quite a sick place to be in," Red Hat engineer and Systemd developer Lennart Poettering said Monday in a post on Google+.

"The open source community is full of [assh*les], and I probably more than most others am one of their most favorite targets," Poettering added. "I get hate mail for hacking on open source. People have started multiple 'petitions' .... asking me to stop working. Recently, people started collecting Bitcoins to hire a hitman for me (this really happened!)."

Linux creator Linus Torvalds himself gets a significant share of Poettering's blame, but in general, "the Linux community is dominated by western, white, straight, males in their 30s and 40s these days," he wrote. "I perfectly fit in that pattern, and the rubbish they pour over me is awful. I can only imagine that it is much worse for members of minorities, or people from different cultural backgrounds."

Bottom line, though, is that "open source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this," he concluded. "I have no intentions to ever talk about this again on a public forum."

Open source communities are "at their best when diverse opinions come together to drive innovation and achieve common goals," Red Hat spokesperson Stephanie Wonderlick told LinuxInsider.

"While community members may engage in healthy, sometimes spirited dialogue, it is essential that all community members are treated with respect," she added. "Hateful or abusive behavior is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated in any community."

Poettering did not respond to our request for further details.

"Poettering makes some good points, and they're not new -- I'm always a little surprised that civility is still controversial," Linux guru Carla Schroder told LinuxInsider. "I don't blame him for being upset, because he has been the target of some seriously twisted and vicious attacks."

The world of free and open source software is "far from being a meritocracy; it is as political and personality-driven as any other human endeavor," Schroder said.

As for fixing the problem, "it's futile to hope that Linus or anyone else will change their management styles; it would be nice if having rhino hide were not the No. 1 requirement to become a contributor in so many Linux projects," she added. "You don't attract and keep contributors by being abusive, a simple truth that still escapes many."

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Systemd Dev Slams FOSS Culture

Your new favorite NFV initiative: OPNFV

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ITEM: A collective of telecoms operators and vendors (mainly the latter) has banded together with the Linux Foundation to develop an open-source platform to speed up development of NFV.

Its called the Open Platform for NFV Project (OPNFV), it's billed as a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project,and it aims todevelop a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform that operators and vendors can use to ensure consistency and interoperability between various open source components.

According to a statement from the group, an open platform that provides continuous testing for carrier-grade service performance is essential for telecoms players to get the most out of network virtualization.

To its credit, OPNFV realizes its not working in a vacuum, and is taking a collaborative approach with other NFV-related groups:

Because multiple open source NFV building blocks already exist, OPNFV will work with upstream projects to coordinate continuous integration and testing while filling development gaps.

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While not developing standards, OPNFV will work closely with ETSIs NFV ISG, among others, to drive consistent implementation of standards for an open NFV reference platform. When open source software development is aligned with standards development, it can root out issues early, identify resolutions and become the de facto codebase, resulting in a far more economical approach to platform development.

It also has the blessing of OpenDaylight and OpenStack, both of which will collaborate with OPNFV.

OPNFV says it will license new components under the Apache License Version 2.0 and will work within the licensing requirements of upstream projects in order to contribute code back to these projects. A Board of Directors and Technical Steering Committee (TSC) will govern the initiative.

The group says its initial scope will focus on building "NFV infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtualized Infrastructure Management (VIM) leveraging existing open source components where possible.

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Your new favorite NFV initiative: OPNFV

Using Open Source Software in Business: The Changing Landscape of Open Source Licenses – Video

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Using Open Source Software in Business: The Changing Landscape of Open Source Licenses
Seminar on Business Approach to Intellectual Property for IT, Electronics and Telecom Industries Using Open Source Software in Business: The Changing Landsca...

By: BananaIP Counsels

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Using Open Source Software in Business: The Changing Landscape of Open Source Licenses - Video

Red Hat to move away from Linux brand dependence

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While Linux remains US open source technology provider Red Hat's leading solution, the company aims to move away from being associated solely as a provider of the operating system.

"Linux remains our flagship product. But many people still see us simply as a Linux vendor, although we're much more than that. Today we stand as an end-to-end player of technology products and services based on open source," Paulo Bonucci, Red Hat VP for Latin America, told BNamericas.

Bonucci has been head of Red Hat operations in Latin America for the past 12 months. During this period, he has been working to boost awareness of Red Hat across the region and one of the ways of doing so was through the Red Hat Forums.

The forums consist of roadshow conferences to promote the company's solutions with clients and partners in key Red Hat LatAm markets, but also to discuss business strategies and technology trends.

The 2014 Brazilian edition of the event took place last week in So Paulo, after editions in Santiago and Buenos Aires.

FROM SOFTWARE TO CLOUD

Currently a leader in the open source software segment for enterprises, Red Hat also aims to become a significant corporate cloud player, through the offer of the OpenShift open hybrid platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and, principally, the open source infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) OpenStack.

"With OpenStack, we have a positioning infrastructure for those who want to operate in cloud structures," Bonucci said.

Red Hat is not alone in this venture. In early September, the company announced with Cisco an integrated infrastructure for cloud deployments based on OpenStack. Previosuly, Red Hat did the same for the telecom segment with Nokia.

In Latin America, Bonucci sees Brazil and Argentina "one step ahead" of others in the implementation of open source cloud applications, followed by Chile and some Caribbean islands. Mexico, in turn, has been "more conservative than other regions regarding the adoption of these new technologies," he said.

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Red Hat to move away from Linux brand dependence