Data management is inherently tricky, but when it involves robots in space-communicating via a low-bandwidth intermittent link#8212;it’s trickier. NASA is leveraging Data Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems to help it solve that problem as part of its Human Exploration Telerobotics project. …read more
Tag Archives: Open Source
Baidu Turns to Open Source to Power Part of Its Empire
WIRED: The latest to turn to open source is Baidu, the fifth most popular website in the world.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Today
Apache OpenOffice 4 is here
By finid Apache OpenOffice 4.0 has been released. This is the first major milestone release since the Free and Open Source software Office suite was donated to the Apache Software Foundation by Oracle. It is…
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at LinuxBSDos
Philip Ballew: CLS WRAP-UP!
CLS has been a great success. It is clear that the people such as myself who were able to attend have all been able to grow our community knowledge together in a way that will be evident to the greater Open Source community. One of my favorite sessions I was able to attend was called “engaging volunteer communities” and here I will be able to use this knowledge and move it to be useful to the Ubuntu Community as a whole. We as a greater open source community have benefited greatly here. Now we will move into the week as OSCON approaches. It is going to be a great week and I look forward to all the people I will meet.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu
Open Source Software: The Hidden Cost of Free
Recently, Michael Skok wrote that “open source is eating the software world.” As general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, Skok should know. He’s witnessed the power of open source as an entrepreneur and VC. And he’s seen the positive, long-term adoption trends revealed by the annual “Future of Open Source” survey sponsored by his firm and others. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Review: LyX is an advanced but easy-to-use document processor based on LaTeX typesetting
When one thinks of document editors, it’s usually Microsoft Word and Google Docs that come to mind. But in the world of word processors there are marquee names, and then there are some worthies not yet in the limelight. Advanced cross-platform document processor LyX has its merits. LyX is free and Open Source. LyX’s workflow is something of an adjustment from Microsoft Word, but learning it can pay off. The results are similar to professional typesetting.
Document processors are usually WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). LyX is WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean), though the frontend does not differ much from any other document editor. The way LyX controls the layout of the document lies in the background, where it uses powerful typesetting markup language LaTeX.
The idea is to separate the content from its presentation. Precise control over layout is a must for academic and scientific authoring. This is where LyX comes into its own. LaTeX is complicated. LyX is the friendly GUI. The program handles the final presentation, leaving the writer with only the business of writing the content. The end result is a more attractive and consistent document.
LyX is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, with unofficial ports for OS/2 and Haiku. For a fresh installation on Windows, opt for the 200MB bundle, which is fully functional and includes the complete LaTeX distribution (MiKTeX) and a bibliography manager. A 35MB update installation is available for older versions of LyX with LaTeX already installed on the system.
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Xen Orchestra: a Web interface for Xen Cloud Platform
Xen Blog: Olivier Lambert describes the recently rebooted Xen Orchestra project, an effort to bring a simple, scalable, web-based Open Source interface to the Xen Cloud Platform.
Mozilla CEO Kovacs On the Way Out
InternetNews: From the ‘Too Busy for Open Source‘ files
Lumesis Names Vincent Aubrun CTO & VP of Engineering
By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Lumesis Names Vincent Aubrun CTO & VP of Engineering
Addition of Veteran Technology Professional to Executive Team and Expansion of Sales & Marketing Supports Accelerating Growth
STAMFORD, Conn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Lumesis, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cloud-based financial services technology firm for the Municipal Fixed Income Marketplace, today announced the appointment of Vincent Aubrun as Chief Technology Officer and VP of Engineering. In this newly created position, Aubrun will lead all technology initiatives at Lumesis to deliver increasingly powerful and comprehensive software solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of its clients. In addition, Lumesis has significantly increased its Sales & Marketing team as the firm’s growth accelerates.
“The expansion of our Executive Team to include someone with Vincent’s knowledge and skills highlights the success of our DIVER platform and our vision for the future,” said Tim Stevens, co-founder and President at Lumesis. “Vincent’s rich experience will add to our ability to provide innovative solutions to the asset managers, insurance companies, banks, mutual funds, broker dealers and other buy and sell-side institutions that we serve. Vincent brings more than 25 years of expertise in leading application and infrastructure architecture, software development, and systems integration of open source and proprietary technologies. His experience is ideal to help drive our growth strategy and platform development efforts. As Lumesis continues to enhance and expand our product offerings and increase our client base, it is critical to have the right expertise and leadership in place to drive our technology forward.”
“I am excited to join Lumesis in this phase of the company’s growth and evolution,” said Aubrun. “Lumesis presents an incredible opportunity for the muni-bond marketplace, bringing together a vast amount of data and multiple tools to create a powerful and scalable platform. This set of solutions dramatically improves the analysis and communication of risks and opportunities for everyone in the market. I look forward to building on Lumesis’ success by leveraging leading-edge developments in software technology and seamlessly integrating our solutions with those of our clients.”
Prior to joining Lumesis, Aubrun was the CTO of Calypso Technology where he led the transformation of the core product technology and architecture leveraging Open Source solutions to deliver scalability, multi-tenancy and Web interface. He also created a SaaS offering based on the Calypso product. As CTO of Misys Treasury and Capital Markets, Aubrun set technology and architecture strategy for
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Proof the Force is with Open Source: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy are now GPLv2
ShowMeSciFi: The whole point of Open Source software is that code is free and open and there is no lockin.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Today
How to Install Asterisk 11 in RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Ubuntu/Debian/Linux Mint
TecMint.com: Asterisk is an Open Source software PBX (Private Branch Exchange), developed by Mark Specer of Digium.
Benefits of co-existing open source & commercial software
Authors: Tuukka Turunen (Digia), Mirko Boehm (KDE e.V.)
[This article was initially published at embedded.com. It is part of the “Companies are Community” series.]
In the world of software development the many debates about the benefits of open source versus commercial software continue, with developers, software manufacturers, users and purchasers all putting forward differing opinions and, sometimes, protecting vested interests.
However, as with most things in life, the argument is not black or white but has many shades of grey. Different models and arrangements mean that open source software may be available without license cost or as part of a larger commercial framework offering with a separate licensing scheme.
But the two approaches are not mutually exclusive – in many cases not only can commercial and open source offerings comfortably co-exist, but they actually strengthen both the product offering and the community to which the system designer can turn for support.
Growth of Open Source
Since its inception and promotion under the banner of the ‘free software movement’ in the 1980s the use of open source software (the more corporate-friendly term by which it became known in the 1990s) has grown rapidly.
Typically covered by licensing arrangements that permit the inspection, modification, improvement and distribution of the source code, open source software (OSS) can now be found in applications ranging from industrial machines to medical equipment and from consumer electronics to defense systems.
Among the various benefits stated for using OSS are cost (it is typically available for free), flexibility of deployment and lack of reliance on a single vendor.
Counter points from the proprietary community also focus on cost (one argument being that the need for organizations to invest in technical expertise and/or long-term technical support mean that deploying an OSS is rarely free).
Without a commercial development and support effort, an organization might end up maintaining the whole OSS product itself, which could be more expensive than a proprietary approach in the long term. Lack of documentation and copyright and trademark protection risks of using open software are also regularly raised.
However, for most of the exponents of OSS, by far the largest advantage is the support of (often passionate) communities whose aim is to work together to continually improve the quality, performance, reliability and flexibility of their chosen product.
These communities not only work as technical consultants for the software, they also provide code contributions, are vocal ambassadors for the brand and educate valuable young talent to create the product and new technology in general.
Our experience is that commercial companies and open source developers can form highly beneficial, symbiotic relationships that enable users to have the best of both worlds, provided that both sides are committed to a long term relationship, and are open about their goals.
Companies can be contributors to open source software projects, just like volunteers, but their contributions are usually of a different kind. The contributions needed by the projects can generally be categorized into time, money and expertise.
It is easier for companies to contribute financially, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE
Open Source ownCloud Gains Key Features with New Release
The VAR Guy: From usability tweaks to security enhancements, the tool is now in a stronger position than ever to compete with rivals such as Dropbox in the very tight file-syncing niche.
NHS Lothian Tech Managers' Ignorance to be Saved by NHS Hack Scotland
KDE Project:
There’s been chat that my NHS Hack Scotland post implies there’s no
point in going to the event, that in light of the NHS Lothian FOI request anything created at the weekend has no chance of being used in the NHS. I wouldn’t be attending (and judging!) if that were true!
The tide of opinion on Free Software in public services in Scotland is turning for the better. In the Scottish
Government’s Digital Strategy they talk about ensuring that “the public sector has an understanding of the advantages of open source material” – there’s a review going on at the moment to turn that into reality. Some organisations might take longer than others to get to this understanding, – in an ideal world they’d all wake up and realise
that Free Software is awesome and fits perfectly with public services, but at the moment even baby steps are progress.
NHS Hack Scotland is at least partially about raising the profile of Open Source software in the NHS, about showing the great things the Open Source community can produce and that it’s not something to be scared of. If it’s a success it means medics and managers will be going back to their health boards all over Scotland and making a noise about the great stuff they made and the friendly, creative people they made it with.
NHS Lothian might not have an Open Source policy but ignorance doesn’t mean prohibition, they run plenty copies of Firefox. Now’s the perfect time for them (and other health boards) to get a little push from staff that have seen the light.
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE
I Agree with Canonical
KDE Project:
Really I do, dunno why some people think I unfairly critisise them. They want to fix bug number 1, “Microsoft has a majority market share”. The obvious way to do that was with the existing community made desktop software but after many years that still had minimal traction. Actually lots of nice rollouts around the world in educational institutions, every region/nation in Spain made their own Ubuntu derivative and of course Kubuntu has had the world’s biggest Linux desktop rollout in Brazil. But nothing to get it directly into the hands of consumers. Dell did a half hearted attempt to pre-load Ubuntu on laptops but somehow it never went very far.
In the mean time Apple did fix Bug No 1 by using shiny design and new form factors. There’s some Free Software in Apple’s catalogue including a web browser engine from KDE but it’s otherwise more closed than Microsoft. Netbooks came and went and Linux to the consumer didn’t have much success there.
Then Google started fixing Bug No 1 with Android and maybe even Chromebook will go somewhere. They’re a lot more Free Sofware but also not openly community developed.
So it’s entirely sensible for Canonical to reason that community developed consumer software isn’t going to fix Bug No 1 any time soon and want to start looking at models which do. Hiring a design team to create their own software is more Free Software than Apple and more Open Source then Google. I wish Ubuntu (Unity) luck in taking over the world and fixing Bug No 1.
But people who like to work on a community driven project will be a bit put off by that which is why we’ve seen some high profile departures recently from Ubuntu. But as I say there are many parts of Ubuntu which are very community driven so I’m hanging around to be part of that community. Come and join us.
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE
EVault Joins OpenStack Community
By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
EVault Joins OpenStack Community
Cloud-Connected Backup and Recovery Leader to Collaborate in the Development of Open Source Standards-Based Cloud Solutions
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)– EVault, Inc., a Seagate Company (NAS: STX) , today announced it is joining the OpenStack community, a global community of technologists, developers, researchers, corporations and cloud computing experts delivering a massively scalable cloud operating system. EVault will be both contributing to ongoing OpenStack development, and working to add OpenStack support to its cloud storage services.
EVault provides onsite, cloud and cloud-connected data protection solutions to help organizations protect distributed environments, supported by a secure, reliable cloud storage infrastructure and backed by the highest quality customer service. EVault has been a leader in the industry’s move to hybrid storage models, with a uniquely integrated ecosystem of EVault storage software, SaaS, managed services and appliances that help ensure customers maintain business continuity.
“EVault is proud to have been a key contributor to cloud business adoption, having first introduced cloud backup solutions 15 years ago. EVault is joining the OpenStack community of software developers collaborating on this scalable open source cloud management platform,” said George Hoenig, vice president, Open Storage, EVault. “EVault’s parent company, Seagate, announced its commitment to working with the Open Source community on cloud-optimized hardware and software systems. EVault plans to build upon OpenStack, and to work closely with Seagate to design and deliver reliable, cost-effective, and simple to use cloud storage services.”
EVault intends to focus its contributions around OpenStack Swift. Swift is a highly available, distributed object store that organizations can use to store large amounts of data efficiently, safely, and inexpensively. “Swift’s fully distributed architecture allows for extreme scalability. Its redundant and self-healing properties provide for enterprise class durability while simultaneously keeping storage management costs to a minimum,” Hoenig added.
About EVault
More than 38,000 companies rely on EVault cloud-connected backup and recovery services. Delivered by a team of data recovery experts and using the very best cloud-connected technology, EVault backup solutions seamlessly integrate on-premises and online backup data protection for fast, local data access and ensured cloud disaster recovery. Optimized for distributed environments and backed by an ironclad cloud, EVault technology also powers the offerings of cloud services providers, data centers, telcos, ISVs, and many …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Harris Corporation Authorized to Connect Veterans Affairs and DoD Electronic Health Record Systems
By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Harris Corporation Authorized to Connect Veterans Affairs and DoD Electronic Health Record Systems
Highlights:
- Significant Authority to Operate certification validates solution’s security and reliability.
- Initial deployment to begin at Texas and Virginia DoD medical centers.
- Program will enhance continuity of care for military personnel returning from active duty.
MELBOURNE, Fla. & WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Harris Corporation (NYS: HRS) , an international communications and information technology company, has been authorized to deploy a solution that enables the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) to share electronic health records. The authorization represents a major milestone in one of the world’s most ambitious efforts to integrate health information, involving two major healthcare systems that are pioneers in electronic medical record keeping.
Harris completed the Critical Design Review process and achieved Authorization to Operate for the initial deployment of the Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) suite that will support information sharing between the VA and the DoD. The SOA will enable new types of clinical collaboration and integration of legacy data in standard interfaces that help users to exchange information in real time, without needing to change source data or displays.
The Authorization to Operate enables Harris to deploy the solution in facilities in San Antonio, Texas and Hampton Roads, Virginia. The rollout approach helps to optimize the capability before deploying it more broadly to VA and DoD facilities worldwide.
This authorization milestone is part of a multi-year, $80 million healthcare integration contract awarded to Harris in March 2012. The contract helps the VA and DoD streamline administration and record keeping, exchange health information, contain costs, track and manage care and enhance outcomes for millions of active duty and retired military personnel and their families.
The VA and DoD have a complex suite of healthcare information systems, as well as two hundred local data centers. The SOA Suite provides a single solution for the two agencies. It will integrate existing and future systems, applications and medical data utilizing state-of-art Commercial Off-the-Shelf and Open Source technologies to provide secure, reliable, and high-performance implementation for health record data exchange across the DoD and VA healthcare systems.
“The capability Harris provides to the VA …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Defensive Publications at Embedded World 2013
Embedded World has started today in Nürnberg, Germany. I am here with Open Invention Network to spread the idea of defensive publications and OIN’s non-aggression community of companies in the Open Source sphere. Highly innovative companies present here, and many of them face the same dilemma — if the innovators decide not to patent their inventions, they run the risk that another party applies for a patent of the same invention later. The decision not to patent could be for ethical reasons because they understand that software patents are harmful, or for business or many other reasons. The problem stays the same, there is a threat that patents are awarded even though similar solutions already existed.
There are many software patents out there that experts consider obvious, not inventive or trivial. All of those three are reasons that the patent should have been rejected. Especially important for complex but non-inventive ones, the patent examiner did not discover relevant prior art when scrutinising the patent application. The state of the art was not documented and accessible in a way that supported a good decision. Defensive publications are one answer to this problem. They offer a cheap and fast way to document inventions. Also, defensive publications are available for areas that legally should not be patentable, like software as such.
Through linuxdefenders.org, companies and research institutions, but also individual developers can submit defensive publications relevant to Linux and Open Source in general. Linux Defenders is backed by Open Invention Network on it’s mission to prevent bad software patents. We want to support developers and inventors to document their ideas as explicit prior art. Our goal is to ensure freedom to operate for the innovators in Open Source. If you are interested, worried about your invention or have any questions, you can find Armijn Hemel and me in hall 5, booth 341. Or ping me on Twitter @mirkoboehm.
Filed under: 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE
vim modelines in git config
I’m working on different Open Source projects and most of them have different coding style guidelines. Mostly spaces or tabs or different tabwidth. The easiest thing would be to store these information in the git config of the project. So here is a easy and secure way to have modelines in the git config.
So first I set the modelines (here for the Samba project):
git config --add vim.modeline "tabstop=8 shiftwidth=8 noexpandtab cindent"
Then edit your ~/.vimrc and add the following code.
" Support for vim modeline in git config.
let git_config_modeline = system("git config --get vim.modeline")
if strlen(git_config_modeline)
exe "set" git_config_modeline
endif
The modeline you defined in your git config will be appended to the :set command of vim. This way only set commands are supported. It will not execute any arbitrary code and you probably are the only person modifying the git config.
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE
Open Source Groupware Checklists
In the last months and years I had to deal with various requirements people have regarding groupware ecosystems. Open Source solutions have matured in this area and this article highlights some needs, but also some common pitfalls.
Preface
In these days there are many excellent Open Source groupware solutions out there. Two well developed solutions I saw in several productive environments are Zarafa and Open-XChange. Both of them are ready to replace Exchange in various productive setups, and I have seen both being deployed successfully as either Exchange replacement or even as a fresh groupware installation for growing offices and working groups.
Also the connection to the mobile world is common as well these days – thanks to z-push and the likes. Yes, there are some licence issues and I would prefer to use a CalDav solution. But ActiveSync works with open source tools pretty well.
However, there are still weaknesses in the Open Source groupware ecosystem. A big one is the Open Source fat client. Most of the clients (Evolution, Thunderbird and Kmail) do not work flawlessly with the currently available Open Source groupwares. Most of the services these days move to web clients anyway, but it is sad to see that there is hardly a well working groupware server fat client setup out there.
For example, in my personal working spaces I do need to sync Evolution with Zarafa, and KMail with OX. And in both setups there are components which do not work at all.
The needs
To better estimate the quality of a groupware solution here is a list of what such a solution should be able to provide:
- Multiple address books and their synchronisation.
- Multiple calendars and their synchronisation.
- Different user rights per calendar.
- The ability to overlay different calendars on the client side.
- E-Mail-Invitations for appointments.
- Free/Busy lists for other users, visible in the calendar view.
- Collision handling whenever the problem comes up.
- Centralized web interface for all components,
- Support for sync of ToDos.
There is no need that one server does that all on its own. The address book could be delivered by ldap, and there are good calendar servers out there like DAViCal.
But even if this list does look pretty normal, some of the points are not covered by the solutions out there. For example: You cannot share multiple calendars with your Zarafa server and your mobile phone without using some ugly hacks. Also, the collision handling is often automatically, the user does not even notice any problems. Another problem is that hardly any solution can sync ToDos properly. And, of course, hardly any of the solutions out there supports Linux based fat clients properly.
Some common tests and problems
But even if a groupware solutions states on paper that it fulfills all the mentioned needs, it might fail in the day-to-day routine. Thus here are some quick tests and common problems which can be checked on demo or test installations to get a first impression:
- Are multiple-day, recurring events synced correctly?
- Are multiple-day, recurring events still correct after changed again and again on both sides?
- Create a calendar …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE