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FOSS News No. 2 - a review of free and open source news for February 3-9, 2020



Hello everyone!

I continue to review the news of free and open source software (and a bit of hardware). This time I tried to take not only Russian sources, but also English ones, I hope it turned out more interesting. In addition, in addition to the news itself, a few links have been added to the reviews and guides related to FOSS that have appeared over the past week and seemed interesting to me.

In the issue No. 2 of February 3–9, 2020:

  1. FOSDEM 2020 conference;
  2. WireGuard code will go into Linux;
  3. Canonical ;
  4. Dell Ubuntu;
  5. TFC «» ;
  6. , GPL;
  7. hardware Open Invention Network;
  8. 40 Open Source ;
  9. ;
  10. Linux 2038- ;
  11. Linux ;
  12. Open Source;
  13. CTO IBM Watson Open Source « »;
  14. Using the open source fio utility to evaluate disk performance
  15. review of the best open Ecommerce platforms in 2020;
  16. Overview of FOSS HR solutions.

FOSDEM 2020 Conference




One of the largest FOSS conferences, FOSDEM 2020, held February 1-2 in Brussels, brought together more than 8,000 developers united by the idea of ​​free and open source software. 800 reports, communication and the opportunity to meet the legendary people of the FOSS world. User Habra Dmitry Sugrobovsugrobovshared his impressions and notes from the speeches.

List of sections at the conference:

  1. community and ethics;
  2. containers and security;
  3. Database;
  4. freedom;
  5. story;
  6. the Internet;
  7. Other;
  8. certification.


There were also many “devrooms”: distributions, CI, containers, decentralized software, and many other topics.

Details

And who wants to see everything for yourself - follow on fosdem.org/2020/schedule/events (carefully, more than 400 hours of content).

WireGuard Code Will Enter Linux




After several years of development, WireGuard, called ZDNet a “revolutionary approach” in building a VPN, is finally scheduled to be included in the Linux kernel and is expected to be released in April 2020.

Linus Torvalds himself is considered one of WireGuard's biggest fans, he said: “ Can I just once again confess my love for this project and hope that it will be frozen soon? Maybe the code is not perfect, but I quickly read it and, compared to OpenVPN and IPSec, it’s a work of art ”(for comparison, WireGuard code base has 4,000 lines of code, and OpenVPN has 100,000 lines).

Despite its simplicity, WireGuard includes advanced cryptographic technologies such as the Noise protocol framework, Curve25519, ChaCha20, Poly1305, BLAKE2, SipHash24, and HKD. Also, the safety of the project has been proven academically.

Details

Canonical Provides Advanced Options for Certified Equipment Providers




Starting with the LTS version of Ubuntu 20.04, the installation and operation of the system will differ on Canonical certified devices. Ubuntu developers are working to check for certified devices in the system during the GRUB boot using the SMBIOS module using device identifier strings. Installing Ubuntu on certified hardware will allow, for example, out of the box support for newer kernel versions. So, in particular, Linux 5.5 will be available (previously announced for 04/20, but subsequently abandoned) and possibly 5.6. Moreover, this behavior applies not only to the initial installation, but also to subsequent operation, a similar check will be carried out when using APT. For example, this approach will be useful for Dell computer owners.

Details

Dell announced a new version of the top ultrabook on Ubuntu




Known for its laptop releases with Ubuntu preinstalled, Dell has unveiled a new version of the XPS 13 ultrabook - Developer Edition (the model has a code of 6300, this is not to be confused with the version of 2019 with a code of 7390, released in November). All the same high-quality aluminum case, the new i7-1065G7 processor (4 cores, 8 streams), an enlarged screen (FHD and UHD + 4K displays are available), up to 16 gigabytes of operational LPDDR4x memory, a new graphics chip, and finally support for a fingerprint scanner.

Details

TFC Project Offers Paranoid-Protected Messaging




The TFC (Tinfoil Chat) project proposed a prototype of a “paranoid-protected” software and hardware messaging system that allows you to keep the correspondence secret even when the end devices are compromised. The project code is auditable, written in Python under the GPLv3 license, and iron access schemes for FDL.

Common messengers using end-to-end encryption protect against interception of intermediate traffic, but do not protect against problems on the client side, for example, from compromising the system if there are vulnerabilities in it.

The proposed client-side scheme uses three computers - a gateway to connect to the network via Tor, a computer for encryption, and a computer for decryption. This, together with the applied encryption technologies, theoretically should significantly increase the security of the system.

Details

The court supported the developer, who spoke in defense of the GPL




The California Court of Appeals ruled in a lawsuit between Open Source Security Inc., a developing Grsecurity project, and Bruce Perens, one of the authors of the Open Source definition, co-founder of OSI, creator of BusyBox, and one of the first leaders of the Debian project.

The essence of the proceedings was that Bruce in his blog criticized the restriction of access to Grsecurity's work and warned against buying a paid version because of a possible violation of the GPLv2 license, and the company accused him of publishing false statements and using his position in the community to harm the company's business .

The court dismissed the appeal, finding that Perence's blog posting was personal opinion based on known facts. Thus, the verdict of a lower court was confirmed, in which all claims against Bruce were rejected, and the company was ordered to recover legal costs of $ 259 thousand.

However, the trial did not directly address the issue of a possible violation of the GPL, and this, perhaps, would be the most interesting.

Details

Leading Japanese hardware vendor connects to Open Invention Network




The Open Invention Network (OIN) is the largest non-aggressive patent community in history. Its main task is to protect Linux and Open Source-friendly companies from patent attacks. Now the large Japanese company Taiyo Yuden has joined OIN.

Shigetoshi Akino, chief manager of the intellectual property department of Taiyo Yuden, said: “ Although Taiyo Yuden does not directly use Open Source programs in its products, our customers do it, and it is important for us to support Open Source initiatives critical to the success of our customers. By joining the Open Invention Network, we show support for Open Source through patent non-aggression for Linux and related Open Source technologies . ”

Details

Startup Attracts $ 40 Million Investment to Simplify Access to Cloud Open Source Projects




The growing popularity of Open Source software is of great importance in the evolution of the corporate IT sector. But there is another side - the complexity and cost of studying and adapting such software to the needs of companies.

Aiven, a startup from Finland, is just building a platform to facilitate such tasks and recently announced a $ 40 million raise.

The company provides solutions based on 8 different Open Source projects - Apache Kafka, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Elasticsearch, Cassandra, Redis, InfluxDB and Grafana - which cover a wide range of functions from basic work with data to searching and processing large amounts of information.

"The growing use of Open Source infrastructure and the use of public cloud services are among the most stunning and powerful trends in enterprise technology and Aiven makes it possible to take advantage of Open Source infrastructure for customers of all sizes, ”said Eric Liu, Aiven partner at IVP, a leading player in the corporate market software that itself supported such well-known projects as Slack, Dropbox and GitHub.

Details

Open Source Industrial IoT Control Platform Open Source




Alliander, the Dutch distributed systems operator, has launched the Open Smart Grid Platform (OSGP), a scalable IIoT platform. It allows you to safely collect data and manage smart devices on the network. In particular, it can be used in the following ways:

  1. A user or operator connects to a web application to monitor or control devices.
  2. The application connects to OSGP through web services, divided by functionality, such as “street lighting”, “smart sensors”, “quality of power supply”. Third-party developers can use web services to develop or integrate their applications.
  3. The platform works with application requests over open and secure protocols.

The platform is written in Java, the code is available on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 license.

Details

Linux kernel resolves 2038 issue




On January 19, 2038 on Tuesday at 03:14:07 UTC, a serious problem is expected due to the use of a 32-bit value for storing UNIX-time. And this is not a bloated Y2K problem. The date will be reset, all 32-bit UNIX systems will return to the past, at the beginning of 1970.

But now you can sleep somewhat calmly. Linux developers in the new kernel version 5.6 fixed this problem eighteen years before a possible temporary apocalypse. Linux developers have worked on this problem for several years. Moreover, patches for its solution will be ported to some earlier versions of the Linux kernel - 5.4 and 5.5.

True, there are caveats - user applications should be modified as necessary to use new versions of libc. And the new core should also be supported by them. And this can cause pain to users of unsupported 32-bit devices, and even more so to users of closed-source programs.

Details

Linux kernel will be able to solve the problem of shared locks




A split lock occurs when an atomic instruction operates on data from multiple cache locations. Due to the atomic nature, in this case, a global bus lock is required, which leads to problems with the performance of the entire system and the difficulty of using Linux in "hard real-time" systems.

By default, on supported processors, Linux will display a message in dmesg when a split lock occurs. And when you specify the kernel option split_lock_detect = fatal, the SIGBUS signal will also be sent to the problem application, which will allow it to either terminate or process it.

This feature is expected to be included in version 5.7.

Details

What venture capital sees the appeal of Open Source




In recent years, we have seen a significant influx of funds in Open Source: the purchase of Red Hat by the IT giant IBM, GitHub by Microsoft, the Nginx web server by F5 Networks. Investments in startups also increased, for example, just the other day Hewlett Packard Enterprise bought Scytale (https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/03/hpe-acquires-identity-management-startup-scytale/). TechCrunch asked 18 top investors what they are most interested in and where they see opportunities.

Part 1
Part 2

CTO IBM Watson Announces the Critical Need for Open Source for the Dynamically Growing Field of Peripheral Computing




Note: “edge computing”, unlike cloud computing, does not yet have an established Russian-language term; here we use the translation “peripheral computing” from the Habr article habr.com/en/post/331066 , in the sense of computing performed closer to customers, than the "clouds".

The number of peripheral computing devices is growing at an amazing rate, from 15 billion today to a forecast of 55 in 2020, said Rob High, vice president and CTO of IBM Watson.

"The first thing that needs to be understood is that the industry risks “blowing up” itself if the issue of standardized management is not resolved, creating a set of standards that the developer communities could form and rely on when creating their ecosystems ... We believe that the only way To achieve such standardization in a reasonable way lies through Open Source. Everything we do is based on Open Source and it’s so simple because we don’t believe that someone can be successful without building strong and healthy ecosystems around standards, ”said Rob.

Details

Using fio's open source utility to evaluate disk performance




Ars Technica has published a short guide to using the cross-platform utility fio to evaluate disk performance. The program allows you to explore indicators of bandwidth, latency, the number of I / O and cache. A feature is an attempt to simulate the real use of devices instead of synthetic tests like reading / writing large amounts of data and measuring the time it takes to execute them.

Guide

Overview of the best open Ecommerce platforms in 2020




The site “It's FOSS”, following an overview of the best CMS, publishes an overview of eCommerce solutions for building your online store or expanding the functionality of an existing site. Considered nopCommerce, OpenCart, PrestaShop, WooCommerce, Zen Cart, Magento, Drupal. The review is brief, but in the beginning, the path to choosing a solution for your project is suitable.

Overview

Overview of FOSS Human Resources Solutions




Solutions Review publishes a brief overview of the best FOSS tools to help HR professionals. Examples are A1 eHR, Apptivo, Baraza HCM, IceHRM, Jorani, Odoo, OrangeHRM, Sentrifugo, SimpleHRM, WaypointHR. The review, like the previous one, is short, only the main functions of each considered solution are also listed.

Overview


That's it, until next Sunday!

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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/undefined/

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