LibreOffice Conference 2020 Proposals

The Document Foundation has received two different proposals for the organization of LibOCon 2020 from the Turkish and German communities. When this has happened in the past, in 2012 (Berlin vs Zaragoza) and 2013 (Milan vs Montreal), TDF Members have been asked to decide by casting their vote. This document provides an outline of the two proposals, which are attached in their original format.

Thomas Boyd Discusses Which Open Source Database is the Best Fit for the Business

The world's largest and most innovative businesses are turning to enterprise open source databases for mission-critical applications, with the most popular open source relational databases being MariaDB, MySQL, and Postgres. However, while all three of these databases are open source, mature, and available in enterprise editions, there are significant differences between them — both in terms of application development as well as database administration and operations. DBTA recently held a webinar featuring Thomas Boyd, director of technical marketing, MariaDB Corporation, who discussed the differences between MariaDB, MySQL, and Postgres. [...] EnterpriseDB is heap only while MySQL and MariaDB offer InnoDB, Columnar, Aria, MyRocks, and more.

Open Source Summit welcomes Platform9 experts

Cloud-native experts share tips and practical learnings for Kubernetes in the enterprise, Kubernetes on bare metal or with stateful MySQL databases, and optimizing the cost and performance of Serverless applications.

Transform Your Career: Attend Open Source Summit North America this August in San Diego

For the last decade, The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit has proven to be invaluable for attendees.  A 2018 participant recently wrote an article on OpenSource.com stating “Last August, I arrived at the Vancouver Convention Centre to give a lightning talk and speak on a panel at Open Source Summit North America 2018. It’s no exaggeration to say that this conference—and applying to speak at it—transformed my career.” We encourage you to read the article and discover why attending Open Source Summit can be a game changer for you as well.

Intervalometerator: Open Source Code for a Remote Timelapse DSLR

Want to set up a remote DSLR for shooting a time-lapse? The Intervalometerator (AKA ‘intvlm8r’) is an open-source intervalometer that can help you do so at minimal hardware cost (as long as you’re comfortable tinkering with hardware and software). Created by Sydney-based coder Greig Sheridan and his photographer partner Rocky over the course of a year, the Intervalometerator is designed to be both cheap and easy to build with familiar tools and using Raspberry Pi and Arduino microcontrollers. “My partner and I have been working for over twelve months now on an intervalometer in order to shoot a DSLR-based time-lapse of the construction of our friends’ home in NZ,” Sheridan tells PetaPixel. “It was at the time a seemingly clever idea for a house-warming present, but it grew like tribbles to consume an incredible amount of effort).

Open Source Tools & Framework: Microservices Perspective

Open Source flexiWAN SD-WAN Software Beta Ships

Agile and open source can complement each other

Despite the growing popularity of both Agile development and open-source practices, it’s not often that they come up in the same conversation. When these two concepts do intersect, it’s often to highlight the contradicting viewpoints that these two models supposedly represent. While there are core differences, Agile doesn’t have to be the enemy of open source—in fact, I would argue the opposite.

SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week: Twilio CLI

In an effort to help its developers be more productive, Twilio has announced the beta version of Twilio CLI. It is an open-source command line interface that enables developers to access Twilio through their command prompt. “It’s hard to beat the flexibility and power that a CLI provides at development time. Until now, there was no CLI designed for typical communications requirements,” Ashley Roach, the product manager for developer interfaces at Twilio, wrote in a post.

Using open source in your enterprise? What to look out for

According to Statista, the open source market was valued at $11.4 billion in 2017 and is estimated to grow to $32.95 billion by 2022, showing it has no intention of slowing down anytime soon. Founded on the belief that collaboration and cooperation build better software, open source sounds closer to a utopian dream than to the cold digital world of programming. Research showed that open source code takes over proprietary one in applications at 57%. This has numerous benefits, such as speeding up the software development process or creating more effective and innovative software. For example, open source frontend development frameworks, such as Angular, are often found in custom web apps, which allows companies to get their products to market at ever-increasing rates. In addition, companies tend to engage open source when at the cusp of technological innovation, especially when it comes to AR, blockchain, IoT, and AI.

Open Source Technology: What's It All About?

To understand how open source works, it is important to appreciate where it all began. The very idea behind its inception isn’t exactly a new one. It’s been adopted by scientists for decades. Let’s imagine a scientist working on a project to develop a cure for an illness. If this scientist only published the results and kept the methods a secret, this would undoubtedly inhibit scientific discovery and further research in this area. On the other hand, teaming up with other researchers and making results and methodologies visible allows for greater and faster innovation. This is the premise from which open source was originally born. Open source refers to software that has an open source code so it can be viewed, modified for a particular need, and importantly, shared (under license). One of the first well known open source initiatives was developed in 1998 by Netscape, which released its Navigator browser as free software and demonstrated the benefits of taking an open source approach. Since then, there have been a number of pivotal moments in open source history that have shaped the technology industry as we know it today. Nowadays, some of the latest technology you use on a daily basis, like your smartphone or laptop, will have been built using open source software. [...] Recent research found that 60 percent of organizations are already using open source software. Many businesses are realizing the benefits that the technology can bring in relation to driving innovation and reducing costs. This in turn is seeing a growing number of organizations integrate open source into their IT operations or even building entire businesses around it. With emerging technologies such as cloud, AI and machine learning only driving this adoption further, open source will continue to play a central and growing role throughout the technology landscape.

How to Take Your Open Source Project from Good to Great

Whether or not you expect anyone to contribute to your project, you should be prepared for the possibility of others wanting to help your cause. And when that happens, your contributing guide will show those helpers exactly how they can get involved. This guide, usually in the form of a CONTRIBUTING.md file, should include information on how one should submit a pull request or open an issue for your project and what kinds of help you’re looking for (bug fixes, design direction, feature requests, etc.).

ForgeRock Delivers Open Source IoT Edge Controller for Device Identity

According to a recent announcement, ForgeRock, a platform provider of digital identity management solutions, has launched its IoT Edge Controller, which is designed to provide consumer and industrial manufacturers the ability to deliver trusted identity at the device level.

Browser Settings Too Complex? Let Firefox Handle That for You

Firefox SVP David Camp doesn't want internet users wasting time 'understanding how the internet is watching you.'

Exclusive: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg on what’s next for Tumblr

It’s been a long and winding road for Tumblr, the blogging site that launched a thousand writing careers. It sold to Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013, then withered as Yahoo sold itself to AOL, AOL sold itself to Verizon, and Verizon realized it was a phone company after all. Through all that, the site’s fierce community hung on: it’s still Taylor Swift’s go-to social media platform, and fandoms of all kinds have homes there. Verizon sold Tumblr for a reported $3 million this week, a far cry from the billion-dollar valuation it once had. But to Verizon’s credit, it chose to sell Tumblr to Automattic, the company behind WordPress, the publishing platform that runs some 34 percent of the world’s websites. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg thinks the future of Tumblr is bright. He wants the platform to bring back the best of old-school blogging, reinvented for mobile and connected to Tumblr’s still-vibrant community, and he’s retaining all 200 Tumblr employees to build that future. It’s the most exciting vision for Tumblr in years. Matt joined Verge reporter Julia Alexander and me on a special Vergecast interview episode to chat about the deal, how it came together, what Automattic’s plans for Tumblr look like, and whether Tumblr might become an open-source project, like WordPress itself. (“That would be pretty cool,” said Matt.) Oh, and that porn ban.

The Apache® Software Foundation Announces Annual Report for 2019 Fiscal Year

The Apache® Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today the availability of the annual report for its 2019 fiscal year, which ended 30 April 2019.

Open Source at the ASF: A Year in Numbers

332 active projects, 71 million lines of code changed, 7,000+ committers… The Apache Software Foundation has published its annual report for fiscal 2019. The hub of a sprawling, influential open source community, the ASF remains in rude good health, despite challenges this year including the need for “an outsized amount of effort” dealing with trademark infringements, and “some in the tech industry trying to exploit the goodwill earned by the larger Open Source community.” [...] The ASF names 10 “platinum” sponsors: AWS, Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, LeaseWeb, Microsoft, the Pineapple Fund, Tencent Cloud, and Verizon Media

Apache Software Foundation Is Worth $20 Billion

Yes, Apache is worth $20 billion by its own valuation of the software it offers for free. But what price can you realistically put on open source code? If you only know the name Apache in connection with the web server then you are missing out on some interesting software. The Apache Software Foundation ASF, grew out of the Apache HTTP Server project in 1999 with the aim of furthering open source software. It provides a licence, the Apache licence, a decentralized governance and requires projects to be licensed to the ASF so that it can protect the intellectual property rights.

Apache Security Advisories Red Flag Wrong Versions in Patching Gaffe

Researchers have pinpointed errors in two dozen Apache Struts security advisories, which warn users of vulnerabilities in the popular open-source web app development framework. They say that the security advisories listed incorrect versions impacted by the vulnerabilities. The concern from this research is that security administrators in companies using the actual impacted versions would incorrectly think that their versions weren’t affected – and would thus refrain from applying patches, said researchers with Synopsys who made the discovery, Thursday. “The real question here from this research is whether there remain unpatched versions of the newly disclosed versions in production scenarios,” Tim Mackey, principal security strategist for the Cybersecurity Research Center at Synopsys, told Threatpost. “In all cases, the Struts community had already issued patches for the vulnerabilities so the patches exist, it’s just a question of applying them.”

Google releases source code for I/O 2019 app with Android Q gesture nav, dark theme

The Google I/O companion app for Android often takes advantage of the latest design stylings and OS features. It demoed Android Q’s gesture navigation and dark theme this year, with the company today releasing the I/O 2019 source code.

Introducing Coil, an open-source Android image loading library backed by Kotlin Coroutines

Yesterday, Colin White, a Senior Android Engineer at Instacart, introduced Coroutine Image Loader (Coil). It is a fast, lightweight, and modern image loading library for Android backed by Kotlin.

Google open-sources Live Transcribe’s speech engine

Google today open-sourced the speech engine that powers its Android speech recognition transcription tool Live Transcribe. The company hopes doing so will let any developer deliver captions for long-form conversations. The source code is available now on GitHub. Google released Live Transcribe in February. The tool uses machine learning algorithms to turn audio into real-time captions. Unlike Android’s upcoming Live Caption feature, Live Transcribe is a full-screen experience, uses your smartphone’s microphone (or an external microphone), and relies on the Google Cloud Speech API. Live Transcribe can caption real-time spoken words in over 70 languages and dialects. You can also type back into it — Live Transcribe is really a communication tool. The other main difference: Live Transcribe is available on 1.8 billion Android devices. (When Live Caption arrives later this year, it will only work on select Android Q devices.)