Posts

The Linux Foundation Announces 2019 Events Schedule

,


The Linux Foundation hosts the premier open source events around the world to enable technologists and other leaders to come together and drive innovation

SAN FRANCISCO, January 15, 2019 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced its 2019 events schedule. Linux Foundation events are where the creators, maintainers and practitioners of the world’s most important open source projects meet. In 2018, Linux Foundation events attracted more than 32,000 developers, architects, community thought leaders, business executives and other industry professionals from more than 11,000 organizations across 113 countries. New events hosted by the Linux Foundation for 2019 include Cephalocon and gRPC Conf.

The Linux Foundation’s 2019 events will gather more than 35,000 open source influencers to learn from each other about new trends in open source and share knowledge of best practices across projects dealing with operating systems, cloud applications, containers, IoT, networking, data processing, security, storage, AI, software architecture, edge computing and more. Events are hosted by the Linux Foundation and its projects, including Automotive Grade Linux, Cloud Foundry, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Kubernetes, Hyperledger, LF Networking and ONAP. The events also looking at the business side of open source, gathering managers and technical leaders to learn about compliance, governance, building an open source office and other areas.

“Linux Foundation events bring open source leaders, technologists and enthusiasts together in locations around the world to work together, network and advance how open source is expanding and developing in various industries,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at the Linux Foundation. “Our events proudly accelerate progress and creativity within the larger community and provide in-person contact that is vital to successful collaboration.”

With a new year comes several new co-located events. After incorporating what was previously known as LinuxCon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen (LC3), the event in Shanghai June 24-26, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon + Open Source Summit China – will now be the largest open source conference in China. Also, Embedded Linux Conference North America will now be co-located with Open Source Summit North America, as Embedded Linux Conference Europe has been with Open Source Summit Europe for several years.

The complete schedule and descriptions of all 2019 events follows below.

The Linux Foundation’s 2019 Schedule of Events
Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) All Member Meeting
March 5-6, 2019
Tokyo, Japan
The Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) All Member Meeting takes place bi-annually and brings the AGL community together to learn about the latest developments, share best practices and collaborate to drive rapid innovation across the industry.

Open Source Leadership Summit
March 12-14, 2019
Half Moon Bay, California
The Linux Foundation Open Source Leadership Summit is the premier forum where open source leaders convene to drive digital transformation with open source technologies and learn how to collaboratively manage the largest shared technology investment of our time. An intimate, by invitation only event, Open Source Leadership Summit fosters innovation, growth and partnerships among the leading projects and corporations working in open technology development.

gRPC Conf 2019
March 21, 2019
Sunnyvale, California
Experts will discuss real-world implementations of gRPC, best practices for developers, and topic expert deep dives. This is a must-attend event for those using gRPC in their applications today as well as those considering gRPC for their enterprise microservices.

Cloud Foundry Summit
April 2-4, 2019
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
From startups to the Fortune 500, Cloud Foundry is used by businesses around the globe to automate, scale and manage cloud apps throughout their lifecycle. Whether they are a contributor or committer building the platform, or using the platform to attain business goals, Cloud Foundry Summit is where developers, operators, CIOs and other IT professionals go to share best practices and innovate together.

Open Networking Summit North America
April 3-5, 2019
San Jose, California
Open Networking Summit is the industry’s premier open networking event, gathering enterprises, service providers and cloud providers across the ecosystem to share learnings, highlight innovation and discuss the future of Open Source Networking, including SDN, NFV, orchestration and the automation of cloud, network, & IoT services.

Linux Storage, Filesystem and Memory Management Summit
April 30-May 2, 2019
San Juan, Puerto Rico
The Linux Storage, Filesystem & Memory Management Summit gathers the foremost development and research experts and kernel subsystem maintainers to map out and implement improvements to the Linux filesystem, storage and memory management subsystems that will find their way into the mainline kernel and Linux distributions in the next 24-48 months.

Cephalocon
May 19-20, 2019
Barcelona, Spain
Cephalocon Barcelona aims to bring together more than 800 technologists and adopters from across the globe to showcase Ceph’s history and its future, demonstrate real-world applications, and highlight vendor solutions.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe
May 20-23, 2019
Barcelona, Spain
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s flagship conference gathers adopters and technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities. Join developers using Kubernetes, Prometheus, OpenTracing, Fluentd, gRPC, containerd, rkt, CNI, Envoy, Jaeger, Notary, TUF, Vitess, CoreDNS, NATS, Linkerd, Helm, Harbor and etcd as the community gathers for four days to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon + Open Source Summit China
June 24-26, 2019
Shanghai, China
In 2019, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon and Open Source Summit combine together for one event in China. KubeCon + CloudNativeCon gathers all CNCF projects under one roof. Join leading technologists from open source cloud native communities to further the advancement of cloud native computing. Previously known as LinuxCon + CloudOpen + ContainerCon China (LC3), Open Source Summit gathers technologists and open source industry leaders to collaborate, share information and learn about the newest and most interesting open source technologies, including Linux, IoT, blockchain, AI, networking, and more.

Xen Project Developer and Design Summit
July 9-11, 2019
Chicago, Illinois
The Xen Project creates an industry leading open source hypervisor that is powering some of the largest clouds in production today. The Summit will bring together the Xen Project community of developers and power users to share ideas, latest developments, and experiences, as well as offer opportunities to plan and collaborate on all things Xen Project.

Open Source Summit Japan
July 17-19, 2019
Tokyo, Japan
Open Source Summit Japan is the leading conference in Japan connecting the open source ecosystem under one roof, providing a forum for technologists and open source industry leaders to collaborate and share information, learn about the latest in open source technologies and find out how to gain a competitive advantage by using innovative open solutions.

Automotive Linux Summit
July 17-19, 2019
Tokyo, Japan
Automotive Linux Summit connects the developer community driving the innovation in automotive Linux together with the vendors and users providing and using the code in order to drive the future of embedded devices in the automotive arena.

Linux Security Summit North America
August 19-21, 2019
San Diego, California
The Linux Security Summit (LSS) is a technical forum for collaboration between Linux developers, researchers, and end users with the primary aim of fostering community efforts in analyzing and solving Linux security challenges. LSS is where key Linux security community members and maintainers gather to present and discuss their work and research to peers, joined by those who wish to keep up with the latest in Linux security development and who would like to provide input to the development process.

Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America
August 21-23, 2019
San Diego, California
Open Source Summit North America connects the open source ecosystem under one roof. It’s a unique environment for cross-collaboration between developers, sysadmins, devops, architects and others who are driving technology forward. Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) is the premier vendor-neutral technical conference where developers working on embedded Linux and industrial IoT products and deployments gather for education and collaboration, paving the way for innovation. For the first time in 2019, Embedded Linux Conference North America will co-locate with Open Source Summit North America.

Linux Plumbers Conference
September 9-11, 2019
Lisbon, Portugal
The Linux Plumbers Conference is the premier event for developers working at all levels of the plumbing layer and beyond.

Kernel Maintainer Summit
September 12, 2019
Lisbon, Portugal
The Linux Kernel Summit brings together the world’s leading core kernel developers to discuss the state of the existing kernel and plan the next development cycle.

Cloud Foundry Summit Europe
September 11-12, 2019
The Hague, The Netherlands
From startups to the Fortune 500, Cloud Foundry is used by businesses around the globe to automate, scale and manage cloud apps throughout their lifecycle. Whether they are a contributor or committer building the platform, or using the platform to attain business goals, Cloud Foundry Summit Europe is where developers, operators, CIOs and other IT professionals go to share best practices and innovate together.

Open Networking Summit Europe
September 23-25, 2019
Antwerp, Belgium
Open Networking Summit Europe is the industry’s premier open networking event, gathering enterprises, service providers and cloud providers across the ecosystem to share learnings, highlight innovation and discuss the future of Open Source Networking, including SDN, NFV, orchestration and the automation of cloud, network, & IoT services.

Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe
October 28-30, 2019
Lyon, France
Open Source Summit Europe is the leading conference for developers, architects, and other technologists – as well as open source community and industry leaders – to collaborate, share information, learn about the latest technologies and gain a competitive advantage by using innovative open solutions. The co-located Embedded Linux Conference is the premier vendor-neutral technical conference where developers working on embedded Linux and industrial IoT products and deployments gather for education and collaboration, paving the way for innovation.

Linux Security Summit Europe
October 31-November 1, 2019
Lyon, France
The Linux Security Summit (LSS) is a technical forum for collaboration between Linux developers, researchers, and end users with the primary aim of fostering community efforts in analyzing and solving Linux security challenges.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America
November 18-21, 2019
San Diego, California
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s flagship conference gathers adopters and technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities. Join developers using Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, OpenTracing, Fluentd, gRPC, containerd, rkt, CNI, Jaeger, Notary, TUF, Vitess, CoreDNS, NATS, Linkerd, Helm, Harbor and etcd to learn and advance cloud native computing.

Open FinTech Forum
December 9, 2019
New York, New York
Focusing on the intersection of financial services and open source, Open FinTech Forum will provide CIOs and senior technologists guidance on building internal open source programs as well as an in-depth look at cutting-edge open source technologies, including AI, Blockchain/Distributed Ledger, Kubernetes/Containers, that can be leveraged to drive efficiencies and flexibility.

Event dates and locations will be announced shortly for additional 2019 events including:

  • The API Strategy & Practice Conference (APIStrat)
  • KVM Forum
  • Open Compliance Forum
  • And much more!

Speaking proposals are now being accepted for the following 2019 events:

  • KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe (Submission deadline: January 18)
  • Open Networking Summit North America (Submission deadline: January 21)
  • gRPC Conf 2019 (Submission deadline: January 23)
  • Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) All Member Meeting (Submission deadline: January 23)
  • Open Source Leadership Summit (Submission deadline: January 28)
  • Cephalocon (Submission deadline: February 1)
  • KubeCon + CloudNativeCon + Open Source Summit China (Submission deadline: February 15)
  • Automotive Linux Summit (Submission deadline: March 24)
  • Open Source Summit Japan (Submission deadline: March 24)
  • Linux Security Summit North America (Submission details coming soon)
  • Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America (Submission deadline: April 2)
  • Xen Project Developer and Design Summit (Submission deadline: April 12)
  • Linux Plumbers Conference (Submission details coming soon)
  • Kernel Maintainer Summit (Submission details coming soon)
  • Cloud Foundry Summit Europe (Submission details coming soon)
  • Open Networking Summit Europe (Submission deadline: June 16)
  • Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe (Submission deadline: July 1)
  • Linux Security Summit Europe (Submission details coming soon)
  • KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America (Submission dates: May 6 – July 12)
  • Open FinTech Forum (Submission dates: January 17 – September 22)

Speaking proposals for all events can be submitted at https://linuxfoundation.smapply.io/.

For more information about all Linux Foundation events, please visit: http://events.linuxfoundation.org.

Additional Resources

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact:
Dan Brown
The Linux Foundation
415-420-7880
dbrown@linuxfoundation.org

/by

Key Resources for Effective, Professional Open Source Management

, ,

The Linux Foundation offers an abundance of resources to help you achieve success with open source.

At organizations everywhere, managing the use of open source software well requires the participation of business executives, the legal team, software architecture, software development and maintenance staff and product managers. One of the most significant challenges is integrating all of these functions with their very different points of view into a coherent and efficient set of practices.

More than ever, it makes sense to investigate the many free and inexpensive resources for open source management that are available, and observe the practices of professional open source offices that have been launched within companies ranging from Microsoft to Oath to Red Hat.

Fundamentals

The Linux Foundation’s Fundamentals of Professional Open Source Management (LFC210) course is a good place to start. The course is explicitly designed to help individuals in disparate organizational roles understand the best practices for success.

The course is organized around the key phases of developing a professional open source management program:

  • Open Source Software and Open Source Management Basics
  • Open Source Management Strategy
  • Open Source Policy
  • Open Source Processes
  • Open Source Management Program Implementation

Best Practices

The Linux Foundation also offers a free ebook on open source management: Enterprise Open Source: A Practical Introduction. The 45-page ebook can teach you how to accelerate your company’s open source efforts, based on the experience of hundreds of companies spanning more than two decades of professional enterprise open source management. The ebook covers:

  • Why use open source
  • Various open source business models
  • How to develop your own open source strategy
  • Important open source workflow practices
  • Tools and integration

Official open source programs play an increasingly significant role in how DevOps and open source best practices are adopted by organizations, according to a survey conducted by The New Stack and The Linux Foundation (via the TODO Group). More than half of respondents to the survey (53 percent) across many industries said their organization has an open source software program or has plans to establish one.

“More than anything, open source programs are responsible for fostering open source culture,” the survey’s authors have reported. “By creating an open source culture, companies with open source programs see the benefits we’ve previously reported, including increased speed and agility in the development cycle, better license compliance and more awareness of which open source projects a company’s products depend on.”

Free Guides

How can your organization professionally create and manage a successful open source program, with proper policies and a strong organizational structure? The Linux Foundation offers a complete guide to the process, available here for free. The guide covers an array of topics for open source offices including: roles and responsibilities, corporate structures, elements of an open source management program, how to choose and hire an open source program manager, and more.

The free guide also features contributions from open source leaders. “The open source program office is an essential part of any modern company with a reasonably ambitious plan to influence various sectors of software ecosystems,” notes John Mark Walker, Founder of the Open Source Entrepreneur Network (OSEN) in the guide. “If a company wants to increase its influence, clarify its open source messaging, maximize the clout of its projects, or increase the efficiency of its product development, a multifaceted approach to open source programs is essential.”  

Interested in even more on professional open source management? Don’t miss The Linux Foundation’s other free guides, which delve into tools for open source management, how to measure the success of an open source program, and much more.

/by

A Free Guide for Setting Your Open Source Strategy

, , ,

Learn how to align your goals for managing and creating open source software with your organization’s business objectives using the tips and proven practices from the TODO Group.

The majority of companies using open source understand its business value, but they may lack the tools to strategically implement an open source program and reap the full rewards. According to a recent survey from The New Stack, “the top three benefits of open source programs are 1) increased awareness of open source, 2) more speed and agility in the development cycle, and 3) better license compliance.”

Running an open source program office involves creating a strategy to help you define and implement your approach as well as measure your progress. The Open Source Guides to the Enterprise, developed by The Linux Foundation in partnership with the TODO Group, offer open source expertise based on years of experience and practice.

The most recent guide, Setting an Open Source Strategy, details the essential steps in creating a strategy and setting you on the path to success. According to the guide, “your open source strategy connects the plans for managing, participating in, and creating open source software with the business objectives that the plans serve. This can open up many opportunities and catalyze innovation.” The guide covers the following topics:

  1. Why create a strategy?
  2. Your strategy document
  3. Approaches to strategy
  4. Key considerations
  5. Other components
  6. Determine ROI
  7. Where to invest

The critical first step here is creating and documenting your open source strategy, which will “help you maximize the benefits your organization gets from open source.” At the same time, your detailed strategy can help you avoid difficulties that may arise from mistakes such as choosing the wrong license or improperly maintaining code. According to the guide, this document can also:

  • Get leaders excited and involved
  • Help obtain buy-in within the company
  • Facilitate decision-making in diffuse, multi-departmental organizations
  • Help build a healthy community
  • Explain your company’s approach to open source and support of its use
  • Clarify where your company invests in community-driven, external R&D and where your company will focus on its value added differentiation

“At Salesforce, we have internal documents that we circulate to our engineering team, providing strategic guidance and encouragement around open source. These encourage the creation and use of open source, letting them know in no uncertain terms that the strategic leaders at the company are fully behind it. Additionally, if there are certain kinds of licenses we don’t want engineers using, or other open source guidelines for them, our internal documents need to be explicit,” said Ian Varley, Software Architect at Salesforce and contributor to the guide.

Open source programs help promote an enterprise culture that can make companies more productive, and, according to the guide, a strong strategy document can “help your team understand the business objectives behind your open source program, ensure better decision-making, and minimize risks.”  

Learn how to align your goals for managing and creating open source software with your organization’s business objectives using the tips and proven practices in the new guide to Setting an Open Source Strategy. And, check out all 12 Open Source Guides for the Enterprise for more information on achieving success with open source.

/by

Tune Into the Free Live Stream of Keynotes at Open Networking Summit Europe, September 25-27!

, ,
ONS livestream

Watch the keynote sessions LIVE next week at ONS Europe!

Open Networking Summit Europe is taking place in Amsterdam next week,  September 25-27. Can’t make it? You’ll be missed, but you don’t have to miss out on the action. Tune into the free livestream to catch all of the keynotes live from your desktop, tablet or phone! Sign Up Now >>

Live video streaming of the keynote sessions from Open Networking Summit Europe 2018 will take place during the following times:

Tuesday, September 25

13:15 – 14:55 (CEST)

Watch keynotes from Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Red Hat, China Mobile, Intel, Orange Group Network and The Linux Foundation.

Wednesday, September 26

9:00 – 10:30 (CEST)

Watch keynotes from Türk Telekom, IBM, IHS/Infonetics Research, Huawei, China Mobile, and Vodafone Group.

Thursday, September 27

9:00 – 10:35 (CEST)

Watch keynotes from Deutsche Telekom AG, Imperial College London, China Mobile, AT&T, and Amdocs, Huawei, VMware and The Linux Foundation.

View the full Keynote Session Schedule

Sign up for free live stream now >>

/by

Open Source Summit EU Registration Deadline, Sept. 22, Register Now to Save $150

, ,

Register now to save $150 for Open Source Summit EU in Edinburgh.

You have TWO days left to save $150 on your ticket to Open Source Summit Europe & ELC + OpenIoT Summit Europe.

Grab your ticket and build your schedule today! Choose from 300+ sessions, deep-dive labs, and tutorials; discover new projects & technologies in the Technical Showcase, and make new connections at the Attendee Reception, and in the Speed Networking & Mentoring Event, Developer Lounges, and Hallway Tracks.

Register now, and join 2,000+ open source professionals to collaborate, share information, and learn about cutting-edge open source technologies.

The discount ends Saturday, September 22.

Sign up to receive updates on Open Source Summit Europe: 

REGISTER & SAVE $150 »

Registration includes access to Open Source Summit Europe and ELC + OpenIoT Summit Europe!

/by

Solving License Compliance at the Source: Adding SPDX License IDs

, ,

SPDX License Identifiers can be used to indicate relevant license information at any level, from package to the source code file level.

Accurately identifying the license for open source software is important for license compliance. However, determining the license can sometimes be difficult due to a lack of information or ambiguous information. Even when there is some licensing information present, a lack of consistent ways of expressing the license can make automating the task of license detection very difficult, thus requiring significant amounts of manual human effort.   There are some commercial tools applying machine learning to this problem to reduce the false positives, and train the license scanners, but a better solution is to fix the problem at the upstream source.

In 2013,  the U-boot project decided to use the SPDX license identifiers in each source file instead of the GPL v2.0 or later header boilerplate that had been used up to that point.   The initial commit message had an eloquent explanation of reasons behind this transition. 

Licenses: introduce SPDX Unique Lincense Identifiers


Like many other projects, U-Boot has a tradition of including big

blocks of License headers in all files.  This not only blows up the

source code with mostly redundant information, but also makes it very

difficult to generate License Clearing Reports.  An additional problem

is that even the same lincenses are referred to by a number of

slightly varying text blocks (full, abbreviated, different

indentation, line wrapping and/or white space, with obsolete address

information, ...) which makes automatic processing a nightmare.


To make this easier, such license headers in the source files will be

replaced with a single line reference to Unique Lincense Identifiers

as defined by the Linux Foundation's SPDX project [1].  For example,

in a source file the full "GPL v2.0 or later" header text will be

replaced by a single line:


        SPDX-License-Identifier:        GPL-2.0+


We use the SPDX Unique Lincense Identifiers here; these are available

at [2].

. . .


[1] http://spdx.org/

[2] http://spdx.org/licenses/

The SPDX project liked the simplicity of this approach and formally adopted U-Boot’s syntax for embedding SPDX-License-Identifier’s into the project.  Initially, the syntax was available on the project WIKI and was formalized in SPDX specification version 2.1 “Appendix V: Using SPDX short identifiers in Source Files”.  Since then,  other upstream open source projects and repositories have adopted use of these short identifiers to identify the licenses in use, including github in its licenses-API.  In 2017, the Free Software Foundation Europe created a project called REUSE.software  that provided guidance for open source projects on how to apply the SPDX-License-Identifiers into projects.   The REUSE.software guidelines were followed for adding SPDX-License-Identifiers into the Linux kernel, later that year.

The SPDX-License-Identifier syntax used with short identifiers from the SPDX License List short form identifiers (referred here as SPDX LIDs) can be used to indicate relevant license information at any level,  from package to the source code file level. The “SPDX-License-Identifier” phrase and a license expresssion formed of SPDX LIDs in a comment form a precise, concise and language neutral way to document the licensing, that is simple to machine process.  This leads to source code that is easier to read, which appeals to developers, as well as enabling the licensing information to travel with the source code.

To use SPDX LIDs in your project’s source code,  just add a single line in the following format, tailored to your license(s) and the comment style for that file’s language.  For example:

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT

/* SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT OR Apache-2.0 */

# SPDX-License-Identifer: GPL-2.0-or-later

To learn more about how to use SPDXLIDs with your source code,  please see the guidance in the documentation in the SPDX project, REUSE.software  or David Wheeler’s SPDX tutorial.    

In addition to U-boot and Linux transitioning to use the SPDXLIDs,  newer projects like Zephyr and Hyperleger fabric have adopted them right from the start as a best practice.   Indeed, to achieve the Core Infrastructure Initiative’s gold badge, each file in the source code must have a license, and the recommended way is to use an SPDX LID.  

The project MUST include a license statement in each source file. This MAY be done by 
including the following inside a comment near the beginning of each file: 
SPDX-License-Identifier: [SPDX license expression for project].

When SPDX LIDs are used,  gathering license information across your project files can start to become as easy as running grep. If a source file gets reused in a different package,  the license information travels with the source, reducing the risk of licence identification errors, and making license compliance in the recipient project easier.  By using SPDX LIDs in license expressions, the meaning of license combinations is understood more accurately. Saying “this file is MPL/MIT” is ambiguous, and leaves recipients unclear about their compliance requirements. Saying “MPL-2.0 AND MIT” or “MPL-2.0 OR MIT” specifies precisely whether the licensee must comply with both licenses, or either license, when redistributing the file.

As illustrated by the transition underway in the Linux kernel,  SPDX LIDs can be adopted gradually. You can start by adding SPDX LIDs to new files without changing anything already present in your codebase.  A list of projects known to be using SPDX License Identifiers can be found at: https://spdx.org/ids-where,  and if you know of one that’s missing,  please send email to outreach@lists.spdx.org.  

Learn more in this presentation at Open Source Summit: Automating the Creation of Open Source BOMs

/by

The Linux Foundation: Accelerating Open Source Innovation

,

The Linux Foundation’s Jim Zemlin welcomes attendees to Open Source Summit in Vancouver.

The Linux Foundation’s job is to create engines of innovation and enable the gears of those engines to spin faster, said Executive Director Jim Zemlin, in opening remarks at Open Source Summit in Vancouver.

Examples of how the organization is driving innovation across industries can be seen in projects such as Let’s Encrypt, a free, automated certificate authority working to encrypt the entire web, Automotive Grade Linux, Hyperledger, and the new Academy Software Foundation, which is focused on open collaboration within the motion picture industry.

This is open source beyond Linux and, according to Zemlin, is indicative of one of the best years and most robust periods at The Linux Foundation itself. So far in 2018, the organization has added a new member every single day, with Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), one of The Linux Foundation’s fastest growing projects, announcing 38 new members this week.

Successful projects depend on members, developers, standards, and infrastructure to develop products that the market will adopt, said Zemlin, and The Linux Foundation facilitates this success in many ways. It works downstream helping industry, government, and academia understand how to consume and contribute to open source. At the same time, it works upstream to foster development and adoption of open source solutions, showing industries how to create value and generate reinvestment.

During his keynote, Zemlin spoke with Sarah Novotny, Open Source Strategy Lead at Google Cloud, about Google’s support of open source development. In the talk, Novotny announced that Google Cloud is transferring ownership and management of the Kubernetes project’s cloud resources to CNCF community contributors and is additionally granting $9 million over three years to CNCF to cover infrastructure costs associated with Kubernetes development and distribution. Novotny, who noted that the project is actively seeking new contributors, said this commitment will provide the opportunity for more people to get involved.

In the words of Zemlin, let’s go solve big problems, one person, one project, one industry at a time.

/by

Wanted: 10,000 Developers to Electrify the Planet

, ,

Open source has transformed industry after industry – now it is time for the power and energy sectors. Be a part of this movement and join us in at our first LF Energy Summit.

Join us on October 24th for the first LF Energy Summit, Edinburgh, UK.

In mid-July, The Linux Foundation launched LF Energy with support from RTE, Europe’s biggest transmission power systems operator, the Electric Power Research Institute, the European Network of Transmission System Operators, and others, in a bid to speed technological innovation and accelerate the energy transition across the planet. System operators, and the utilities that bring electricity to our homes, businesses, and soon our vehicles are on the frontlines in the battle against climate change.

Open source has transformed industry after industry – now it is time for the power and energy sectors. Be a part of this movement and join us in at our first LF Energy Summit, co-located with Open Source Summit Edinburgh.

The digitalization of energy heralds the advent of a new age for electricity that will be organized around highly flexible and heterogeneous energy devices and sensors requiring advanced communication capacity between systems, people, and things. Up until now, power systems have been an asset-heavy industry (think coal-fired plants, transformers, and substations) with centralized control and one-way communication. The future grid is composed of distributed energy resources that can be aggregated and shaped to provide reliable electricity when variable resources like the sun and wind are orchestrated with battery storage to shape loads and shave peaks. The complexity of this cannot be managed with top-down control but will require highly sophisticated, automated, and self-aware digital intelligence spanning previously distinct sectors such as transportation, telecommunications, banking, and built environments.

Right now, while we are far from plug-and-play, the history of open source shows that shared digital “plumbing” holds the key to interoperability. For example, if you look at the scaling of the Internet, it is clear that operating systems like the Linux OS made hardware agnostic and enabled the abstraction of complexity. We need an analogous power systems operating system  for electricity if we are to meet global challenges, which is why we are gathering for the first LF Energy Summit as a part of the Open Source Summit Europe in Edinburgh.

The day will be divided into two parts. In the morning we will have the opportunity to hear from inspiring leaders in both the energy and open source fields, including:

  • Jim Zemlin, Executive Director, The Linux Foundation
  • Olivier Grabette, Deputy CEO, RTE
  • Shuli Goodman, Executive Director, LF Energy
  • Laurent Schmidt, Secretariat General, ENTSO-E

We will discuss the challenges and opportunities, as well as a high-level primer describing the grid of the future. In the second half of the day, we will “Get Energized” via facilitated and designed discussions in small and large groups leading us to a road map with actionable outcomes.There will be highly skilled facilitators and a visual recorder to sharpen our vision and plot next steps.

This is an evolving event – meaning we do not have it all figured out! We need your input. The event is designed for CDOs, CTOs, CIOs, power system engineers, grid architects, cloud architects, network architects, business analysts, market makers, and developers interested in transforming the future of energy. Everyone is welcome. Be prepared for the journey! We will travel far together.

Don’t miss out – register today for the LFE Summit or add it to your existing Open Source Summit registration for a discounted price of $200.00 USD.

Make sure to subscribe to the LF Energy Newsletter to follow the project.

See these NEW videos to learn more:

LF Energy: The future of energy is shared technology innovation.
Let’s Coordinate: An LF Energy open source workflow platform.

/by

Mårten Mickos on How Open Source Has Changed Our World

, ,

Transparency, openness and collaboration will never go out of fashion, says HackerOne’s Mårten Mickos.

Mårten Mickos has been around the open source world for a long time. He has seen the early days when open source was not taken very seriously, but now he is heading HackerOne, a company that’s building a massive community of white hat hackers to help companies create secure systems. Security and open source might seem like different worlds, but Mickos sees strong influences from one to the other.

Mårten Mickos, CEO of HackerOne

Today, open source has become the de facto software development model, but it has not always been that way.  “In 2001, when I joined my MySQL as its CEO, people didn’t believe in open source. It looked cute, like a toy. We looked like a small startup. They didn’t have the courage to follow us, but slowly and surely it started growing,” said Mickos.

Now the question is not who is using open source but who is not using it. 

Open source impact

Many people may see the benefits of open source from a technological perspective, but open source has had a deeper impact on people, culture, and our society.

“One of the greatest benefits of open source is that it has created a model where smart people who disagree with each other can collaborate with each other. It’s easy to collaborate if we agree, but open source enables collaboration even when people disagree,” Mickos said. “That is the true beauty of this model.”

A common myth about open source is that it survives out of altruism and selfless work by some community members. It might have been true in the beginning, but it’s not true anymore. “It’s not dependent on any charity. It’s not dependent on altruism. It’s not dependent on friendship. It’s not dependent on being kind. I mean, hopefully we are kind and friends, but it’s not dependent on it,” said Mickos, “It’s so smartly built that even as we are yelling and screaming at each other, we can still get work done.”

Open source is powerful but that doesn’t mean it will survive without effort. Like any other component of our civilization, it takes work. “We have to educate everybody, like any civilization needs to keep educating the population on what’s important. You educate them about history, language, mathematics, and other things. We have to do that and the new generation will completely get it,” he said.

Open source and security

Open source is known for being more secure than proprietary technology, but there is no magic there either. Just openness and hard work. “It’s more secure than closed source because you are developing it in the open. Your code is subject to the scrutiny of everybody, and I think it has been scientifically shown to be correct,” he said.

Another factor that contributes to the security of open source is the fact that the community is not afraid of talking about its problems. “It also means we know about all the problems in open source. You might think there are a lot of problems, a lot of serious problems, but as a percentage of the total number of lines of code, I would argue that open source is much more secure than closed source because when there is a vulnerability or a weakness in open source software, everybody will know about it. On the contrary, if there is something like that in closed source, it is kept secret and not fixed,” he said.

Mickos thinks the security industry can learn something from open source. “It can learn how to better collaborate on vital initiatives,” he said.

Conclusion

Today, our world is powered by open source. New technologies are arriving and new business models are evolving, yet, proprietary software will persist.

When asked if our future will be powered by open source, Mickos replied, “Transparency, openness and collaboration will never go out of fashion. It’s also true that every now and then, evolution will go backwards; it will be less open, less collaborative. But open source is an unstoppable force. It will come back and break those models and bring back collaboration, openness and sharing.”

Mickos concluded with these words, “I don’t think we can change it because we are humans and our evolution has made us such. Every now and then, there will be self-centered people driven by their own desire, driving us in a different direction so they can be in power, but then we come back. We are bigger in numbers, we never give up and it is the most productive way to build and sustain a society. That’s what we’re here on this planet to do.”

/by

Diversity Empowerment Summit Highlights Importance of Allies

, ,
allies for inclusion

Diversity Empowerment Summit provides insights, ideas, and examples to help open source projects and professionals adopt inclusive practices.

Diversity and inclusion are hot topics as projects compete to attract more talent to power development efforts now as well as build their ranks to carry the projects into the future. The Diversity Empowerment Summit co-located with Open Source Summit coming up in Vancouver August 29-31, will offer key insights to help your project succeed in these endeavors.

Although adoption of diversity and inclusion policies is generally seen as simply the right thing to do, finding good paths to building and implementing such policies within existing community cultures continues to be challenging. The Diversity Empowerment Summit, however, provides hard insights, new ideas, and proven examples to help open source professionals navigate this journey.

Nithya Ruff, Senior Director, Open Source Practice at Comcast

Nithya Ruff,  Senior Director, Open Source Practice at Comcast, and member of the Board of Directors for The Linux Foundation, says “the mission of open source communities to attract and retain diverse contributors with unique talent and perspectives has gathered momentum, but we cannot tackle these issues without the support of allies and advocates.” Ruff will be moderating a panel discussion at the conference examining the role of allies in diversity and inclusion and exploring solid strategies for success.

Along with Erik Riedel of Dell EMC, Ruff will also present “Everyday Opportunities for Inclusion & Collaboration.” In this talk, the speakers will share specific examples and stories illustrating some less obvious opportunities for communication, networking, mentoring, and collaboration encountered in  on-the-job activities as well as at events and forums.

We talked with Ruff about the importance of the Diversity Empowerment Summit as well as some of the upcoming  highlights.

The Linux Foundation: Why is the Diversity Empowerment Summit important?

Nithya Ruff: A big part of open source is the developers who feel included and valued as human beings. And the Diversity Empowerment Summit helps us celebrate and discuss how we can continue to create inviting, inclusive and healthy communities. This conference welcomes talks on growing our community to practices for inclusion to being allies to people who are under-represented in our communities.  It is great to see The Linux Foundation make valuable space and time for this track every year.

The Linux Foundation: Who should attend?

Ruff: Everyone who cares about the health of the community should attend.  Projects are successful because of the people behind it and if you are interested in creating a sustainable project, you should attend these sessions.

The Linux Foundation: What are you looking forward to at the Summit?

Ruff: This year, I am excited about the panel on building allies as it brings some great speakers in one session to the audience. I’m looking forward to truly great speakers like our keynote speaker, Jennifer Cloer, and others like Tameika Reed, Deb Nicholson, Chloe Condon, Lucy Wyman, and Guy Martin.

There are also many terrific talks about welcoming and helping new contributors to open source, which is critical considering women comprise less than 10 percent of open source community members and many underrepresented communities account for less than 5 percent of open source community members.

Check out the complete schedule and register now to attend the Diversity Empowerment Summit at Open Source Summit in Vancouver.

Sign up to receive updates on Open Source Summit:

/by