FOSS Week in Review
It’s been a busy week for those in the FOSS realm — from sea-to-shining-sea, and even down South — with the Red Hat Summit going on in Boston, with Open Source Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and with preparations being finalized for the upcoming Texas Linux Fest in two months, among other things.
Let’s take these one at a time, shall we?
Red Hat, Samsung Team Up: While there has been a lot of oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over what’s been coming out of the Red Hat Summit in Boston this week, probably the most intriguing news to come out of the proceedings is that Red Hat and Samsung Electronics America “announced a strategic alliance to deliver the next generation of mobile solutions for the enterprise,” according to Red Hat’s PR department.
Or you could read Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols report in ZDNet, which outlines the agreement pretty well and presents a clearer picture than the press release (thanks, Steven). While it’s all mobile all the time, this agreement could punctuate the already long sentence, with appropriate commas and semicolons, that is now open source and mobile technology. We’ll keep watching this, but it sure is an interesting partnership between two technology giants.
Meanwhile, Out West . . . : With significantly less fanfare than what’s coming out of Boston, Open Source Bridge — the conference for open source citizens — continues on its merry way every June in Portland, Oregon. Conveniently, OSB has been keeping folks at the event, and those who couldn’t make it (raising my hand here), up to date with a running blog on their site.
Give it a read, and if you have a chance to make it next year, you should check it out.
TXLF Keynoter Chosen: While the Call for Papers for Texas Linux Fest closes on Sunday (so get those talk proposals in, people!), the folks flying the FOSS flag in the Lone Star State have chosen Joan Touzet of the Apache Foundation as the keynote speaker.
Joan will speak on the topic “Evolve or Perish! Improving OSS Communities The Apache Way.” From the summary, we get a good idea of what to expect: “Change is an inevitable part of growing an open source community. In this talk, learn how one OSS community (Apache CouchDB) reinvigorated itself from a series of seemingly insurmountable challenges. With lessons learned from video gaming, theatre and music, CouchDB rediscovered The Apache Way and turned a toxic environment into a positive, supporting place for positive change.”
Of course, registration for Texas Linux Fest is now open, and the event runs from Aug. 21-23 in San Marcos, Texas. For more information, visit the conference website.
Have You Driven Ubuntu Lately? It appears that Ford is ready to use Ubuntu in its self-driving cars, according to a report from Softpedia. Of course, autonomous automobiles automatically autotraipsing on the autobahn is not a new concept, but the fact Ford might be using Ubuntu in their cars actually is an interesting development for our friends on the Isle of Man. Clearly it remains to be seen whether the American automaker goes with Canonical on this one.
A Few More Things: Let’s see, what else? A few other items worth mentioning include the following: SCALE 14x registration opened this week, so now the first-of-the-year Linux/FOSS event in 2016 worldwide (FOSDEM is in February next year, and linux.conf.au is the last weekend of January 2016) is ready to take names for badges. Let’s have a moment of silence for Fedora 20 Heisenbug — the last Fedora release with a release name, sadly — which reaches the end of life on Wednesday, according to the Fedora Project. This also means that distros based on Fedora 20, like Korora and specifically Korora 20 “Peach,” are also reaching end of life, too. And Ubuntu 15.10 Wile E. Coyote…I mean Wily Werewolf…released its Alpha 1 version this week, for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Kylin and Ubuntu Cloud. If you’re so inclined, go ahead and pick it up.
See you Wednesday
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Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero
Thanks for the complement.
Steven