Open Source

If, like me, you are franticly searching for a replacement for Google Reader, Fabian Scherschel over at the H Open has a great rundown of currently available alternatives, both closed and open source. Google announced that they would be shuttering the popular news aggregation service back in March, and now that the end of June is nearly here, many of us will be finding a new place to get our news fix. The H Open lists 17 options that encompass a just about any direction you want to take with how you read your news. The list is separated into three sections: hosted services, desktop clients, and command line feed readers. Hosted: NewsBlur Feedly Netvibes The Old Reader Tiny Tiny RSS selfoss ownCloud Gregarius Feed on Feeds . Fever Desktop: Liferea Akregator Blam RSSOwl RSS Guard Command Line: Newsbeuter Snownews There are many more, to be sure, but Fabian does a pretty good job summing up the main players. For me, I am still undecided on what to do. If I only read the news on the desktop, I would probably be perfectly happy with Newsbeuter. I live in the command line all day, and I've already put the time into finding a good colorscheme and font for easy readability and minimum eye strain. However, sometimes I want to read on my tablet or phone as well, so then I'd want to get a hosted solution. Obviously the best feature of Google Reader was the API, and the ability for anyone to write a great client. This meant that I never needed to see the Google Reader interface, and judging from the UI in some of the current crop of web based readers, I think I would be perfectly happy not to see them either. On the other hand, the situation with Google Reader shutting down is a good example of why we should be wary of online services. The perfect solution might be a self hosted aggregator, kept on a server I run in my house. Well, a guy can dream, can't he? What direction are you leaning? Drop me a line in the comments, I'd love to hear some where's and why's on your next RSS reader. Related Activities Comments (0) Post a Comment Ask a Question Related Software rss (add alternative, post review) Related Blog Posts Shape Up! Google and Other Tech Firms React to Government Snoops (post comment) Google to Deliver Two Chrome Mobile Events This Month (post comment) Google Tests In-App Payments Functionality for Chrome (post comment)

One of OSI's main activities at present is to switch governance to become a member-based organization. Towards that goal, earlier this year we held an Affiliate election, and we are now announcing our first Individual Members Election. This is an important step towards fully empowering OSI's membership, and we expect this to be just the first election that will gradually replace all Board members with elected candidates from our Affiliates and Individual Members. Assuming all current Directors serve out their maximum terms, the Board will be fully member-elected by 2016. This election is open to all individual members of the OSI, both as candidates and as voters. Any individual member can nominate themselves as a candidate, and when the election itself starts, all individual members will get an email explaining the voting process. Nominating Nominations are now open. If you are an individual member, and would like to nominate yourself, please follow the election guidelines. You have until July 5th to self-nominate as a candidate for the election. Voting If you are an individual member and would like to vote on this election, just pay attention for the voting emails that will be sent on July 8. It will allow you to vote on the election, through our voting system. Becoming a member And if you are not an individual member yet, please consider registering for individual membership. Your participation is fundamental to make the OSI more community oriented and to better represent your interests. You can join in as a member now and still vote or become a candidate on this election as long as you join before nominations close. Thank you!

There was a story recently that Red Hat would replace MySQL with MariaDB in the next version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Actually, Red Hat isn't saying yet which DBMS, or any other specific program, will be shipping in RHEL 7.

Today is the first day of coding for our 9th year of the Google Summer of Code program. This year 1,192 students will spend the next 12 weeks writing code for 177 different open source organizations. We are excited to see the contributions this year’s students will make to the open source community. For more information on important dates for the program please visit our timeline. Stay tuned as we will highlight some of the new mentoring organizations over the next few months. Have a great summer! By Carol Smith, Open Source Programs

The first beta of version 4.11 of the KDE Software Collection, also referred to by its actual version number of 4.10.80, has been released and brings experimental Wayland support to KWin and more Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces

In this edition of the Open Recall, MIMO at the TDF, openSUSE 13.1's second milestone, the latest Parted Magic, Minecraft cloned in assembler, LibreOffice's code cleaning, playing Pong with WebRTC and GStreaming on iOS devices

Red Hat has made a name for itself as the only U.S.-based public company that is exclusively focused on open source, and it has proven that its Linux-focused strategy is very profitable. In fact, the company is the first open source-focused company to hit the $1 billion revenue mark. That said, though, Wall Street has been questioning where else the company might be able to generate revenues in the future. And, it's becoming clear that Red Hat sees cloud computing as the key to the next steps in its evolution. The company's OpenStack-focused strategy is getting more robust by the minute.  Recently Network World reported on Red Hat Summit, noting the following: "At the company’s annual Summit in Boston this month, Red Hat made what Red Hat executive vice president of products and technology Paul Cormier said was the biggest announcement in the nine years that the company has been running the show. Integrating OpenStack into its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system, the company hopes, will propel it through the next decade of growth."  This is no small matter for Red Hat. The company has done well getting its corporate clients to renew subscriptions for its Linux support offerings, but growth has slowed at the company and cloud computing is all the rage now, with OpenStack rapidly gaining momentum. As reported here last week, the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform can serve as the foundation for  cloud users who are seeking to build an OpenStack-powered cloud. And Red Hat has also announced Cloud Infrastructure, which can support organizations moving from traditional data center virtualization to OpenStack-powered clouds.  Meanwhile, as we've reported, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) blog recenlty confirmed that the AWS Free Usage Tier, which lets users run applications and operating systems in the cloud, now includes 750 hours of Red Hat Enterprise Linux usage. This is a good tire-kicking opportunity for those who aren't quite ready to commit to an RHEL deployment. The question everyone is asking is whether Red Hat can find the same kind of success in the cloud computing arena as it has found on the Linux front. The key to finding cloud success will be support, and support is what Red Hat is good at. Red Hat's business model has always been organized around charging for subscription support and its cloud offerings are also subscription-based. Red Hat is strategizing around OpenStack at a time when a couple of high-profile supporters of the platform are showing signs of wavering. In a major announcement from Dell Computer last month, the company announced that its public cloud ecosystem and strategy will be centered on partners Joyent, ScaleMatrix and ZeroLag, and will emphasize recent acquisition Enstratius. Some saw this announcement as a retreat from OpenStack. Meanwhile, IBM--which has been firmly in the OpenStack camp--is spending billions to buy SoftLayer for its cloud computing infrastructure tools and services.  Related Activities Comments (0) Post a Comment Ask a Question Related Blog Posts Report: Red Hat to Switch Up MySQL for MariaDB (post comment) Red Hat Debuts Linux-based OpenStack Offering (post comment) Apache CloudStack 4.1.0 Cloud Computing Platform Arrives (post comment)

Mozilla, which is well-known for its dedication to an open web and open standards, has just announced the launch of the Mozilla Science Lab, a new initiative that it is targeting "to help researchers around the world use the open web to shape science’s future." It's worth reading the Mozilla post about this new project. Correctly, the post characterizes scientific practices as stuck in a bygone area, particularly when it comes to sharing and collaboration. According to the announcement of Mozilla Science Lab: "Scientists created the web — but the open web still hasn’t transformed scientific practice to the same extent we’ve seen in other areas like media, education and business. For all of the incredible discoveries of the last century, science is still largely rooted in the 'analog' age. Credit systems in science are still largely based around “papers,” for example, and as a result researchers are often discouraged from sharing, learning, reusing, and adopting the type of open and collaborative learning that the web makes possible." "The Science Lab will foster dialog between the open web community and researchers to tackle this challenge. Together they’ll share ideas, tools, and best practices for using next-generation web solutions to solve real problems in science, and explore ways to make research more agile and collaborative." The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is helping with funds for the Science Lab project, and it will be lead by Kaitlin Thaney, described as an "open science advocate." Among other achievements, Thaney founded the science program at Creative Commons.  Mozilla has served up a few different ways to follow this project: Learn more about the project at the Mozilla Science Wiki. Follow @MozillaScience and @kaythaney on Twitter. Follow the project’s progress on Kaitlin’s blog. Related Activities Comments (0) Post a Comment Ask a Question Related Software Mozilla (34 alternatives, post review) Related Blog Posts Shape Up! Google and Other Tech Firms React to Government Snoops (post comment) Mozilla's Johnathan Nightingale Has Big Things in Mind for Firefox (post comment) Firefox OS to Arrive at the Low End -- Then Spread Out (1 comment)

The US District of Utah has re-opened the SCO v IBM court case, six years after SCO filed for Chapter 11. The case has been resurrected because SCO's motion to re-open the case was wrongly denied

Irrespective of the details of the current revelations about US spying being provided by Edward Snowden in the Guardian, there is already a huge collateral...