Benefits of Kubernetes on bare metal cloud infrastructure

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March 3, 2020

Bare metal cloud infrastructure is being introduced to run 5G applications in containers. This is a natural development of the shift the industry is going through from virtualized network functions to cloud native applications. But what are the benefits of running Kubernetes on a bare metal cloud infrastructure compared to a virtualized infrastructure?

In the center of cloud native technology development is CNCF, an open source community driving the adoption of the cloud native paradigm across industries by fostering collaboration between the industry’s top developers, end users and vendors. Since CNCF is such a huge community, the focus on the telecom industry has been limited. But now with the formation of the Telecom User Group (A Special Interest Group) within CNCF, Ericsson has taken a leading role in telecom related discussions in the community.

[Source: Ericsson]

Open source is getting bigger and richer, says SUSE

By

Swapnil Bhartiya

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March 3, 2020

Melissa Di Donato, CEO of open source software company SUSE, was at a tech summit recently where every other attendee was an executive from a proprietary, closed-source software company. “They were all talking about the importance of crowd-sourcing, of community building, so I raised my hand and said: ‘Wait a minute – are you aware there is a whole world out there and it’s called open source? Do you even know what open source is?'”

The other execs were a bit perplexed, she remembers. “These people didn’t realize how much potential the technology has,” she says. “Open source is shaking the world, and it’s coming like an earthquake.” The idea of open-source software goes back decades, but in the past decade or so, and in particular with the advent of cloud computing, it has become a core part of the business technology landscape.

[Source: ZDNet]

Linux Foundation Partners with Open Source Group on Code Security Audits

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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March 2, 2020

To continue to grow the security and reputation of open source software by the businesses around the world, the Linux Foundation recently partnered with the Open Source Technology Improvement Fund (OSTIF) to fund more software security audits on a wide range of open source projects.

The strategic partnership, which will augment the Linux Foundation’s previous work in providing code security audits, enables OSTIF to share its related code-auditing resources through the Linux Foundation’s Community Bridge funding and support organization for developers and projects. OSTIF is a nonprofit group that works to connect open source security projects with needed funding and logistical support, while the Linux Foundation hosts a myriad of open source projects and encourages open source collaboration around the world.

[Source: Channel Futures]

Kali Linux evolution: What’s next for the open source pentesting Linux distro?

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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March 2, 2020

When the popular security-focused BackTrack Linux distribution was redesigned from the ground up and given the name Kali Linux nearly seven years ago, I remember thinking that it was a fantastic name – and fitting, too.

I had the vivid image of the many-handed Hundu goddess of time and change in my mind, with her typical fierce expression and wielding a weapon/tool in each hand, and made an instant association with the newly Debian-based distro containing hundreds of preinstalled penetration testing programs. As it turned out, its developers did not have the goddess in mind – or anything else, really – when they chose the new name, but the association stuck with me as I continued to follow the distro’s development through the years.

[Source: Help Net Security]

What Are The Most Common Issues With Free Open Source Software?

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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March 2, 2020

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has become a prominent aspect of the new age global economy. It has been analysed that FOSS makes up about 80-90% of any particular piece of today’s software. It is to be noted that software is an increasingly-critical resource in almost all businesses, both public and private. But, there are many issues with FOSS, according to the Linux Foundation.

The Linux Foundation established the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) in 2014 as a part of which its members gave funding and support for FOSS projects, which are important to worldwide data and information infrastructure. In 2015, CII finished the Census Project (“Census I”) to find out which software packages in the Debian Linux distribution had been the most important to the kernel’s overall security.

[Source: Analytics India Magazine]

X.Org/FreeDesktop.org Is Looking For Sponsors

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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March 2, 2020

The cost of cloud hosting — or in particular hosting their own GitLab instance and running continuous integration (CI) support for FreeDesktop.org projects — is putting financial strain on the X.Org Foundation. The X.Org Foundation estimates their annual hosting expenses this year to top out at 75k USD and at 90k USD for 2021. The gitlab.freedesktop.org hosting is done within the Google Cloud. This cost doesn’t include that of any continuous integration runners but just the expenditures from storing and serving build artifacts and images from the cloud to external runners.

Due to rising costs and not having any guaranteed recurring sponsors while the current hosting costs being unsustainable, the X.Org Foundation may need to disable continuous integration (CI) functionality in the months ahead if they don’t obtain additional funding.

[Source: Phoronix]

What does it take to commit to 100% open source?

By

Swapnil Bhartiya

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March 2, 2020

Open source is arguably the most successful approach to developing and distributing business-critical infrastructure software. By removing all barriers to entry and giving developers absolute freedom, open source allows organizations to take software and implement it across their businesses in a truly seamless and customizable way. This can then lead to exponential adoption growth, which in turn powers the rapid feedback loops required of high-velocity, collaborative, community-driven development of feature-rich software.

Open source can also strengthen security hardening, ecosystem integrations, extensibility frameworks and other essential enterprise capabilities, while also maintaining high quality and reliability. While experts in the database market in particular agree that open source is becoming the norm, the question remains, just how open is this sector’s open-source software?

[Source: SDTimes.com]

Arm, Aeler Select IoT Linux Platform FoundriesFactory

By

Swapnil Bhartiya

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March 2, 2020

Open OS platform provider Foundries.io has announced that it has garnered significant traction for FoundriesFactory across several market segments, including factory automation, robotics, WiFi security, and global asset tracking.

FoundriesFactory is a secure, customizable embedded Linux platform that enables customers, regardless of size, to develop, deploy and maintain secure Internet of Things and Edge devices for life. It offers support for a range of SoCs, SoMs and single board computers as the starting point for customers to deliver, deploy and maintain software on their own hardware.

[Source: TFiR]

InnerSource: How Open Source Best Practices Are Helping Enterprise Development Teams

By

Swapnil Bhartiya

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March 2, 2020

Open source legend has it that Tim O’Reilly coined the term InnerSource back in 2000. While O’Reilly confesses that he doesn’t remember coming up with the term, he does remember recommending to IBM late in the 1990’s that they adopt some of the elements that make open source magic, namely — “collaboration, community, and low barriers to entry for those who wanted to share with each other.”

Today, more and more organizations are adopting InnerSource as a strategy, leveraging the methods and philosophy that power open source and make it great, to improve their internal development processes. InnerSource is the strategy incorporating open source methods into the development processes of commercial companies, and using them to create and publish proprietary software.

[Source: Security Boulevard]

No More WhatsApp! The EU Commission Switches To ‘Signal’ For Internal Communication

By

Swapnil Bhartiya

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February 27, 2020

In a move to improve the cyber-security, EU has recommended its staff to use open source secure messaging app Signal instead of the popular apps like WhatsApp.

Signal is an open source secure messaging application with end to end encryption. It is praised by the likes of Edward Snowden and other privacy activists, journalists and researchers. We’ve recently covered it in our ‘open source app of the week‘ series. This is part of EU’s new cybersecurity strategy. There has been cases of data leaks and hacking against EU diplomats and thus policy is being put in place to encourage better security practices.

[Source: It’s FOSS]