Why a popular open source library became closed source and commercially licensed

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December 16, 2019

In May this year, users of popular open source project FUSE for macOS noticed the source code for the latest update was missing. The project had become closed source and was no longer free for commercial use. But as The Reg discovered when we had a talk with its maintainer, there was a very good reason for that – and it’s not a good look for the many companies that used it.

FUSE stands for File System in Userspace and lets developers create a custom filesystem without writing code for the kernel. FUSE has a long history. It was created for Linux and ported to other Unix-like operating systems including FreeBSD and OpenSolaris. In 2007, Google released a port for Mac OS X as open source. In 2011 this was forked to become osxfuse, later renamed FUSE for macOS.

[Source: The Register]

How to use the Linux uniq command

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 13, 2019

In Linux, the uniq command can help find out the individual users who are logged into a given server, but it’s not a straightforward process. mYes, using the command on its own yields a list of who’s logged in, but it can list individual users more than once depending on what they’re doing.

There are ways to get around this by sorting the results of uniq so they deliver only once the names of all the users. This 2-Minute Linux Tip video by Network World’s Unix as a Second Language blogger Sandra Henry Stocker shows how to do just that.

[Source: ITWorld]

Eclipse Foundation forms working group for open source edge computing tech

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 13, 2019

The Eclipse Foundation today announced the formation of the Edge Native Working Group, which will drive the adoption of open source software for edge computing. Founding members include Adlink, Bosch, Edgeworx, Eurotech, Kynetics, Huawei, Intel, and Siemens. The working group plans to focus on creating an end-to-end software stack that will support deployments of today’s most transformative technologies, including the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and autonomous vehicles.

[Source: VentureBeat]

OpenJS Foundation Welcomes Electron As Its New Incubating Project

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 13, 2019

Open source web framework Electron is now part of the OpenJS Foundation‘s incubation program. The Foundation announced the development at Node+JS Interactive in Montreal on Wednesday.

Electron, the open source framework created for building desktop apps using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, is based on Node.js and Chromium. Additionally, it is widely used on many applications including Discord, Microsoft Teams, OpenFin, Skype, Slack, Trello, Visual Studio Code, and many more.

[Source: TFiR]

Twitter wants to fund an open source social media standard

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 13, 2019

Twitter has a new madcap scheme to try and deal with its growing population of propagandists, bots and common-or-garden jerks. The company is set to fund researchers looking to decentralise social media standards for a shared open-source alternative. The team name: Bluesky, which sounds a bit like a perpetual runner-up on The Apprentice to us.

“Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralised standard for social media,” wrote CEO Jack Dorsey on Twitter. “The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard.”

[Source: The Inquirer]

WireGuard to be merged with Linux net-next tree and will be available by default in Linux

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 13, 2019

On December 9, WireGuard announced that its secure VPN tunnel kernel code will soon be included in Linux net-next tree. This indicates, “WireGuard will finally reach the mainline kernel with the Linux 5.6 cycle kicking off in late January or early February!”, reports Phoronix. WireGuard is a layer 3 secure networking tunnel made specifically for the kernel, that aims to be much simpler and easier to audit than IPsec.

On December 8, Jason Donenfeld, WireGuard’s lead developer sent out patches for the net-next v2 WireGuard. “David Miller has already pulled in WireGuard as the first new feature in net-next that is destined for Linux 5.6 now that the 5.5 merge window is over,” the email thread mentions.

[Source: Packt Hub]

Nvidia Linux/BSD Graphics Driver Adds Support for Quadro T2000 with Max-Q Design

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 13, 2019

Nvidia released a new version of its long-lived proprietary graphics drivers for Linux, BSD, and Solaris-based operating systems that fixes various bugs from previous releases and adds support for a new GPU. Coming just three weeks after the Nvidia 440.36 driver, which introduced support for the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER graphics card, the Nvidia 440.44 graphics driver is here to add support for the Nvidia Quadro T2000 with Max-Q Design graphics card on Linux, BSD, and Solaris systems, as well as support for the __GL_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE environment variable for Vulkan apps on GNU/Linux systems.

[Source: Softpedia]

7 ways to remember Linux commands

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 12, 2019

Some Linux commands are very easy to remember. The names may have only a couple letters and they often relate directly to what you want to do – like cd for changing directories or pwd for displaying the present working directory. Others can be very difficult to remember, especially if what you want to do relies on using a series of options.

So, let’s look at some commands and tricks that can help you remember commands that do just what you need them to do and that make issuing those commands so much easier.

[Source: Network World]

VirtualBox 6.1 Officially Released with Linux Kernel 5.4 Support, Improvements

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 12, 2019

Oracle released today the final version of the VirtualBox 6.1 open-source and cross-platform virtualization software for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems. VirtualBox 6.1 is the first major release in the VirtualBox 6 series of the popular virtualization platform and promises some exciting new features, such as support for the latest and greatest Linux 5.4 kernel series, the ability to import virtual machines from the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, as well as enhanced support for nested virtualization.

[Source: Softpedia]

Google Cloud gets a new family of cheaper general-purpose compute instances

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Swapnil Bhartiya

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December 12, 2019

Google Cloud today announced the launch of its new E2 family of compute instances. These new instances, which are meant for general-purpose workloads, offer a significant cost benefit, with saving of around 31% compared to the current N1 general-purpose instances. The E2 family runs on standard Intel and AMD chips, but as Google notes, they also use a custom CPU scheduler “that dynamically maps virtual CPU and memory to physical CPU and memory to maximize utilization.”

[Source: TechCrunch]