VMware and Pivotal Software announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement under which VMware will acquire Pivotal for a blended price per share of $11.71, comprised of $15 per share in cash to Class A stockholders, and the exchange of shares of VMware’s Class B common stock for shares of Pivotal Class B common stock held by Dell Technologies, at an exchange ratio of 0.0550 shares of VMware Class B stock for each share of Pivotal Class B stock. In total, the merger consideration represents an enterprise value for Pivotal of $2.7 billion. Following the close of the transaction, VMware will be positioned to deliver a comprehensive enterprise-grade Kubernetes-based portfolio for modern applications. (Arcweb)
Microsoft, Intel and Others are Doubling Down on Open Source Linux Security
Microsoft is continuing its broad ongoing push to contribute with open source projects, joining the newly created Confidential Computing Consortium, an initiative launched by The Linux Foundation which aims to provide better security for data which is actually in use by apps on a computer, or in the cloud (as opposed to at rest, or not being used).
Microsoft is far from alone in this endeavor, and is joined by Intel in the consortium, along with ARM, Baidu, Google Cloud, IBM, Red Hat and other tech giants. (Source: TechRadar)
TODO Open Source Guide: Marketing Open Source Projects
Learn how to promote an open source project to attract contributors, find users, and raise the profile and credibility of your project. Do this while simultaneously growing your own open source credibility within the project community, attracting talented developers, and promoting your open source projects and services. (Source: TODO Group)
From 0 To 6000: Celebrating One Year Of Proton, Valve’s Brilliant Linux Gaming Solution
This week, Valve’s Proton turns one year old, and it has unarguably propelled the notion of gaming on Linux further than I would have thought possible. It has led to noticeably more mainstream press and YouTube coverage of desktop Linux, including this gem from Linus Tech Tips titled “Linux Gaming Finally Doesn’t Suck.” (Forbes)
IBM joins Linux Foundation AI to promote open source trusted AI workflows
AI is advancing rapidly within the enterprise — by Gartner’s count, more than half of organizations already have at least one AI deployment in operation, and they’re planning to substantially accelerate their AI adoption within the next few years. At the same time, the organizations building and deploying these tools have yet to really grapple with the flaws and shortcomings of AI– whether the models deployed are fair, ethical, secure or even explainable.
Before the world is overrun with flawed AI systems, IBM is aiming to rev up the development of open source trusted AI workflows. As part of that effort, the company is joining the Linux Foundation AI (LF AI) as a General Member. (ZDNet)
Western Digital’s Long Trip from Open Standards to Open Source
Western Digital, the company known to most as a seller of hard drives, has gone all-in on open source. While not a stranger to open source software — and far from being the first hardware company to embrace open source — it recently became a pioneer by diving headfirst into the uncharted waters of open source silicon. And it seems fitting for a company started in the 1970s as a chipmaker. (Data Center Knowledge)
What Twitter Taught Me About Open Source
I’ve managed to successfully wean myself from Instagram and Facebook, but I just can’t quit Twitter. No, I don’t stay because of the constant virtue signaling and politicking, but rather because of what I learn. For example, I’ve been in open source for nearly 20 years, and just this past week folks on Twitter taught me (or reminded me) of some important principles. (Tech Republic)
Google Open-Sources Gesture Tracking AI For Mobile Devices
Google previewed the new technique at the 2019 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in June and recently implemented it in MediaPipe, a cross-platform framework for building multimodal applied machine learning pipelines to process perceptual data of different modalities (such as video and audio). Both the source code and an end-to-end usage scenario are available on GitHub. (Source: VentureBeat)
Knoppix 8.6 First Wide Public Release To Abandon Systemd
Version 8.6 of the popular Debian-derived Linux distribution Knoppix was released on Sunday, rebasing the distribution on Debian 10 (Buster)—released on July 9—with select packages from Debian’s testing and unstable branches to enable support for newer graphics hardware. TechRepublic reports, “The still controversial startup systemd, which has been a little outrageous due to security vulnerabilities just recently, has been integrated in Debian since Jessie [8.0], and has been removed since Knoppix 8.5. I bypass hard dependencies on the boot system with my own packages.” (Source: TechRepublic)
Gerald Pfeifer Appointed Chair Of The openSUSE Board
Seasoned open source leader Gerald Pfeifer has been appointed chair of the openSUSE board. Pfeifer’s new responsibilities will begin immediately and run concurrently with his role as SUSE CTO in EMEA. Current chair Richard Brown, who was appointed in July 2014, is resigning after five years of service for a combination of personal reasons and his desire to focus on his career at SUSE, from where he will continue his contribution to openSUSE. Brown and Pfeifer will work closely together to transition responsibilities.