Smarter Grid Solutions (SGS) has published its first open source project today, an OpenFMB device simulator, which it hopes will accelerate the development, testing and adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs) that use the OpenFMB messaging and data model. Interoperability framework OpenFMB was developed in response to the proliferation of DERs, such as wind and solar power, and the resulting, increasingly-critical need for greater cohesion and information sharing among these systems. (Source: SmartGrid Solutions)

Collabora today announced a new open-source project that promises to enable Linux-based desktop environments and window managers to be aware of VR (virtual reality). Sponsored by Valve, the xrdesktop project is developed by Collabora and designed to integrate into existing desktop environments like KDE and GNOME, making them running in virtual reality (VR) runtimes. It does that by rendering windows in 3D space, allowing users to manipulate them with VR controllers and headsets. (Source: Softpedia)

Google this week said it would for the first time natively support VMware workloads in its Cloud service, giving customers more options for deploying enterprise applications. The hybrid cloud service called Google Cloud VMware Solution by CloudSimple will use VMware software-defined data center (SDCC) technologies including VMware vSphere, NSX and vSAN software deployed on a platform administered by CloudSimple for GCP. (Source: Network World)

Amazon, Google, Microsoft And IBM Renew Pledge To Support Interoperability And Advance Open StandardsThe six companies and competitors—Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce— announced a renewed commitment to interoperability at the CMS Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference on Tuesday afternoon. The companies also are throwing their sizable weight behind recent interoperability proposed rules from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The CMS and ONC proposed rules focus on the use of HL7’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources as an open standard for electronically exchanging healthcare information. 

Microsoft has acquired BlueTalon, a start-up whose software can prevent people from accessing certain high-value data that companies keep. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. BlueTalon’s technology works with a variety of systems for storing data, including Hadoop, Spark and PostgreSQL. The software lets people run queries on sensitive data to make observations, while not revealing the actual underlying information. (Source: CNBC)

David McLaughlin, Product and Technical Head of Twitter Computing Platform, has announced that Twitter’s infrastructure would completely switch from Mesos to Kubernetes. “Twitter’s switch from its initial adoption of Mesos to the use of Kubernetes Native today proves again the assertion that Kubernetes has become an industry standard for container orchestration. More importantly, Twitter’s embrace of Cloud Native is expected to provide a classic learning model for the large-scale implementation of the cloud-native technology in production,” said  Zhang Lei, Senior Technical Expert on Alibaba Cloud Container Platform and Co-maintainer of Kubernetes Project. (Source: Alibaba Cloud Blog)

Netflix has joined the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) and will begin contributing to the OpenTimelineIO (OTIO) project originally created by Pixar, the ASWF said today. OTIO is an open-source API and interchange format for collaboration between story, editorial and production departments, making it easier to track changes in shot length, notify collaborators when shots are added or removed, and conform new renders into a cut. (Source: Studio Daily)

Jiří Kosina, the Czech Linux kernel developer in charge of the floppy drive driver, said he  no longer had working hardware. “Actual working physical floppy hardware is getting hard to find, and while Willy was able to test this, I think the driver can be considered pretty much dead from an actual hardware standpoint.  The hardware that is still sold seems to be mainly USB-based, which doesn’t use this legacy driver at all,” wrote Linus Torvalds on a discussion thread. (Source: ZDNet)

Arduino, one of the biggest open-source hardware and software ecosystem, has chosen Auth0 as the identity management platform of choice. With a global community of 30 million “makers”, Arduino will use Auth0 to replace its own Single Sign-On solution for all of its public-facing web properties, including Arduino Create and community apps. (Source: Yahoo! News)

If you use GitHub’s online services in a country facing US sanctions, you could be about to be kicked off all but the most basic offerings. GitHub this week told Anatoliy Kashkin, a 21-year-old Russian citizen who lives in Crimea, that it had “restricted” his GitHub account “due to US trade controls”. (Source: ZDNet, GitHub)