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Why should you hire an offshore developer?

There has been a long lasting discussion about the outsourcing: Why American companies should give the job to the people from other countriesand fire American programmers even when the formers’ wages are lower so the same solution will be several times cheaper?

In fact, they should not. Why should anyone fire his employee when he does the work pretty much well? That is unfair, at least.

Indeed, outsourcing is available on the highly competitive American market. High level of competition is normal as long as you demand quality products and want to keep prices low. Americans are driving Toyota, eating at Del Taco, wearing Adidas. How many of Americans’ everyday things had been through the whole production cycle, from research to design to manufacturing solely in the USA? So, why would businesses not want to outsource IT?

Actually, this is the reason why the “Why should I ever speak to the non-Americans?” sort of claims sound on the LinkedIn like crying sour grapes. This network had been designed exactly to help businesses find each other regardless their location and thus increase the opportunity for mutually profitable cooperation. You can either react on the offshore companies’ offers and accept them or just ignore the letters (or blacklist annoying people), but why claim?

What type of developer does the client need? The answer is quite simple: the one that the client finds suitable”, as Constantine’s wrote in his post: Both onshore and offshore development have strong and weak sides and so the choice does depend on what is crucial for you. You will have to choose between cost saving and communication through different time zones, cultural differences and corporate spirit, lower hourly rates and strong portfolios, look for relevant expertise and trusted teams etc.

However, you will be pretty amazed when you see how many people prefer to outsource IT solutions to e.g., Eastern Europe or India. They aim to find the smart guys who have the right expertise and offer their services for the lower price.

People and Competition. Talents drive the world and most of the IT engineers are talented. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel and other big companies that rely heavily on innovations need even more brilliant minds who do not only invent but also refine the technology until it turns into a ready product. This is why, big companies offer interns and engineers great packages which little companies are hardly ever to beat. So when you hire an onshore developer you should be aware of higher wages due to big demand on the market.

Moreover, the people who know they can make a fortune with their innovative ideas found own companies and introduce their ideas to non-IT markets (Uber is a nice example here).

Economy, based on ideas and technologies. Any solution needs basic science (for understanding how it works), experience through experiments and you can never guess when and where the next big idea starts. For example, Estimote BLE beacons is a startup of Polish origin; DJI, one of the biggest drone makers is a Chinese startup. One more example is Looksery, a Ukrainian startup that made a real-time service for face effects. Earlier in September Snapchat had acquired it to improve its own service.

Also, not all companies get enough funding and while they are smart they also benefit from the world specialization when the head office is established in the USA or Western Europe, the development team and tech support resides in Ukraine, Poland or Serbia and client support is situated in India. However, people usually prefer not to advertise this fact.

Last but not least, Sergey Brin, Satya Nadella, Max Levchin, Andrew Grove, Jerry Yang – all these people have been either children of immigrants or came to the land of opportunities as adults and helped much to make Silicon Valley the most innovative place on the Earth while contributing to the increase of the standard of living of all Americans.

 

Can be outsourcing a problem? Is it a risky thing? Sure, this is the reality of the entrepreneurship. However, reputation matters.  The general rule is: do not buy the cheapest lunch wrapped as “a special custom solution” and you will be safe. As you could have noticed, many of the top companies’ reviews have four stars for costs. Your task is to find the company that is cheaper on your market and not on its native market. 

IBM Launches Bluemix Local, Aims to Bridge Public, Private Clouds With Data Center

Bluemix Local enables developers to write apps once and run across multiple platforms. IBM on Thursday launched a platform to build apps that work across public and private clouds as well as on-premise data centers via a service called Bluemix Local.

In a nutshell, Bluemix Local enables developers to write apps once and run across multiple platforms. The service is enabled by a technology called Relay that rings together data and services across multiple environments. For IBM, Bluemix Local is another effort to cater to hybrid cloud deployments,…

Read more at ZDNet News

Mirantis 7 Fuels OpenStack Kilo With Liberty

The new release of Mirantis’ OpenStack cloud platform, which bundles the Fuel toolkit for cloud deployment and management, focuses on stability. 

Mirantis has emerged in recent years as one of the leading vendors and contributors to the open-source OpenStack cloud platform. Today Mirantis is releasing its OpenStack 7.0 distribution, which bundles its Fuel toolkit for cloud deployment and management alongside common OpenStack components.

Read more at eWeek

How Much is Open Source “Worth?” Our New Report.

logo lf newCan the principles and practices of Linux be transferred to other industries? We at The Linux Foundation certainly think so and apparently so does the industry. Over the last few years every major technology category has been taken over by open source. Many of those Foundations and projects are being hosted at The Linux Foundation or at other organizations like the Apache Software Foundation and others. Much opinion has been written about the proliferation of open source projects, but not about the value.

We set out this year to do a simple code analysis to answer a question: What R&D value are the people who use these projects receiving?

Today we’ve released a report that attempts to answer this question, “A $5B Value: Estimating the Total Development Costs in Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects.” We’ve based our findings on a well known code analysis method called COCOMO to analyze all the code in our projects’ code repositories on Git. The results were impressive:

As of last month, 115,013,302 total lines of source code were present in Linux Foundation’s Collaborative Projects. Using the COCOMO model, we estimated the total amount of effort required to retrace the steps of collaborative development to be 41,192.25 person-years.  In other words, it would take a team of 1,356 developers 30 years to recreate the code base present in Linux Foundation’s current Collaborative Projects listed above. The total economic value of this work is estimated to be more than $5 billion. By comparison, the Linux kernel is 15 million lines of code.

According to Wired Magazine, 30 million lines of code is the equivalent of about 300 paperback books filled with programming language. So the code in our CPs would fill 1,200 books.

We think it’s clear the complexity present in modern day software requires an economic investment that is unlikely to be shouldered by one company alone. From cloud computing to new ways of developing and deploying applications, the future of computing is open and collaborative.

Just in the past year we have seen announcements of bitter rivals and competitors collaborating on the same projects. Examples include Cloud Foundry where HP, IBM, Pivotal and others are basing their strategic cloud platforms on this open project. Google itself has joined forces with other vendors to create the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. And the automakers are using Linux and collaboration with one another to build the next platform for IVI. Bitter rivals in the showroom but collaborators on the software that goes inside.

Software is “eating the world” and transforming industries like transportation and health care, yet the software industry itself is undergoing a massive shift. Services and speed to market are key, as well as managing the complexity inherent in managing and deploying all of these millions (or billions) lines of code. Open source is the keystone of both of these shifts. The value shown by this new report and the commercial adoption of this code paints a clear and compelling vision of the future.

The $5B in value has been created in just the last few years. We are hopeful that many of the hardest problems we are facing can be solved with this pace of innovation and economic creation.

 

Read more at News and Thoughts from Inside the Linux Foundation

Google’s Marshmallow Treats Now on Tap

google-logo-vectorNot so many years ago, the introduction of a major new Android release was more like looking six months or more into the future when your phone just might become eligible for upgrade. In the case of the Android 6.0 (“Marshmallow”) update announced yesterday, however, owners of recent Nexus devices can start downloading next week, and those who buy the newly announced Nexus devices — the LG-made, 5.2-inch, Nexus 5X, and Huawei’s 5.7-inch Nexus 6P — will feast on Marshmallow when the devices ship in October. The same goes for Google’s newly tipped Pixel-C tablet, due in December (see below). Based on Android 5.0 “Lollipop”, most other major Android devices that run Lollipop should be onboard before the end of the year or early 2016.

The Android 6.0 announcement was also a reflection of the past, or at least of the last few months of leaked information. Google seems less concerned these days about keeping its Android plans secret. It’s a long way from the level of transparency — let alone public input — of the desktop Linux world or projects like Tizen and Firefox OS where upcoming releases are pawed over in alphas and betas for many months. Yet, along with the faster release rollouts and substantial Android M Developer Previews, it’s a step in the right direction.

In addition to unveiling Marshmallow, Google announced an updated Chromecast 2.0 media streaming device with a new disk-like design and a 5GHz WiFi-ac radio. There’s also a new Chromecast Audio gizmo you can plug into any speaker’s 3.5mm audio jack to turn it into a mobile streamer. In short, for only $35, you get the key feature of a much more expensive smart speaker such as the Linux-based Sonos, which also had a major announcement this week with its impressive Sonos Play:5.

Marshmallow Pushes Power Management, Google Now

The first major Android release since last year’s Android 5.0 is not quite as transformative. However, it’s especially welcome to those who use Google Now voice activation or are continually searching for a power plug.

With Android 6.0, the Google Now assisted voice interface and digital concierge extends throughout the Android experience into apps. Google Now response time is improved, and a new “Now on Tap” contextual suggestion feature enables the personal assistant to improve its contextual snapshot of your situation by examining all currently open apps and content.

In other words, Google’s digital genie is getting smarter. Those who were wary of Google Now (or Siri and Cortana, for that matter), are likely to be even more creeped out. Yet, those who have been holding off letting Google take over even more of their lives until Google Now was more dependable, may want to give it a try.

In a nod toward privacy concerns, Android 6.0 breaks down the permissions for a given app’s access into various device features and data into more specific requests. For example, you can approve or deny access to specific functions at different times, and you can deny all permissions on the fly. A similar approach is found on the upcoming, ultra-secure Blackphone 2.

Whether or not you use Google Now or are vigilant enough to spend a lot of time fine-tuning your permissions, all Android 6.0 users can enjoy more foundational improvements. Android 6.0 offers improved notifications, faster scrolling, new window animations, and better developer support for Voice Actions, says Google.

A new “Doze” power management feature places your device into a deeper sleep mode than was possible before, thereby extending battery life during downtime. In addition, less power is used to keep “seldom used apps” at the ready, and devices that incorporate a new Android Sensor Hub chip can better track motion, thereby improving power management.

Android 6.0 adds support for the new USB Type-C port, which lets you plug in a cable facing up or down and charge your device much more quickly. It also has support for fingerprint-based security to reduce the necessity for passwords. The feature can be used for Android Pay, the Play Store, and supporting apps. As with the Android Sensor Hub, both features are found on the new Nexus devices.

Nexus 5X and 6P

Now that intrusive UI skins and bloatware are no longer as prevalent, the original goal of the Nexus program — to offer a pure, stock Android experience — has changed somewhat. Samsung, HTC, and others have toned down the intrusiveness of their add-ons, and fairly stock Android builds are increasingly common. Yet mindful of the revived competition from Apple’s iPhone, Google wants Android vendors to follow its lead in hardware and keep its apps and services in the forefront.

Nexus6PWith the latest two Nexus devices, Google appears to be putting the brakes on phablet expansion. Considering that last year’s 6-inch, Motorola-built Nexus 6 was one of the less popular Nexi, Google had first-time Nexus partner Huawei reduce the size of the new 6P to 5.7 inches. It’s still a phablet, but it’s thinner (7.3mm), lighter (10 grams), and easier to hold, according to a hands-on report from The Verge.

The lower-end, $380 Nexus 5X, which updates the similarly LG-built, and quite successful Nexus 5, increases the screen size, but only from the previous 5.0 to 5.2 inches. Gizmodo joined the general media lovefest regarding the new Google devices, praising the 5X for its light weight, easy grip, and impressive speed.

The 5.2-inch Nexus 5X offers HD resolution, while the 5.7-inch Nexus 6P features 2560×1440 pixels. The former runs on Qualcomm’s 1.8GHz hexacore Snapdragon 808 with two Cortex-A57 and four Cortex-A53 cores, while the Nexus 6P advances to an octacore Snapdragon 810, split equally between -A57 and –A53 cores. Both devices feature high-end, 12.3-megapixel, f/20 rear-facing cameras with 1.55µm pixel size. There are also front-facing cameras: 5-megapixel on the 5X, and 8-megapixel on the 6P.

The 6P ships with 3GB RAM and 128GB storage, while the 5X has 2GB and tops out at 32GB storage. Both devices offer a Nexus Imprint fingerprint reader, USB Type-C ports, and the Android Sensor Hub chip.

Google also unveiled a Google-branded tablet, which despite its Android 6.0 firmware, goes under the Chrome OS Pixel brand instead of Nexus. Like the touchscreen-enabled Chromebook Pixel laptop, the Pixel C 2-in-1 tablet is a high-end competitor for Windows-based devices such as Microsoft Surface.

The 10.2-inch, 2560 x 1800-pixel tablet runs on the latest Nvidia Tegra X1 processor. The optional, magnet-attached keyboard only slightly increases the 7.0mm profile. The Pixel C will sell for $499 plus $149 for the keyboard, with availability slated for December.

Despite the improvements in Android 6.0, and the Android at Work program, Android has a way to go before it’s taken as seriously as Chrome OS as a laptop or 2-in-1 for the enterprise. Security is one continuing issue. The bigger problem is the relative lack of Android apps that are optimized for 10-inch tablets.

The Linux Foundation Releases First-Ever Value of Collaborative Development Report

logo lf newThe Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced the immediate release of its first ever report that attempts to measure the estimated value of development costs in its Collaborative Projects. The report is titled “A $5 Billion Value: Estimating the Total Development Cost of Linux Foundation’s Collaborative Projects.”

Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. More than 500 companies and thousands of developers from around the world contribute to these open source software projects that are changing the world in which we live.

Read more at Linux Foundation

Taurinus X200: Now the Most ‘Free Software’ Laptop on the Planet

The Free Software Foundation has announced Libiquity’s Taurinus X200 laptop has met its strict requirements for being a free-software computer, including replacing Intel’s Management Engine firmware.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) take free software very seriously. To them, any proprietary software, hardware, or drivers is bad news. In practice, they’ve had to compromise. For many years it was hard to find open-source drivers for graphic cards and Wi-Fi chipsets. The code for these is now available, but a free software firmware replacement for the CPU wasn’t available. Until now. In Libiquity‘s Tarinux X200Intel’s Management Engine (ME) firmware and software has been removed.

Read more at ZDNet News

​Android Now Has 1.4bn Active Users, 300m on Lollipop

Android maintains its long lead as the world’s most widely used operating system. 

Apple has sold more than one billion iOS devices since 2007, Microsoft is chasing one billion Windows 10 devices by 2018, but Google is way ahead now with 1.4 billion active Android users. The new official figure for active Android users is up 400 million from the one billion active users it announced in June 2014 and the 900 million it counted in mid-2013.

Read more at ZDNet News

New Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities Fixed in Ubuntu 15.04, Users Urged to Update Now

linux-kernel-4-1-9All users of the Linux 4.1 LTS kernel series must update. After announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.2.2, Greg Kroah-Hartman has informed users of the Linux 4.1 LTS kernel branch that the ninth maintenance version is now available for download, urging them to update as soon as possible.

According to the diff from Linux kernel 4.1.8 LTS, which we announced last week, the Linux 4.1.9 LTS kernel is here with numerous networking improvements, especially for the IPv4 and IPv6 protocols…

MapR Technologies Unveils In-Hadoop Document Database

MapR integrates Web-scale enterprise storage and real-time database management and adds native JSON support to MapR-DB, its NoSQL database.

Big data and database platform provider MapR Technologies on Sept. 29 launched what it calls the IT industry’s first “in-Hadoop document database.”  MapR has developed a popular distribution of the open-source Apache Hadoop that combines a few features that its competitors do not have…

Read more at eWeek