Open-source News

Beelink SER 4 4800U X pairs a Ryzen 7 CPU with Manjaro Linux  Liliputing

Intel open-source engineers sent in their initial batch of "drm-intel-gt-next" updates to DRM-Next today destined for the Linux 5.19 merge window...

10 Reasons to Run Linux in Virtual Machines  It's FOSS

Microsoft discovers ‘several’ vulnerabilities affecting Linux desktop endpoints  The Record by Recorded Future

Microsoft discovers 'several' vulnerabilities affecting Linux desktop endpoints  The Record by Recorded Future

Incredibuild Launches Support for Yocto Project® - Bolstering Solution for Linux  PR Newswire

When I started at The Linux Foundation (LF) a few weeks ago, our research was one of the first things I dug into as I absorbed and learned what all the LF does to advance open source. Plus, since I started, it seems like the LF Research team has published a new report every few days. What a wealth of information!

So, imagine my surprise when I learned that LF Research has just been around for one year. April 15th marked their one year birthday – and they have set the bar high in their first year. 

But are they making a difference? I know my inclination, especially having spent time working in government, is that research reports get published and then sit on virtual shelves, never to be seen again. But LF Research uses the open source model of bringing people together to solve problems and to share the solutions widely. They engage LF members and the community, across the ecosystem, to answer the question, what are the tools we can create, together, for shared value. And, importantly, their reports focus on action items.

Over the past twelve months, LF Research has published 12 reports across a variety of topics and industry verticals. Each of them are presented below. Take time to look at their work, dig in deeper on topics that interest you, and then go, make a difference. 

And  stay tuned for more impactful research in 2022 on topics such as cybersecurity insights in the developer process, mentorship, a guide to enterprise open source, an updated state of the open source program office, a new jobs report, and much, much more.

The Carbon Footprint of NFTs – NFTs are simultaneously overhyped and met with both skepticism and a general lack of understanding on what they are and how they work. Serious concerns have also been raised over energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanisms. The report, just released last week, studies the concern that energy-intensive PoW consensus mechanisms for NFTs have a significant impact on the climate. The report details the changes taking place in the blockchain industry to address this issue, and describes howNFTs can have varying carbon footprints depending on their underlying technology stacks. Read it to learn how we can make a difference now.

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AI and Data in Open Source – The report reviews critical challenges in the open source AI ecosystem, such as the talent shortage, the trust gap for AI-enabled products, implementing and verifying trusted and responsible AI systems and processes, and more. But, with challenges are opportunities – opportunities that could change the world. Imagine how marrying AI with edge computing enhances performance and real-time decision making, or how CDLA licenses enable wider sharing and use of open data and the innovation that sparks in AI and machine learning models. The report also reviews how the LF AI & Data Foundation is empowering innovators and accelerating open source development. Read the full report and get excited!

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Paving the Way to Battle Climate Change: How Two Utilities Embraced Open Source to Speed Modernization of the Electric Grid – New technology has to be easy to use and workable to be adopted widely enough to make a difference – this holds true in electricity production. As the energy sector innovates to do its part to arrest climate change, it must find solutions to ease the adoption of new energy sources. As the electricity infrastructure modernizes, electricity is provided into the grid from a variety of sources – homes, business, wind and solar farms, etc. – rather than just from the local power plant. It goes from TSOs (main power lines) to DSOs (the “last mile” so to speak). Netherlands’ Alliander, a DSO, and France’s RTE, a TSO, contributed to three LF Energy projects (SEAPATH, CoMPAS, and OpenSTEF) so their electrical substations will become more modular, interoperable, and scalable. This report digs into the case studies to show how working together via open source enables them to develop more software solutions up to ten times faster than working on their own proprietary solutions.

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Open Source in Entertainment: How the Academy Software Foundation Creates Shared Value – Truth be told, when I try to explain open source software and what we foster at the LF among my friends and family, I use the Academy Software Foundation as an example. I mean, let’s be honest, movies are way more interesting and relatable than software supply chains or licensing. The ASWF also serves as a stellar example of why companies would want to join forces and collaborate on a common software solution – let’s share resources to make the foundational tools together and then innovate on top of that on our own. We can all grow together by raising the foundation we start at. This report is a story about industry competitors, who, by working together, have shared and developed the technologies used to create mesmerizing visual effects for professional studios and filmmaking enthusiasts alike. It should spark open source innovation in other industries too (see FINOS below). 

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Census II of Free and Open Source Software – Application Libraries – There are more software vulnerabilities out there than there are resources available to fix them, so knowing which ones are more widely utilized and which ones are used in more critical instances allows for better resource prioritization. Makes sense, right? This report builds on the Census I report, which focused on the lower level critical operating system libraries and utilities. It utilizes data from partner Software Composition Analysis (SCA) companies including Synk, the Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC), and FOSSA.  They looked at over half a million observations of Free and Open Source Software libraries used in production applications at thousands of companies.  See the data and read the report written by and see the data here. 

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The Evolution of the Open Source Program Office – The TODO Group is an LF project community to help organizations run successful and effective open source program offices or similar open source initiatives. This report was produced in partnership with them to provide rich insight, direction, and tools to implement an OSPO or an open source initiative with corporate, academic, or public sector environments. It also has case studies from Bloomberg, Comcast, and Porsche – the last of which was especially cool for the car geek in me. Check it out here. 

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The State of the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) and Cybersecurity Readiness – An SBOM is a formal and machine-readable metadata that uniquely identifies a software package and its contents. It allows organizations to quickly and accurately determine which software applications and libraries are used and where so they can effectively address vulnerabilities. The report offers fresh insight into the state of SBOM readiness and helps organizations looking to better understand SBOMs as an important tool in securing software supply chains. They need to be adopted now – so go read the report.

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Open Source – Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the technology industry — and within open source specifically—is an opportunity we need to continuously leverage for the benefits it brings. In addition to the survey findings on the state of DEI, this research explores a number of DEI initiatives and their efficacy and recommends action items for the entire stakeholder ecosystem to further their efforts and build inclusion by design. Access the report here.

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Data and Storage Trends Report – The SODA Foundation is an open source project under the Linux Foundation that fosters an ecosystem of open source data management and storage software for data autonomy. The report is based on a survey in English, Chinese, and Japanese-speaking markets to identify the current challenges, gaps, and trends for data and storage in the era of Cloud Native, edge, AI, and 5G. The intention is to use this survey data to help guide the SODA Foundation and its surrounding ecosystem on important issues and help its members be better equipped to make decisions, improve their products, and the SODA Foundation to establish new technical directions.

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The State of Open Source in Financial Services Report – While the financial services industry has been a long-time consumer of open source software, contributing to software and standards development has not been at the core of their business models and tech strategies. This report creates a baseline of their current activities, highlights obstacles and challenges to improving industry-wide collaboration, and lays out a set of actionable insights for improving the state of open source in financial services. You can read the report here. 

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9th Annual Open Source Jobs Report – ​​ The LF partnered with edX to shed light on the changes and challenges in the global open source jobs market. Employers can use its actionable insights to inform their hiring, training, and diversity awareness efforts. It also gives professionals clear, unbiased insights on which skills are most marketable and how reskilling and certifications benefit job seekers. Dig in here. 

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Hyperledger Brand Study – The study explores the state of the enterprise blockchain market and the Hyperledger brand. It looks at whether enterprises have or are considering adopting blockchain, which solutions they are familiar with, what are desirable attributes of solutions, what problems they are addressing with blockchain technology, and much, much more. You can read the results and access the underlying data here. 

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The post LF Research: One Year Recap and Imagining the Future appeared first on Linux Foundation.

Blockchain Iot Market 2022-2030 : Scope and overview |Ethereum Foundation (Switzerland) , The Linux Foundation (US) , R3 (US) – themobility.club  themobility.club

The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) has launched Fwupd Friendly Firmware as a new initiative for selecting original equipment/device manufacturers to select ICs that already boast Fwupd plug-ins for easing the integration of firmware updating support under Linux...

While AMD long ago stopped actively contributing to the open-source R600 Gallium3D driver on Linux systems for OpenGL on Radeon HD 2000 "R600" through Radeon HD 6000 "Northern Islands" graphics cards, thanks to a few open-source community developers this Mesa driver code continues seeing improvements even with the Radeon HD 6000 series already being more than one decade old. The latest on the R600g front are various efforts improving the GPU compute support...

Open-Source R600g Driver For Old AMD GPUs Is Seeing New Activity To Improve GPU Compute  Phoronix

1. Microsoft warns: These flaws could give attackers root privileges on Linux desktops  ZDNet
2. Microsoft finds Linux desktop flaw that gives root to untrusted users  Ars Technica
3. Microsoft Discovers New Privilege Escalation Flaws in Linux Operating System  The Hacker News
4. Nimbuspwn Linux Bugs Could Provide Root Access  Infosecurity Magazine
5. New Nimbuspwn Linux vulnerability gives hackers root privileges  BleepingComputer
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

Fedora starts to simplify Linux graphics handling  The Register

With last week's release of the much anticipated Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Canonical announced they would begin providing a real-time kernel flavor too for this Long Term Support release though that RT kernel is initially in beta form. Today they outlined more information on their real-time kernel beta and how to actually go about trying it out...

LLVM 14.0.1 released just earlier this month while already LLVM 14.0.2 is out today. LLVM normally sees just a single point release and traditionally happened mid-to-late in the development cycle ahead of LLVM's next major release. But now LLVM is moving to shipping point releases every two weeks...

Systemd lead developer Lennart Poettering is out with his first blog post since last September. Today he's relaying the power of the systemd-sysext component shipped as part of systemd for loading/merging "system extension" images on the system for manipulating the exposed /usr...

MontaVista Launches MVEdge, a Commercially Supported End-to-End Solution for the Intelligent Edge  EnterpriseTalk

New Nimbuspwn Linux vulnerability gives hackers root privileges  BleepingComputer

Native calling on Linux x86-64 not working for a type  GameDev.net

How I grew my product management career with open source Shebuel Inyang Wed, 04/27/2022 - 03:00 Up Register or Login to like.

I'm a curious person, and I like to explore many fields in the technology industry, from visual design, programming, and product management. I am also drawn to open source ideas. So I'm excited to share with you how I, as a product manager (PM), have used open source to build my career. I believe my experiences can help others who are interested in product management.

More open source career advice Open source cheat sheets Linux starter kit for developers 7 questions sysadmins should ask a potential employer before taking a job Resources for IT artchitects Cheat sheet: IT job interviews What is open source software?

In simple terms, open source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, enhance, and share. Opensource.com has documented a detailed and comprehensive article to help you understand what open source is. 

My discovery of open source started in the early phase of my career as a visual designer. I was curious to know what it meant and how to be a part of it and that led me to reach out to a few experienced open source contributors and advocates. Though I didn't contribute at the time, I acquired knowledge of the community which helped me when I made the decision to start contributing. 

How to break into product management

It might seem that breaking into product management is difficult, that you must put your boxing gloves on, come out fighting and force your way in. And yet, I've heard from other product managers that it was actually easier to break into compared to writing or debugging blocks of code, or pushing pixels to generate complex wireframes for product design.

Our journeys and approaches are different, so it's safe to say that the road to becoming a product manager can often be long and unpredictable. With the increasing level of competition in the job market, getting a role as an entry-level product manager can be difficult. Recruiters often require 2 to 3 years of experience to join a product team. You might ask, "How am I expected to get the experience?"

Here's a quick look at the four strategies for directing your career toward product management:

1. Internal transition at a large organization that might require your manager to advocate for you as a good fit to transition within the company. You must have proof that you have transferable skills. This is generally considered the quickest route to product management experience.

2. Junior PM roles at large organizations. It's common to go through an organization to get an internship, or to join an associate product management program that employs a junior PM.

3. You can also try to get into product management by joining a startup.

4. You can start a side project of your own to break into product management.

Without hands-on experience, it's difficult to become a product manager. As open source product manager David Ryan stated, "Few people are taking advantage of what is possibly the most under-utilized path to practical product management experience."

What is this path?

Open source is the answer

An open source project needs more than just code to be successful. This ranges from a strategy for the project, user research, and linking the strategy to daily work. These are all activities that a product manager should be actively involved in. But how much of the product management discipline is the responsibility of a first-time product manager?

Susana Videira Lopes stated in one of her articles that the "essence of getting an entry-level product role is to introduce you to the product management discipline in a way that builds up your confidence, while at the same time delivering value for the organization as early as possible."

How can an entry-level product manager get involved with an open source project, and deliver value?

Simple answer: Ask Questions

Here are some questions you can ask:

• What problem or opportunity is being explored?

• How is the solution being framed to tackle this problem?

• What metrics are used to determine whether the project is successful?

• Who are the people this solution serves?

• How are they being informed about it?

• How does the solution fit with both the immediate and wider ecosystem?

• Where is the documentation being maintained on the project?

• Do project maintainers understand accessibility requirements? Are they being met?

You've acquired skills as a product manager. Use them to help you express these thoughtful questions, and invite the team to consider them. The team can select the ones that resonate for the developers and the community, and prioritize what's most important.

These questions help you build user personas, a customer journey map, lean canvas, and more. This kind of experience goes a long way towards developing career potential.

My experience at OpenUnited

OpenUnited is a platform that connects digital talent and work in a unique way. We work with contributors to help them prove specific skills by working on high quality open source products. Once their work is verified, these talented contributors are eligible to work for companies on paid tasks.

OpenUnited is an open source platform that onboards contributors of all kinds—product managers, developers, designers, business analysts, and others. It helps them improve their skills and provides them with a long term source of high-quality paying work.

Farbod Saraf, a senior product manager at Miro, onboarded me on a platform he created with a partner. I joined the project and learned about contributing to OpenUnited. I also learned about other projects that could help me grow in my product management career, and made my first contribution. It was a good experience because I got to start working quickly on bits of the product, to improve the experience of other users on the platform. My mentor Farbod made it easier by making himself available to provide any needed help while I contributed to the project.

Everything you contribute to an open source project becomes a powerful public record of your development as a product manager. I strongly recommend the OpenUnited platform to anyone who wants to break into product management with open source.

How do you find open source projects?

Many people believe that contributing to open source is best left to developers because they find it difficult to search for and get open source projects they can comfortably contribute to.

As a first-time product manager, there are several ways to find open source projects to contribute to. Here's a list of some:

• Speak up in product manager communities such as Mind The Product and Product School.

• Go to local meetups and open source conferences like Open Source Community Africa Festival to connect with open source project creators and maintainers.

• Engage with product managers working at larger open source companies such as GitLab or Mozilla. They may be able to refer you to open source projects where your skills and contribution could be beneficial.

• Investigate open source advocates and DevRel teams at open source companies to get recommendations of open projects an entry-level product manager can contribute to.

• Look to open source companies on AngelList or popular open source products on Product Hunt. These are great places to consider in your search for open products to contribute to.

What next?

Ruth Ikegah, a great source of inspiration for me, wrote an article for beginners in open source. In her article, she gave some tips to consider as you embark on contributing to open source.

Before joining and contributing, do some research on the project, community, or organization, and ask questions. When you finally decide to join the community, try to be active by introducing yourself and stating areas where you can help the project.

Of course, open source isn't just a stepping stone for your career. It's a platform in itself, and it needs great product managers. Get involved, contribute to the community, and help it help you hone your skills.

Gaining experience in open source helped me create a successful career path in product management.

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Opensource.com

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