Open-source News

PinePhone $149 Linux smartphone could support Ubuntu, Sailfish, Maemo, LuneOS and more  Liliputing

The PinePhone is a cheap, Linux-ready smartphone that's expected to ship in limited quantities later this year. It's not exactly a high-power device by modern ...

Zorin OS 15 Released, Canonical Issues Security Updates for All Supported Versions of Ubuntu Linux, New RCE Vulnerability Discovered Affecting Email Servers, Khadas VIM3 Launching Soon and Krita's Digital Atelier on Sale  Linux Journal

News briefs for June 6, 2019. Zorin OS 15 has been released. From the announcement for this new major version: "Every aspect of the user experience has ...

The open source project will establish and maintain a common legal and technical foundation for smart legal contracts

London, Accord Project Forum, June 6, 2019 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the launch of the Accord Project as a Linux Foundation project. The Accord Project is a nonprofit organization that builds open source code and documentation to maintain a common and consistent legal and technical foundation for contract management. The project comprises all the software necessary to author, edit and execute smart legal contracts in a standardized way. Many of the world’s largest global law firms have signed on, as well as leading industry bodies and technology companies such as DocuSign, IBM, IEEE and R3.

Smart contracts are showing promise for simplifying complexities in supply chain management and other contract-heavy areas of technology development, but they also introduce requirements for interoperability and consistency. The Accord Project provides a globally interoperable approach for creating contracts that bind legally enforceable natural language text to executable business logic. With an increased focus on enterprise digitalization, adoption of blockchain technologies and the growth of the API economy, the usage of computable agreements is rapidly increasing. Having a common format for “computable” legal agreements is an important cornerstone for the future of commercial relationships. One of the main purposes of Accord Project is to provide a vendor-neutral “.doc” format for smart legal agreements.

“The Linux Foundation is home to communities that are advancing the world’s most critical software infrastructure,” said Mike Dolan, VP of strategic programs at The Linux Foundation. “The Accord Project represents an opportunity to collaboratively build the framework necessary for the next generation of contracting. Their work is essential in supporting the software that runs our lives.”

Contract templates are composed of three elements: the Template Grammar (the natural language text for the template), the Template Model (the data model that backs the template), and the Logic (the executable business logic for the template). When combined these three elements allow templates to be edited, analyzed, queried and executed. Importantly, the Accord Project’s approach does not lock smart legal contracts into any particular execution environment or vendor applications. Smart legal contract templates can be used with a wide variety of technologies, including different types of distributed ledgers.

The templates are designed to be quick to create from existing legal contracts and easy to execute using the Ergo domain specific language. Ergo aims to help legal tech developers quickly and safely write computable legal contracts. Ergo’s other goals are modularity (reuse of existing contract or clause logic), ensuring safe execution, neutrality with respect to blockchain implementation if one is chosen, and being formally specified so the meaning of contracts is well defined and can be verified and preserved during execution.

Dan Selman, co-director of the Accord Project and Chair of its Technology Working Group, noted that “Our goals for the Accord Project are to promote the use of open legal technology, attract a self-sustaining base of contributors, supported by a rigorous governance structure. Linux Foundation has been an excellent steward to scores of open source projects, large and small, over many years. We believe Linux Foundation is the perfect home for Accord Project and look forward to learning from the collective wisdom of the Linux Foundation community and taking advantage of the various services and programs they offer.”

Developers, attorneys, business and finance professionals and other contract users can access the Accord Project online at accordproject.org and the code at www.github.com/accordproject. For technical documentation please visit: https://docs.accordproject.org/

About The Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

The post Linux Foundation to Host the Accord Project to Develop Open Source Framework for Smart Legal Contracts appeared first on The Linux Foundation.

It's Time To Pay Attention To Zorin OS 15, The Best Desktop Linux Distro You've Never Heard Of  Forbes

Zorin OS 15 launches today, and I'm going to go out on a limb and proclaim that Zorin OS is the best desktop Linux distribution you've never heard of.

Zorin OS 15 Linux distro is ready to replace Microsoft Windows 10 on your PC  BetaNews

While I'm a Linux fan and advocate, I'm not delusional. Switching from Windows to an operating system based on the Linux kernel is not for everyone. For some ...

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 beta is now available  ZDNet

The last RHEL 7 version is on its way out the door for enterprise Linux users.

People everywhere are demanding basic consumer protections.

We want our food to be healthy to eat, our water to be clean to drink, and our air to be safe to breathe.

Recovering your root password in a Red Hat OS base Linux  TechGenix

Can't remember your root password in a Red Hat OS base Linux? No worries. Here's how to recover it quickly in a few easy steps.

Chromebook Pixel 2015, 8 more Chrome OS devices to get Linux apps support soon  9to5Google

It seems that nine more devices, including the Google Chromebook Pixel 2015, may soon allow their owners to run Linux apps.

Facebook, Not Microsoft, Is the Main Threat to Open Source  Linux Journal

In the future, Facebook won't be a social-media site. Facebook is under a lot of scrutiny and pressure at the moment. It's accused of helping foreign actors to ...

Recommended Open Source Compliance Practices for the Enterprise

Open source software provides significant economies to be gained through shared and transparent development, which offers access to source code, the ability to customize the source code based on specific needs, results in faster time-to-market for products and services, and provides access to a large pool of innovators. As such, open source software provides major competitive advantages when used appropriately, and when users comply with its licensing terms.

With an incredibly high adoption rate and the increasing rapid adaptation of source code, enterprises are often on the lookout for better ways to maintain proper license compliance for the hundreds and thousands of open source components included in their products and services. This paper offers practical recommendations to help them improve their open source compliance practices.

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The post Recommended Open Source Compliance Practices for the Enterprise appeared first on The Linux Foundation.

The Linux desktop's last, best shot  ZDNet

With Microsoft cutting off support for Windows 7, the Linux desktop may finally get its day in the sun. But are Linux companies ready to take advantage of their ...

Introducing The Arch Linux Summer 2019 Community Challenge  Forbes

Welcome to the Linux Community Challenge that lives up to its name. (BTW, we installed Arch.)

The "From Mac to Linux" Issue  Linux Journal

What you are reading right now is a Linux magazine—with a focus on Apple computers running macOS. (Or MacOS. Or however Apple is doing the ...

New HiddenWasp Linux Malware Focused Solely on Achieving Targeted Remote Control  Security Intelligence

A new threat called HiddenWasp is different from other Linux malware in that it's focused solely on achieving targeted remote control of infected hosts.

Creating a Linux VM in Hyper-V the Easy Way  Redmondmag.com

Hyper-V in Windows 10 has a built-in tool called Quick Create that lets you automate the process of setting up new virtual machines. Here's how to use it.

Red Hat has joined the Business Coalition for the Equality Act, a group of leading U.S. employers supporting U.S. federal legislation that would provide the same basic protections to LGBTQ people as are provided to other protected groups under federal law.  

Mageia 7 Linux distribution reaches release candidate (RC) status -- download it now!  BetaNews

We recently learned that most Windows 10 users aren't even keeping the operating system up to date, choosing to forgo the often buggy feature releases. Yes ...

Clear Linux Moving Ahead With Blocking dmesg Access For Non-Root Users  Phoronix

Most Linux distributions allow unfettered access to dmesg for seeing the kernel log outputs, but seeing as kernel addresses can be dumped to this output and ...

Unity Editor is Now Officially Available for Linux  It's FOSS

Unity Editor for the cross-platform gaming engine Unity is now officially available for Linux. It comes with support for Ubuntu and CentOS.