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"The Linux Foundation and RISC-V Foundation announced yesterday a joint collaboration project to promote open source development and commercial adoption of the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA)," reports TechRepublic: Though some devices that integrate RISC-V will use real-time operating systems rather than Linux, the use of Linux in development will be instrumental as existing tools are being extended to support the RISC-V ISA when developing software on traditional computers. "This joint collaboration with the Linux Foundation will enable the RISC-V Foundation to offer more robust support and educational tools for the active RISC-V community, and enable operating systems, hardware implementations and development tools to scale faster," said Rick O'Connor, executive director of the RISC-V Foundation, in a press release.

In many ways, RISC-V is a hardware equivalent to the open source principles that guide the Linux project, as the ISA is open source, is not subject to patent encumbrances, and is available under the BSD license. [L]icensing fees for Arm or MIPS ISAs -- both of which are fundamentally RISC in principle -- can be avoided by using RISC-V.... As alternatives like Alpha, SuperH, MIPS, and even Intel's own Itanium processors have fallen by the wayside, organizations using those ISAs in their products have had difficult adjustment periods transitioning away, while patent encumbrances largely prevent third parties from continuing development or providing drop-in replacements for those technologies. RISC-V's open nature prevents these issues, as it is possible for any organization to extend or customize their own implementation, and any organization can produce their own RISC-V processors.
Manufacturers like how RISC-V CPUs aren't restricted to a single manufacturer, according to the article, which points out that NVIDIA and Western Digital have both announced plans to use RISC-V in some upcoming products.

RISC-V is also "gaining popularity in Internet of Things, low-power, and embedded applications," and Western Digital even plans to ultimately transition its annual consumption of processors -- one billion cores per yer -- to RISC-V.

TechCrunch is reporting that GraphQL, the Facebook-incubated data query language, is moving into its own open-source foundation. "Like so many other similar open-source foundations, the aptly named GraphQL Foundation will be hosted by the Linux Foundation." From the report: Facebook announced GraphQL back in 2012 and open sourced it in 2015. Today, it's being used by companies that range from Airbnb to Audi, GitHub, Netflix, Shopify, Twitter and The New York Times . At Facebook itself, the GraphQL API powers billions of API calls every day. At its core, GraphQL is basically a language for querying databases from client-side applications and a set of specifications for how the API on the backend should present this data to the client. It presents an alternative to REST-based APIs and promises to offer developers more flexibility and the ability to write faster and more secure applications. Virtually every major programming language now supports it through a variety of libraries.

"GraphQL has redefined how developers work with APIs and client-server interactions. We look forward to working with the GraphQL community to become an independent foundation, draft their governance and continue to foster the growth and adoption of GraphQL," said Chris Aniszczyk, vice president of Developer Relations at the Linux Foundation. As Aniszczyk noted, the new foundation will have an open governance model, similar to that of other Linux Foundation projects. The exact details are still a work in progress, though. The list of founding members is also still in flux, but for now, it includes Airbnb, Apollo, Coursera, Elementl, Facebook, GitHub, Hasura, Prisma, Shopify and Twitter.

From The Linux Foundation's mailing list: Last Friday (just before Labor Day) I learned that Linus had gotten confused about when and where the Maintainer's Summit was going to be held this year. And most unfortunately, he has already scheduled a family vacation overlapping with the week of the Maintainer's Summit. Over the weekend, I've been conferring with folks from the Linux Foundation, Linus, and the Maintainer's / Kernel Summit program committee. We explored a lot of options, but ultimately there were only two choices that were workable:
1) Have the Maintainer's Summit in Vancouver, without Linus.
2) Move the Maintainer's Summit to Edinburgh, with Linus.

Curiously enough, Linus suggested option #1. And while holding the Maintainer's Summit without Linus might be an interesting experiment, ultimately, the Program Committee had a strong consensus that moving it Summit to Edinburgh was the better option.

This means that the Maintainer's Summit will take place in Edinburgh, on Monday afternoon, October 22nd. As a reminder, the Maintainer's Summit is an invite-only workshop, with ~30 people attending. The focus of the Maintainer's Summit is process and development issues, *not* technical issues. The Kernel Summit track will still be held in Vancouver alongside Plumber's. Technical discussions will take place there; we simply won't have the time, or necessarily, the right people, to have technical discussions at the Maintainer's Summit.

darthcamaro writes: In a wide-ranging conversation at the Open Source Summit, Linus Torvalds admitted that he no longer knows everything that's in LInux. "Nobody knows the whole kernel anymore," Torvalds said. "Having looked at patches for many years, I know the big picture of all the areas in the kernel and I can look at a patch and know if it's right or wrong." Overall, he emphasized that being open source has enabled Linux to attract new developers that can pick up code and maintain all the various systems in Linux. In his view, the only way to deal with complexity is to be open. "When you have complexity you can't manage it in a closed environment, you need to have the people that actually find problems and give them the ability to get involved and help you to fix them," Torvalds said. "It's a complicated world and the only way to deal with complexity is the open exchange of ideas."

The Linux Foundation has endorsed Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub. In a blog post, Jim Zemlin, the executive director at the Linux Foundation, said: "This is pretty good news for the world of Open Source and we should celebrate Microsoft's smart move." The Verge reports: 10 years ago, Zemlin was calling for Microsoft to stop secretly attacking Linux by selling patents that targeted the operating system, and he also poked fun at Microsoft multiple times over the years. "I will own responsibility for some of that as I spent a good part of my career at the Linux Foundation poking fun at Microsoft (which, at times, prior management made way too easy)," explains Zemlin. "But times have changed and it's time to recognize that we have all grown up -- the industry, the open source community, even me." Nat Friedman, the future CEO of GitHub (once the deal closes), took to Reddit to answer questions on the company's plans. "We are not buying GitHub to turn it into Microsoft; we are buying GitHub because we believe in the importance of developers, and in GitHub's unique role in the developer community," explains Friedman. "Our goal is to help GitHub be better at being GitHub, and if anything, to help Microsoft be a little more like GitHub."

To celebrate Linux's 26th anniversary, the Linux Foundation tweeted a picture of Tux on a birthday cake, and linked to an essay on OpenSource.com by FreeDOS founder Jim Hall: My first Linux distribution was Softlanding Linux System (SLS) 1.03, with Linux kernel 0.99 alpha patch level 11. That required a whopping 2MB of RAM, or 4MB if you wanted to compile programs, and 8MB to run X windows... To celebrate, I reinstalled SLS 1.05 to remind myself what the Linux 1.0 kernel was like and to recognize how far Linux has come since the 1990s.
"Getting X windows to perform was not exactly easy..." Hall writes, adding "the concept of a desktop didn't exist yet." Meanwhile Phoronix celebrated by republishing that fateful email Linus Torvalds sent on August 25, 1991. And Fossbytes shared the most recent statistics about modern-day Linux's 20 million lines of code from the Linux Foundation: During the period between the 3.19 and 4.7 releases, the kernel community was merging changes at an average rate of 7.8 patches per hour; that is a slight increase from the 7.71 patches per hour seen in the previous version of this report, and a continuation of the longterm trend toward higher patch volumes.

21,000 developers were surveyed for this year's annual survey by VisionMobile -- and for the first time, they were asked about their salaries. An anonymous reader quotes Linux.com: [S]killed cloud and backend developers, as well as those who work in emerging technologies including Internet of Things, machine learning and augmented/virtual reality can make more money than frontend web and mobile developers whose skills have become more commoditized... The top 10 percent of salary earners in AR who live in North America earn a median salary of $219,000, compared with $169,000 for the top earning 10 percent of backend developers, according to the report... New, unskilled developers interested in emerging tech will have a harder time finding work, and earn less than their counterparts in more commoditized areas, due both to their lack of experience and fewer companies hiring in the early market.

Along with skill level and software sector, developer salaries also vary widely by where they live in the world. A web developer in North America earns a median income of $73,600 USD per year, compared with the same developer in Western Europe whose median income is $35,400 USD. Web developers in South Asia earn $11,700 in South Asia while those in Eastern Europe earn $20,800 per year.
For developers who want to move up in the world, VisionMobile suggests "Invest in your skills. Do difficult work. Improve your English. Look for opportunities internationally. Go for it. You deserve it!"

An anonymous reader writes: The non-profit association that sponsors Linus Torvalds' work on Linux also offers self-paced online training and certification programs. And now through December 22, they're available at a 50% discount. "Make learning Linux and other open source technologies your New Year's Resolution this holiday season," reads a special page at LinuxFoundation.org. There's training in Linux security, networking, and system administration, as well as software-defined networking and OpenStack administration. (Plus a course called "Fundamentals Of Professional Open Source Management," and two certification programs that can make you a Linux Foundation-certified engineer or system administrator.)
And if you order right now, they'll also give you a free mug with a penguin on it.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The Linux Foundation held its "LinuxCon Europe" this week, "where developers, sys admins, architects and all types and levels of technical talent gather together under one roof for education, collaboration and problem-solving to further the Linux platform." They've now updated their web site with photos and slide presentations.

The 44 presentations included a talk about Linux kernel security subsystem by kernel developer James Morris and an interesting talk by GitHub's Carol Smith arguing that mandatory math requirements can create a "steep barrier to entry" for people trying to launch programming careers. Karsten Gerloff also described how Siemens is making "strategic" use of free software.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The Linux Foundation held its "LinuxCon Europe" this week, "where developers, sys admins, architects and all types and levels of technical talent gather together under one roof for education, collaboration and problem-solving to further the Linux platform." They've now updated their web site with photos and slide presentations.

The 44 presentations included a talk about Linux kernel security subsystem by kernel developer James Morris and an interesting talk by GitHub's Carol Smith arguing that mandatory math requirements can create a "steep barrier to entry" for people trying to launch programming careers. Karsten Gerloff also described how Siemens is making "strategic" use of free software.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The Linux Foundation held its "LinuxCon Europe" this week, "where developers, sys admins, architects and all types and levels of technical talent gather together under one roof for education, collaboration and problem-solving to further the Linux platform." They've now updated their web site with photos and slide presentations.

The 44 presentations included a talk about Linux kernel security subsystem by kernel developer James Morris and an interesting talk by GitHub's Carol Smith arguing that mandatory math requirements can create a "steep barrier to entry" for people trying to launch programming careers. Karsten Gerloff also described how Siemens is making "strategic" use of free software.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The Linux Foundation held its "LinuxCon Europe" this week, "where developers, sys admins, architects and all types and levels of technical talent gather together under one roof for education, collaboration and problem-solving to further the Linux platform." They've now updated their web site with photos and slide presentations.

The 44 presentations included a talk about Linux kernel security subsystem by kernel developer James Morris and an interesting talk by GitHub's Carol Smith arguing that mandatory math requirements can create a "steep barrier to entry" for people trying to launch programming careers. Karsten Gerloff also described how Siemens is making "strategic" use of free software.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The Linux Foundation held its "LinuxCon Europe" this week, "where developers, sys admins, architects and all types and levels of technical talent gather together under one roof for education, collaboration and problem-solving to further the Linux platform." They've now updated their web site with photos and slide presentations.

The 44 presentations included a talk about Linux kernel security subsystem by kernel developer James Morris and an interesting talk by GitHub's Carol Smith arguing that mandatory math requirements can create a "steep barrier to entry" for people trying to launch programming careers. Karsten Gerloff also described how Siemens is making "strategic" use of free software.

The Linux Foundation is announcing FD.io ("Fido"), a Linux Foundation Project. FD.io is an open source project to provide an IO services framework for the next wave of network and storage software. Early support for FD.io comes from founding members 6WIND, Brocade, Cavium, Cisco, Comcast, Ericsson, Huawei, Inocybe Technologies, Intel Corporation, Mesophere, Metaswitch Networks (Project Calico), PLUMgrid and Red Hat.

Architected as a collection of sub-projects, FD.io provides a modular, extensible user space IO services framework that supports rapid development of high-throughput, low-latency and resource-efficient IO services. The design of FD.io is hardware, kernel, and deployment (bare metal, VM, container) agnostic.

No, working your company's trade show or conference booth isn't your job. But sooner or later, an awful lot of people (including me) get tagged for booth duty whether we want it or not. Fine. At least we can learn a little about how to do it well, which is why Andy Saks, of Spark Presentations, is offering us some useful tips on how to do well at trade shoms and conferences.

While Andy's focus is on corporate displays and presentations, everything he says also applies to FOSS projects that exhibit at anything from regional Linux conferences to multinational expos like OSCON and LINUXCON. And one last thought before we turn this over to Andy, who we recorded from Skype at an extremely low frame rate to make this a narrated slide show (with accompanying transcript, as usual): If you're working in a typical corporation, trade shows are often your best way to meet your own company's executives, espcially at casual after-show gatherings. You might also meet execs from other companies and be open to conversations about changing jobs, but this is not something you want to talk about with your bosses or their bosses, but is best kept quiet until or unless you have a firm offer in hand.

chicksdaddy writes: Everybody recognizes that open source software incredibly valuable, by providing a way to streamline the creation of new applications and services. But how valuable, exactly? The Linux Foundation has released a new research paper that tries to put a price tag on the value of the open source projects it comprises, and the price they've come up with is eye-popping: $5 billion. That's how much the Foundation believes it would cost for companies to have to rebuild or develop from scratch the software residing in its collaborative projects.

To arrive at that figure, the Foundation analyzed the code repositories of each one of its projects using the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) to estimate the total effort required to create these projects. With 115,013,302 total lines of source code, LF estimated the total amount of effort required to retrace the steps of collaborative development to be 41,192.25 person-years — or 1,356 developers 30 years to recreate the code base present in The Linux Foundation's current collaborative projects listed above.

The OpenDaylight Project works on Software Defined Networking. Their website says, "Software Defined Networking (SDN) separates the control plane from the data plane within the network, allowing the intelligence and state of the network to be managed centrally while abstracting the complexity of the underlying physical network." Another quote: it's the "largest software-defined networking Open Source project to date." The project started in 2013. It now has an impressive group of corporate networking heavyweights as sponsors and about 460 developers working on it. Their latest release, Lithium, came out earlier this month, and development efforts are accelerating, not slowing down, because as cloud use becomes more prevalent, so does SDN, which is an obvious "hand-in-glove" fit for virtualized computing.

Today's interview is with OpenDaylight Project Executive Director Nicolas "Neela" Jacques, who has held this position since the project was not much more than a gleam in (parent) Linux Foundation's eye. This is one of the more important Linux Foundation collaborative software projects, even if it's not as well known to the public as some of the foundation's other efforts, including -- of course -- GNU/Linux itself.

Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin doesn't use the phrase 'world domination' in these videos, but he could. He lists enough computing niches where GNU/Linux is the major player -- from supercomputers to the next generation of automotive systems -- that with or without world domination, Linux has obviously become an extremely important, widely used operating system that has grown amazingly since Linus Torvalds first shared his humble kernel with the world in 1991. With great popularity has come a great need for people who know how to administer and otherwise work with Linux, so the Linux Foundation is developing new courses in tandem with massive open online course (MOOC) provider edX. Unlike some of the Linux Foundation's previous course offerings, their edX ones are free to audit, and the cost for certification (if you want a cred, not just knowledge) is lower than many IT certification tests and certificates.

These videos (both visible today) were made remotely, with Timothy Lord at one end in Austin, TX, and Jim Zemlin at the other end in Tokyo, Japan. Their sound quality suffers from the distance involved, but they are generally intelligible -- and, of course, you can always choose to read the transcript instead of watching the videos.

New submitter prisoninmate writes: The Linux Foundation's LinuxLTSI (Long-Term Support Initiative) group has confirmed on Twitter that the next LTS version of the Linux kernel will be 4.1. The information has also been confirmed by Greg Kroah-Hartman, a renowned kernel developer who is currently maintaining several kernel branches, including a few LTS ones. When Linux kernel 4.1 is released, it will become the LTS version of 2015 and the most advanced long-term support release. This is significant because the LTSI releases are (or will be) everywhere, in a "Linux is everywhere" sense. As the initiative's page puts it, "The LTSI tree is expected to be a usable base for the majority of embedded systems, as well as the base for ecosystem players (e.g., semiconductor vendors, set-vendors, software component vendors, distributors, and system/application framework providers). ... The goal is to reduce the number of private trees currently in use in the CE industry and encourage more collaboration and sharing of development resources."

New submitter prisoninmate writes: The Linux Foundation's LinuxLTSI (Long-Term Support Initiative) group has confirmed on Twitter that the next LTS version of the Linux kernel will be 4.1. The information has also been confirmed by Greg Kroah-Hartman, a renowned kernel developer who is currently maintaining several kernel branches, including a few LTS ones. When Linux kernel 4.1 is released, it will become the LTS version of 2015 and the most advanced long-term support release. This is significant because the LTSI releases are (or will be) everywhere, in a "Linux is everywhere" sense. As the initiative's page puts it, "The LTSI tree is expected to be a usable base for the majority of embedded systems, as well as the base for ecosystem players (e.g., semiconductor vendors, set-vendors, software component vendors, distributors, and system/application framework providers). ... The goal is to reduce the number of private trees currently in use in the CE industry and encourage more collaboration and sharing of development resources."

Mark F. Brown and Joel Rozenweig build autonomous drones; that is, drones that don't need an operator every second. You tell the autonomous drone, "Pick up package # 941A at the loading dock and deliver it to 451 Bradbury St.' and off it goes. It's going to be a while yet before that happens, but one day....

Back in the present, dronemaking is still a hobby for Mark and Joel, something they do for fun after spending their workdays as software engineers at Intel. Joel says there is 'remarkably little' crossover between their jobs and their hobby, and that (so far) Intel has contributed little beyond some Edison modules (which you can buy for less than $50) and travel to the Embedded Linux Conference, where they gave a talk accompanied by these slides. NOTE: We have a little bonus for you today. We try to keep videos to 10 minutes or less, but we have no such constraints on transcript length. So if you want the 'full' version of this interview, please read the transcript.

jones_supa writes: As part of an effort to make encryption a standard component of every application, the Linux Foundation has launched the Let's Encrypt project (announcement) and stated its intention to provide access to a free certificate management service. Jim Zemlin, executive director for the Linux Foundation, says the goal for the project is nothing less than universal adoption of encryption to disrupt a multi-billion dollar hacker economy. While there may never be such a thing as perfect security, Zemlin says it's just too easy to steal data that is not encrypted. In its current form, encryption is difficult to implement and a lot of cost and overhead is associated with managing encryption keys. Zemlin claims the Let's Encrypt project will reduce the effort it takes to encrypt data in an application down to two simple commands. The project is being hosted by the Linux Foundation, but the actual project is being managed by the Internet Security Research Group. This work is sponsored by Akamai, Cisco, EFF, Mozilla, IdenTrust, and Automattic, which all are Linux Foundation patrons. Visit Let's Encrypt official website to get involved.

Motor was one of several readers to note that a small patch recently added to the Linux kernel contains guidelines for discourse and dispute resolution within the community. It's called the "Code of Conflict." Quoting: Your code and ideas behind it will be carefully reviewed, often resulting in critique and criticism. The review will almost always require improvements to the code before it can be included in the kernel. Know that this happens because everyone involved wants to see the best possible solution for the overall success of Linux. .... If however, anyone feels personally abused, threatened, or otherwise uncomfortable due to this process, that is not acceptable. ... As a reviewer of code, please strive to keep things civil and focused on the technical issues involved.

Nerval's Lobster writes This year is shaping up as a really good one for Linux, at least on the jobs front. According to a new report (PDF) from The Linux Foundation and Dice, nearly all surveyed hiring managers want to recruit Linux professionals within the next six months, with 44 percent of them indicating they're more likely to hire a candidate with Linux certification over one who does not. Forty-two percent of hiring managers say that experience in OpenStack and CloudStack will have a major impact on their hiring decisions, while 23 percent report security is a sought-after area of expertise and 19 percent are looking for Linux-skilled people with Software-Defined Networking skills. Ninety-seven percent of hiring managers report they will bring on Linux talent relative to other skills areas in the next six months.

alphadogg writes Now more than ever, the development of the Linux kernel is a matter for the professionals, as unpaid volunteer contributions to the project reached their lowest recorded levels in the latest "Who Writes Linux" report, which was released today. According to the report, which is compiled by the Linux Foundation, just 11.8% of kernel development last year was done by unpaid volunteers – a 19% downturn from the 2012 figure of 14.6%. The foundation says that the downward trend in volunteer contributions has been present for years. According to Linus Torvalds, the shift towards paid developers hasn’t changed much about kernel development on its own. “I think one reason it hasn't changed things all that much is that it's not so much unpaid volunteers are going away as people who start writing kernel code get hired really quickly,” he said.

jones_supa writes: Soon after the poor state of the GnuPG was unveiled, the online community has rallied to help Werner Koch. He wanted to hire a full-time programmer to work on the project alongside him and to ensure that he's not living on the brink of bankruptcy all the time. Immediately after the article was published, it was revealed that he got a one-time grant of $60,000 from the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative. Also, the community donated over $150,000, and Facebook and Stripe have each pledged to provide $50,000 per year. All in all, it looks like Werner Koch won't be worried about funding for quite some time. The problem remains: it's very likely that other projects just as important as this one are probably facing the same kind of issues, but it would be nice to hear about them before they get in trouble, and not after.

DeviceGuru writes: The Linux Foundation has released the full agenda for its annual North American Embedded Linux Conference + Android Builders Summit, which takes place Mar. 23-25 in San Jose, Calif. The ELC, which this year is titled Drones, Things, and Automobiles, increasingly reflects new opportunities for Linux in areas such as drones, robots, automotive computers, IoT gizmos, 3D sensing, modular phones, and much more. For those worried that ELC is skimping on the basics as it explores the more colorful sides of Linux, worry not, as there are still plenty of sessions on booting, trace analysis, NAND support, PHY frameworks, power management, defragmenting, systemd, device tree, and toolchain.

garymortimer writes with news about a project that hopes to create an open source code platform for drones. "The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced the founding of the Dronecode Project. The Project will bring together existing open source drone projects and assets under a nonprofit structure governed by The Linux Foundation. The result will be a common, shared open source platform for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Founding members include 3D Robotics, Baidu, Box, DroneDeploy, Intel, jDrones, Laser Navigation, Qualcomm, SkyWard, Squadrone System, Walkera and Yuneec. Dronecode includes the APM UAV software platform and associated code, which until now has been hosted by 3D Robotics, a world leader in advanced UAV autopilot and autonomous vehicle control. The company was co-founded by Chris Anderson, formerly editor-in-chief of Wired"

Andy Updegrove writes: The Linux Foundation this morning announced the latest addition to its family of major hosted open source initiatives: the Open Platform for NFV Project (OPNFV). Its mission is to develop and maintain a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform for the telecom industry. Importantly, the thirty-eight founding members include not only cloud and service infrastructure vendors, but telecom service providers, developers and end users as well. The announcement of OPNFV highlights three of the most significant trends in IT: virtualization (the NFV part of the name refers to network function virtualization), moving software and services to the cloud, and collaboratively developing complex open source platforms in order to accelerate deployment of new business models while enabling interoperability across a wide range of products and services. The project is also significant for reflecting a growing recognition that open source projects need to incorporate open standards planning into their work programs from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought.

Mcusanelli writes: The Linux Foundation and its partners have released the first version of Automotive Grade Linux, the open source platform for use inside connected cars. "AGL is building the industry’s only fully open automotive platform, allowing automakers to leverage a growing software stack based on Linux while retaining the ability to create their own branded user experience. Standardizing on a single platform means the industry can rapidly innovate where it counts to create a safe and reliable connected car experience. Open collaboration within the AGL community means support for multi-architectures and features to bolster the in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) experience." Further details and source code are available from the official website.

Mcusanelli writes: The Linux Foundation and its partners have released the first version of Automotive Grade Linux, the open source platform for use inside connected cars. "AGL is building the industry’s only fully open automotive platform, allowing automakers to leverage a growing software stack based on Linux while retaining the ability to create their own branded user experience. Standardizing on a single platform means the industry can rapidly innovate where it counts to create a safe and reliable connected car experience. Open collaboration within the AGL community means support for multi-architectures and features to bolster the in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) experience." Further details and source code are available from the official website.

wiredmikey (1824622) writes "Technology giants including Microsoft, Google, Intel, and Cisco are banding together to support and fund open source projects that make up critical elements of global information infrastructure. The new Core Infrastructure Initiative brings technology companies together to identify and fund open source projects that are widely used in core computing and Internet functions, The Linux Foundation announced today. Formed primarily as the industry's response to the Heartbleed crisis, the OpenSSL library will be the initiative's first project. Other open source projects will follow. The funds will be administered by the Linux Foundation and a steering group comprised of the founding members, key open source developers, and other industry stakeholders. Anyone interested in joining the initiative, or donating to the fund can visit the Core Infrastructure Initiative site."

kc123 writes "Earlier this week, The Linux Foundation announced that it would be working with edX, a non-profit online learning site governed by Harvard and MIT, to make its "Introduction to Linux" course free and open to all. The Linux Foundation has long offered a wide variety of training courses through its website, but those can generally cost upwards of $2,000. This introductory class, which usually costs $2,400, will be the first from the Linux Foundation to run as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)."

In addition to sponsoring the work of Linus Torvalds, The Linux Foundation supports and promotes a wide variety of resources and services for Linux. Their recently released 2014 Linux Jobs Report surveyed more than 1,000 managers and corporations, finding in part, that the demand for "Linux Professionals" was up 70% from last year. Jim Zemlin is the Executive Director of the Linux Foundation and he has agreed to answer any questions that you have about the report and the state of Linux in general. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

In addition to sponsoring the work of Linus Torvalds, The Linux Foundation supports and promotes a wide variety of resources and services for Linux. Their recently released 2014 Linux Jobs Report surveyed more than 1,000 managers and corporations, finding in part, that the demand for "Linux Professionals" was up 70% from last year. Jim Zemlin is the Executive Director of the Linux Foundation and he has agreed to answer any questions that you have about the report and the state of Linux in general. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

cold fjord writes "IEEE Spectrum reports, "About once a year, the Linux Foundation analyzes the online repository that holds the source code of the kernel, or core, of the Linux operating system. As well as tracking the increasing complexity of the ever-evolving kernel over a series of releases from versions 3.0 to 3.10, the report also reveals who is contributing code, and the dominant role corporations now play in what began as an all-volunteer project in 1991. While volunteer contributors still represent a plurality among developers, over 80 percent of code is contributed by people who are paid for their work. ""

probain sent in this excerpt from Engadget "In case Valve's multi-tiered investment in Linux gaming weren't clear enough from SteamOS, the Steam Controller, and Steam Machines, the company's also joining the ranks of The Linux Foundation membership. Valve Linux head Mike Sartain calls the news, 'one of the many ways Valve is investing in the advancement of Linux gaming;' he sees the move as yet another step for Valve toward its bigger goal of popularizing accessible Linux-based gaming." Cloudius Systems and the HSA Foundation also joined the Linux Foundation today.

Out in the Northeast Texas town of Ft. Worth, a company called CircuitCo started making something they called the BeagleBoard -- an open source hardware single-board computer for educators and experimenters. Now, with help and support from Intel, they're making and supporting the Atom-based MinnowBoard, which is also open source, and comes with Angstrom Linux to help experimenters get started with it. David Anders is the Senior Embedded Systems Engineer at CircuitCo. Slashdot's Timothy Lord met David at LinuxCon North America 2013 in New Orleans and made this video of him talking about the recently-released MinnowBoard and the more mature BeagleBoard.

New submitter urdak writes "At CloudOpen in New Orleans, KVM veterans Avi Kivity and Dor Laor revealed their latest venture, a new open-source (BSD license) operating system named OSv. OSv can run existing Linux programs and runtime environments such as a JVM, but unlike Linux, OSv was designed from the ground up to run efficiently on virtual machines. For example, OSv avoids the traditional (but slow) userspace-kernel isolation, as on the cloud VMs normally run a single application. OSv is also much smaller than Linux, and breaks away from tradition by being written in C++11 (the language choice is explained in in this post)."

Slashdot's Timothy Lord is attending LinuxCon in New Orleans this week and writes in with the following. "Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell says in no uncertain terms what the brain trust at Valve thinks: When it comes to actual users, 'Linux is currently insignificant by any metric' (by any metric that matters to game companies, at least, like number of players, minutes played, and — all important — revenue). On these fronts, Linux players are 'typically under 1 percent' of what game companies see. But that's not the upshot. The takeaway is just about the opposite, says Newell: 'The future of gaming is on Linux.' Newell expounded on the present and future of games on Linux in a keynote address at LinuxCon North America, which kicked off today in New Orleans. He described ways Valve is working to improve the landscape for games on Linux, and hinted at new hardware developments from the company in the near future." Keep reading for the rest of Tim's report. Since Valve's 1996 founding, the company has come out with a rash of well-known games including Half-life, Counterstrike, and Portal, for personal computers as well as the console market. In that time, though, Valve, like the rest of the computer world, has gone through structural changes driven by the falling costs of both computers and bandwidth. These, says Newell, have increased the relative value of design and game quality in general, but also marketing and — crucially — distribution paths. That has ramifications throughout the games industry, including the emergence and growth of online delivery for games and updates. (Valve’s own system, Steam, is up to 50 million users by itself; the console infrastructure is even bigger: Sony claimed that many users three years ago). The changes in relative costs have also spurred free to play models and large-scale e-sports. (Large scale is no joke: According to Newell, "At the last tournament we held, we had over a million people watching it simultaneously.")

Newell describes a trend toward end-users being involved, though, not just as spectators, but as content creators. He describes this in fairly sweeping terms: “Games will becomes nodes in a linked economy, where the majority of digital goods and services are user generated.” That sounds a bit grandiose, perhaps, but it’s grounded in numbers. “The Team Fortress community creates 10 times the amount of content [that developers do],” says Newell. While he says Valve has always been happy to compete with other game studios (“we’re a little bit cocky”), “the one entity we wouldn’t ever want to compete with is our own users; they’ve already outstripped us dramatically. It’s not by a little bit; it’s an order of magnitude already.” Broad-based distributed development like that is what open source has been whipping up in the world of software for decades.

Creating games or games content, though, isn’t for the faint of heart: centralized online app stores (Apple’s in particular) “put an enormous number of roadblocks in front of doing that,” including developer approval as well as vetting individual apps and updates to them. In that context, he says, few users have the stubbornness or wherewithal to get through that. A more streamlined system for taking advantage of eater player/developers is needed.

“Several years ago, we thought ‘OK, if our model is correct, we need to help making Linux a good gaming plaform for users and developers.” To that end, Valve makes for a case study in how Linux has been creeping in: the company shipped the first dedicated games server running Linux in 1999. Now, most games servers run Linux (now several hundred thousand — and “probably a million”).

Those game servers are dishing up prodigious loads of data: “Near as we can tell, we’re generating something like 2 to 3 percent of worldwide mobile and land-based IP traffic, and that tends to startle people who don’t realize what a large sea change is going on. Even ignoring game servers, we’ve delivered over an exabyte of data year to date.” (Internally, he says, there’s approximately 20TB of content in a Linux-based version control system. This, says Newell, is true for companies like Bungie, too.)

Impressive as those data-shoveling numbers are, they don’t exactly shout desktop (or living room) success. But steps that Valve (along with other companies) has taken make it easier to swallow the claim. “Several years ago, we thought ‘OK, if our model is correct, we need to help make Linux a good gaming plaform for users and developers.” The first major move, says Newell, was to get a game — a real, graphics-intensive game — going on Linux. The process, though, revealed a “sweater thread” of issues, revealing flaws in in all parts of the stack: faulty drivers, gaps between Linux distributions’ included software, pitfalls in the user experience, and flaws in the company’s Steam tools.

In the course of resolving problems in each of those layers, “The good thing is that if we get a game like Left for Dead running, we’ve probably worked through issues for lots of developers. We’ve definitely solved problems for the Call of Duty team, or Tour of Duty, or whatever. The games aren’t that different; the key thing is to get changes all the way through for users. In February, we shipped [the Linux] Steam client; today -- at least when I got on the plane -- Valve has 198 games running on Linux.“

The bug-fixing and code-developing isn’t just a sporadic effort; the company has “several guys on SDL,” started by current Valve employee Sam Lantinga, and is co-developing a new Linux debugger, in addition to the work they’ve done on the LLVM debugger.

Making Linux a better platform for games is necessary, but may not be sufficient in itself, though. Platforms tend to cluster not just by operating system, but by context: platform, mobile, and console games don’t always play nicely: “As a user, I shoudn’t have to buy new games, or have new friends, or whatever, just because I’m sitting on a couch.” With Linux certainly a more-than-viable software platform for games, but still in the chicken-and-egg world of low user and revenue numbers that discourage spending developer time on Linux end users, Newell says the next step is necessary work on the hardware side of the equation, to smooth the open-source path between the developer and back-end data handling side of the games business to actual end-users.

“One of the things we had to do, is we're staging out the different pieces we think are necessary for staging to make Linux the future of gaming,” said Newell. “Our next step, having done these other pieces, is on the hardware side. There are thermal issues and sound issues, but also a lot of input issues.” He closed with this tease: “Our next step on this is to release some stuff we’ve done on the hardware side. Next week we’re going to be rolling out more information about how we get there, and what are the hardware opportunities we see for getting Linux into the living room."

darthcamaro writes "The Linux Foundation's Who Writes Linux report (sign up required) is now out and after 22 yrs leading Linux, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has fallen out of the list of top 100 developers in terms of code contributions. He currently ranks 101st for number of patches generated from the Linux 3.3 to the Linux 3.10 kernel releases." Read below for a few highlights from the report. Nearly 10,000 developers from more than 1,000 companies have contributed to the Linux kernel since tracking began in 2005. Just since the last report, more than 1,100 developers from 225 companies have contributed to the kernel. In fact, more developers and companies are contributing to Linux than ever before with Linux kernel 3.10 seeing the most developer contributions ever.

Mobile and embedded companies are increasing their investments in Linux. Linaro, Samsung and Texas Instruments together increased their aggregate contributions from 4.4 percent during the previous version of the paper to 11 percent of all changes this year. Google’s contributions are also up significantly this year.

The Top 10 organizations sponsoring Linux kernel development since the last report include Red Hat, Intel, Texas Instruments, Linaro, SUSE, IBM, Samsung, Google, Vision Engraving Systems Consultants and Wolfson Microelectronics. After appearing on the list for the first time in 2012, Microsoft notably dropped off the list entirely this year. A complete list of the top 30 organizations sponsoring this work is included in the paper.

The rate of Linux development is unmatched. The average number of changes accepted into the kernel per hour is 7.14, which translates to 171 changes every day and more than 1,200 per week.

CowboyRobot writes "The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit that manages much of the day-to-day business behind the open source operating system, maintains a small office in San Francisco. Stop by, however, and you probably won't find anyone there. That's because the organization's 30-something employees work virtually. It's like the anti-Yahoo: Just about everyone, including Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds, works from home. 'We really wanted to have that effectiveness and nimbleness of a virtual organization,' said Amanda McPherson, Linux Foundation's VP of marketing and developer programs. 'You have that commitment and ownership of your job more than when you're just sitting there in that cube farm,' McPherson said. 'For us, if you hire the right people who are motivated by that, you just get more commitment. [You get] people who really love their jobs and like to work, but also like that they can go to the gym at 2 in the afternoon when it's not crowded. In an office, [people would say]: "Why isn't he at his desk? It's 2. There must be something wrong."'"

jrepin writes "The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the Xen Project is becoming a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. The Xen Project is an open source virtualization platform licensed under the GPLv2 with a similar governance structure to the Linux kernel. Designed from the start for cloud computing, the project has more than a decade of development and is being used by more than 10 million users. As the project experiences contributions from an increasingly diverse group of companies, it is looking to The Linux Foundation to be a neutral forum for providing guidance and facilitating a collaborative network."

DeviceGuru writes "The Linux Foundation is offering live video streaming of all of the Linux Collaboration Summit's day 1 keynote sessions to be held Monday, April 15. The day 1 keynotes include presentations by Jaguar Land Rover, Samsung, Intel, Netflix, Yocto, OpenMAMA, Adapteva, and LWN's Jon Corbet. The foundation's Linux Collaboration Summit is an exclusive, invitation-only summit of core kernel developers, distribution maintainers, ISVs, end users, system vendors and other community organizations. It includes full-group sessions as well as workgroups."

Later today, the U.S. government will enter the sequestration process, a series of across-the-board budget cuts put into place automatically because U.S. politicians are bad at agreeing on things. "At that moment, somewhere in the bowels of the Treasury Department, officials will take offline the computers that process payments for school construction and clean energy bonds to reprogram them for reduced rates. Payments will be delayed while they are made manually for the next six weeks." The cuts will directly affect science- and tech-related spending throughout the country. Tom Levenson writes, '[s]equester cuts will strike bluntly across the scientific community. The illustrious can move a bit of money around, but even in large labs, a predictable result will be a reduction in the number of graduate student and post – doc slots available — and as those junior and early-stage researchers do a whole lot of the at-the-bench level research, such cuts will have an immediate effect on research productivity. The longer term risk is obvious too: fewer students and post-docs mean on an ongoing drop from baseline in the amount of work to be done year over year.' The former director of the National Institute of Health says it will set back medical science for a generation. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has laid out how the cuts will affect the U.S. space program. He said, "The Congress wasn’t able to do what they were supposed to do, so we’re going to suffer." The sequester will also prevent billions of dollars from flowing into the tech industry. This comes at a time when there's a pressing need in the tech sector for professionals versed in the use of Linux, and salaries for those workers are on the rise.

hypnosec writes "The Linux Foundation has announced the release of Linux 3.4 under its Long Term Support Initiative (LTSI), which will be maintained for the next two years with back-ported features from newer Linux kernels. Based on Linux 3.4.25, the LTSI 3.4 is equipped with features such as Contiguous Memory Allocator – which is helpful for embedded devices with limited hardware resource availability; AF_BUS – a kernel-based implementation of the D-Bus protocol; and CoDel (controlled delay) – a transmission algorithm meant for optimization of TCP/IP network buffer control."

hypnosec writes "The Linux Foundation has announced the release of Linux 3.4 under its Long Term Support Initiative (LTSI), which will be maintained for the next two years with back-ported features from newer Linux kernels. Based on Linux 3.4.25, the LTSI 3.4 is equipped with features such as Contiguous Memory Allocator – which is helpful for embedded devices with limited hardware resource availability; AF_BUS – a kernel-based implementation of the D-Bus protocol; and CoDel (controlled delay) – a transmission algorithm meant for optimization of TCP/IP network buffer control."

Ever since news broke last year that Microsoft would require Windows 8 machines to have UEFI secure boot enabled, there were concerns that it would be used to block the installation of other operating systems, such as Linux distributions. Now, reader dgharmon sends this quote from Ars Technica about a new defense against that outcome: "The Linux Foundation has announced plans to provide a general purpose solution suitable for use by Linux and other non-Microsoft operating systems. The group has produced a minimal bootloader that won't boot any operating system directly. Instead, it will transfer control to any other bootloader — signed or unsigned — so that can boot an operating system." The announcement adds, "The pre-bootloader will employ a 'present user'; test to ensure that it cannot be used as a vector for any type of UEFI malware to target secure systems. This pre-bootloader can be used either to boot a CD/DVD installer or LiveCD distribution or even boot an installed operating system in secure mode for any distribution that chooses to use it."

caseyb89 writes "If it weren't for open source technology, you wouldn't be able to tweet. Chris Aniszczyk, Open Source Manager at Twitter, shares how open source is vital to Twitter's success. He states that using open source is a 'no-brainer' for Twitter because it 'allows us to customize and tweak code to meet our fast-paced engineering needs as our service and community grows.' Twitter also established an open source office about a year ago to support a variety of open source organizations that are important to them. Aniszczyk will discuss Twitters open source usage in his keynote at LinuxCon."

An anonymous reader writes "Next week at the sixth Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, two Qualcomm Atheros engineers will be making a stand for killing all proprietary drivers for good — across all operating systems. The Qualcomm slides go over their early plans. Do they stand a chance?"