Linux Is Ready

• 13Apr

  Government Cost-Cutting Plan Embraces Open Source

  Open Source News

  UK Cabinet minister Francis Maude says his new ICT strategy will save the government millions.

  The government has unveiled a new ICT cost-cutting strategy, in which it renews its commitment to encouraging small business innovation and embraces open source technologies.

  Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude outlined the plans today, promising to create a level playing field for open source software and impose compulsory open standards, starting with interoperability and security.

  “For too long, Government has wasted vast amounts of money on ineffective and duplicate IT systems,” said Maude. “We will end the oligopoly of big business supplying government IT by breaking down contracts into smaller, more flexible projects. This will open up the market to SMEs and new providers.”Delivering interoperability: In its report, the government acknowledges that, when used in conjunction with compulsory open standards, open source presents “significant opportunities for the design and delivery of interoperable solutions”. It says that moving to smaller and more manageable projects will improve project delivery timelines and reduce the risk of project failure.

  The government also intends to encourage the sharing and reuse of ICT solutions and contracts across the public sector through a common infrastructure and online applications store. This will help prevent unnecessary duplication and save on the cost of purchasing new or bespoke solutions.

  Furthermore, the report states that the government will move away from large and expensive ICT projects, with a presumption that no project will be greater than £100 million.

  “We are especially pleased to see that [the report] recognises ICT as an enabler and not just an overhead,” said John Higgins, director general of Intellect, the trade association for the UK’s technology industry. “By adopting innovative approaches and opening up opportunities to SMEs, social enterprises, charities and other new providers, we will see a dynamic supplier ecosystem and greater benefits to the taxpayer.”
  Fairer procurement policies

  The news has been welcomed by the National Outsourcing Association, which says the decision will help the public sector get the most out of its ICT suppliers and keep costs to a minimum.

  “At present, the government is tied into a range of contracts with large suppliers, which could mean that they struggle to get the best possible service as a result,” said Martyn Hart, Chairman of the National Outsourcing Association.

  “By pledging to free policy makers from the multi-billion pound contracts they have been tied to, and creating a ‘presumption against’ IT contracts in excess of £100 million, the government is ensuring that public sector procurement for IT is more cost-effective and competitive, which is good news for the outsourcing industry and the public sector as a whole.”

  The news follows on the heels of the government’s new ‘StartUp Britain’ scheme, which is intended to support entrepreneurs and help new businesses get off the ground. Organisers of the scheme estimate that the government’s support is worth more than £1,500 for every British start-up business. The government also this week unveiled its Innovation Launch Pad, which allows SMBs to pitch their ideas on how to offer better value for money in the delivery of government services.

  “In recent weeks, we’ve seen the coalition government pledging to support SMEs with a broad range of initiatives aimed at ensuring that larger outsourcing suppliers are not the only ones with access to public sector contracts,” said Hart. “This morning’s announcement is designed to take this a step further and ensure a fairer procurement process for IT contracts in the public sector.”

• 18Mar

  Open Source Recording Offers Flexibility in a Fast Moving Business World

  Open Source News

  Open source utilities allow a user to configure program parameters to meet the exact specification of its end users. Open source infrastructure utilities like MySQL or Linux have seen universal adoption because they can be quickly and easily modified to accommodate environmental changes. OrecX brings the same ease of programming to call recording, making it more transparent and compliant in a quickly evolving business world.

  When using call recording in a sales or customer service environment, compliance and lawful intercept requirements make the ability to change a recording system an advantage to bundled solutions. OrecX’s open source recoding platform contains an API that configures the interface via languages that meet the criteria of these stringent programming laws.

  When keeping calls recorded for archives or other historical records there are a number of programming requirements that need to be taken into consideration. According to OrecX, “The Lawful Intercept system currently requires our software to provision surveillance sessions via the BroadWorks CLI. This solution for permanent recording on certain lines is useful but its provisioning could be done remotely through a web API and control recording on the fly. Ideally, the recording web API should be based on the HTTP standard, following the REST or servlet conventions. This is the best way to ensure that the API can be used from any programming language easily without any SDK or special library.”

  This open source mentality allows for multiple solutions to a single problem and can understand several languages for easy adoption in the operations of an IT department. Mangers are realizing that open source means more control and more flexibility for their organizations.

• 28Feb

  U.K. Comes out for Royalty-Free Standards for Government Procurement

  Open Source News

  The U.K. has become the latest country to conclude that for information and communications technology (ICT) procurement purposes, “open standards” means “royalty free standards.”  While apparently falling short of a legal requirement, a Cabinet Office Procurement Policy Note recommends that all departments, agencies, non-departmental bodies and “any other bodies for which they are responsible” should specify open standards in their procurement activities, unless there are “clear business reasons why this is inappropriate.”

  Under the new Procurement Note, “open standards” are defined as standards that:

  • result from and are maintained through an open, independent process;
  • are approved by a recognised specification or standardisation organisation, for example W3C or ISO or equivalent. (N.B. The specification/standardization must be compliant with Regulation 9 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2006. This regulation makes it clear that technical specifications/standards cannot simply be national standards but must also include/recognise European standards);
  • are thoroughly documented and publicly available at zero or low cost;
  • have intellectual property made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis; and
  • as a whole can be implemented and shared under different development approaches and on a number of platforms.

  The U.K.’s decision is noteworthy for several reasons. First, the W3C, a consortium (as compared to a national or European standards body) is specifically mentioned as being an acceptable source of open standards. The EU has for some time been Quixotically wrestling with the question of whether or not to allow standards developed by consortia to be specified in procurement (Quixotic, because of course so much of their ICT procurement already necessarily depends heavily on such standards to enable interoperability).

  Second, the U.K. decision is a repudiation of the recent decision of the European Commission to retreat from a royalty-free definition when it released its long-awaited, new version of the European Interoperability Framework, originally issued in 2004 with a royalty-free (and otherwise more strict) definition of open standards for government procurement purposes.
  India had already adopted (in November of last year) a definition of open standards that went even farther than the original EIF 1.0 definition of open standards. But unlike India, a comparative newcomer to the practice of automatically patenting everything in ICT that can be patented, Britain has been part of the high tech intellectual property business regime since its inception. In other words, specific British technology companies will lose as well as gain from the U.K.’s adoption of such a policy, while Indian companies are likely to only gain from the decision of their government.

  Finally, the British decision, in comparison to that of the E.C., illustrates where and how lobbying is most likely to be successful. Why? Because as I noted last December, it was largely due to the lobbying of major ICT companies (represented in part by the Business Software Alliance) that the EC backed down on the EIF definition of open standards. I ended that blog entry by noting that, “Those that believe that open standards, liberally defined, are vital to open government will now have to look for innovation elsewhere.”

  In a way, what we are witnessing on a global scale is reminiscent of a dynamic often seen in the U.S.  Controversial legislation introduced at the national level will often fail, only to later succeed at the state level (stringent environmental and global warming initiatives launched in “Blue States” are an example). The reason is that special interest groups will under most circumstances pay and focus more on legislation of national impact than they will on threats that relate to only a single state. Similarly, it may be easier to kill a bill of weak national appeal at the federal level than it may be to defeat the same legislation in a single state where local support is strong. Years later, after these laws and their results become public, the national Zeitgeist and laws sometimes fall in line.

  It is the same process that I expect we are now seeing in the E.C.. The revision of the EIF process was a matter of overall EU applicability, and therefore of broad and drawn out community debate and lobbying pressure. At the level of an individual country, however, there is much greater freedom to set government procurement policy less visibly, and thus a greater ability to set policy rapidly and with less attention from lobbyists.

  And indeed, it would seem that the U.K.’s decision to hie to something much closer to the original EIF requirement of open standards than the watered-down recommendation found in EIF 2.0 appears not to be an isolated decision. I have recently heard (first hand) that at least two other E.U. member states plan to continue to honor the original EIF definition rather than the new one. And why not? The new definition deliberately avoids imposing exact requirements (because that’s what the lobbyists asked for).

  The challenge for traditionalists wishing to keep the royalty-free genie in the bottle therefore appears to be increasing. If additional nations jump on the bandwagon already sent rolling by India and the U.K., there may simply be too many moles for the lobbyists to whack.   And if three metaphors in two sentences aren’t enough to get that point across, I’ve got more where those came from.

  Andy Updegrove

• 08Feb

  Johannesburg Stock Exchange to move to Linux

  Open Source News

  The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has announced that it is moving to an all Linux based trading platform when it relocates to Johannesburg. The JSE currently operates out of London and runs on the TradElect platform which is based on Microsoft .Net and SQL Server 2000. It plans to move to MilleniumIT’s Millennium Exchange platform by the first half of 2012.

  The JSE is following the example set by the London Stock Exchange. That exchange also ran the TradElect platform, but in 2009 began the process of migrating to the Millenium Exchange system using Linux and Solaris based systems. The LSE also purchased the Sri Lanka based developers of Millennium Exchange, MillenniumIT, for $30 million.

  Now, the JSE is intending to move back to Johannesburg as part of a plan to avoid international connectivity issues and make the service more available to its South African based clients. It is taking this opportunity to move to Millennium Exchange, though unlike the LSE, The H has been told by a company spokesperson that it will be run purely on Linux systems.

  The new system should provide much increased trading speeds, executing transactions almost 400 times faster than the current trading platform. This increase should allow the exchange to grow. “There is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that when exchanges increase their trading speeds they also boost levels of high frequency trading. This is important in order to deepen a market”, said Leanne Parsons, JSE’s Chief Operating Officer and Head of Equity Markets.

• 06Jan

  Putin Orders Russian Move to GNU/Linux

  Open Source News

  Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a plan for transition of power structures and the federal budget [to] free software. According to the document, the introduction of Linux in government should begin in II quarter 2012.

  Today it became known that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a document which describes the timetable for the transition of power structures on free software (OSS).

  The document is called a “transition plan of the federal authorities and federal budgetary institutions on the use of free software, and covers the period from 2011 to 2015.

• 20Dec

  Tax Office authentication goes Linux compatible

  Open Source News

  The Federal Government has released a new version of its AUSkey authentication software that promises to support Linux software packages for the first time.

  As previously reported on iTnews, Treasury was working with Linux Australia to make its AUSkey and Standard Business Reporting (SBR) systems compatible with open source platforms.

  AUSkey was launched in April and intended to be a single authenticator for businesses in their dealings with 11 government agencies, including the Offices of State Revenue, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, and the Australian Taxation Office.

  The ATO previously deemed Linux too “cost-prohibitive” to support, with deputy commissioner Bettina Konti estimating Linux users to comprise only one percent of Australian business users.

  But it has now announced that the AUSkey registration, download and installation process had been successfully tested with Ubuntu 10.04 and Firefox 3.6, and may also work with other versions of the software.

  “The latest release will assist software developers to integrate AUSkey into their financial and accounting software packages for Linux users,” the tax office announced.

  However, “if you are a Linux user, having an AUSkey may not automatically guarantee Linux-based access to the government online services that accept AUSkey.”

  Users that wish to identify agencies that accept AUSkey should select “Where AUSkey accepted” from the left-hand navigation menu of www.abr.gov.au/auskey.

  Only the Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Business Register currently accept AUSkey for their online services.

• 20Dec

  Oracle launches web and mobile office suite

  Open Source News

  Oracle has unveiled the open source-based Oracle Cloud Office – a suite of business applications based on the ODF format available for users over the web or on mobile devices.

  The company has also updated the existing open source Open Office suite, featuring a word processor, a database, a spreadsheet application, a presentation application and a graphics programme, to version 3.3.

  Oracle inherited the sponsorship of Open Office when it acquired Sun Microsystems at the start of the year. It has now chosen to revamp the suite and make it available both online and on mobiles, claiming it would enable users to “significantly improve productivity, reduce costs and achieve greater innovation across the enterprise.”

  Businesses wanting to take on the suite will have the choice of keeping the application on premise or accessing it through a software as a service (SaaS) model.

  “Oracle Cloud Office and Oracle Open Office 3.3 deliver complete, open and cost-effective office productivity suites that are designed and optimised for our customers’ needs,” said Michael Bemmer, vice president of Oracle Office.

  “Customers now have the flexibility to support users across a wide variety of devices and platforms, whether via desktop, private or public cloud.”

• 16Dec

  Who uses Linux and Open Source in Business?

  Open Source News

  As Kevin McEntee, Netflix’s VP of Systems & ECommerce Engineering explained on a recent blog posting, Why we use and contribute to open source software, “Our budget, measured in dollars, time, people, and energy, is limited and we must therefore focus our technology development efforts on that streaming video software that clearly differentiates Netflix and creates delight for our customers. These limits require that we stand on the shoulders of giants who have solved technology challenges shared in common by all companies that operate at Internet scale. I’m really just articulating the classical build vs. buy trade off that everyone deals with when developing software.”

  McEntree continued, “We do utilize some commercial software but there is often the alternative choice of utilizing open source software, preferably open source software that implements an open standard. Open source software projects often originate as a labor of love by software developers who are tired of seeing a shared problem solved over and over again in one off solutions, or perhaps they realize that they can offer a more simple and elegant alternative to a commercial product. The great thing about a good open source project that solves a shared challenge is that it develops its own momentum and it is sustained for a long time by a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement. At Netflix we jumped on for the ride a long time ago and we have benefited enormously from the virtuous cycles of actively evolving open source projects. We benefit from the continuous improvements provided by the community of contributors outside of Netflix. We also benefit by contributing back the changes we make to the projects. By sharing our bug fixes and new features back out into the community, the community then in turn continues to improve upon bug fixes and new features that originated at Netflix and then we complete the cycle by bring those improvements back into Netflix.”

  That’s about a good summing up as I’ve ever read about why open-source software and development is good for business.

• 02Dec

  Linux kernel: 13 million lines, over 5 patches per hour

  Open Source News

  The Linux Foundation has published its third annual report about Linux kernel authorship. The statistics included in the paper illustrate growth trends in the kernel development process and provide insight into how the labor is distributed among individual contributors and corporate sponsors. The kernel has seen modest growth in its base of contributors over the past year, though the rate of development has seen a marginal decline.

  The latest version of the Linux kernel currently consists of approximately 13 million lines of code across over 33,000 files. The rate of development peaked with version 2.6.30 last year, which saw an average of 6.40 patches per hour. The rate declined to an average of 5.30 patches per hour in version 2.6.35.

  The Linux Foundation attributes the decrease to a shift in focus from heavy development to stabilization on major components like GEM and ext4 that are reaching maturity. The merging of the staging tree into the mainline kernel (read our coverage of 2.6.28 for more details) inflated the volume of new code that was added last year, thus contributing to the appearance of a decline in activity this year. An informed analysis of the statistics indicates that the Linux kernel development community is still healthy, vibrant, and diverse.

  The Linux Foundation report highlights the kernel’s top individual and corporate contributors. Between version 2.6.30 and 2.6.35, approximately 19 percent of kernel development was done by independent contributors with no corporate affiliation. These volunteers collectively contribute more code than any single corporation that funds kernel development. The undisputed top corporate contributor is Red Hat, whose employees are responsible for 12 percent of the kernel changes that were made between .30 and .35. The next most prolific corporate contributors during that time period are Intel with 7.8 percent, Novell with 5 percent, and IBM with 4.8 percent.

  Although Google uses Linux as a base for its Android and Chrome OS mobile platforms, the search giant’s number of contributions over the past year are somewhat low relative to other mobile companies. Google’s contributions account for 0.7 percent of the changes made to the kernel between .30 and .35. By comparison, Nokia’s contributions represent 2.3 percent of the changes during the same period. Texas Instruments contributed 1.5 percent and Samsung contributed 0.6 percent.

  These numbers are based largely on commit count and don’t necessarily provide a crystal clear representation of a corporate contributor’s significance in the Linux ecosystem. It’s worth noting, for example, that despite a low commit count over the past year, Google employs some key kernel developers like Andrew Morton and Ted Ts’o.

  Although a lot of the work on the kernel is being done by a small handful of companies, the Linux Foundation estimates that over 500 total companies are participating in Linux development in some capacity. Novell, which is undergoing a pending acquisition by Attachmate, is one of the most active participants. It’s unclear if Novell’s prolific kernel activity will continue in the coming year as it is integrated into Attachmate’s business. We might see a decline in the numbers in next year’s report if Attachmate doesn’t share Novell’s commitment to upstream kernel development.

  Readers might be surprised to learn that Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds is not among the top individual contributors. The Linux Foundation says that this is because Torvalds (who is employed by the foundation) spends an increasingly significant amount of time managing development and merging contributions from other developers rather than developing new features.

  The kernel subsystem maintainers individually account for most of the effort to merge contributor patches, however, as they play a more direct role in reviewing the code that enters the kernel. Red Hat is the most prolific code reviewer, accounting for roughly 37 percent of all patch signoffs. Red Hat’s David S. Miller (who is known for his work on the network stack and his role in porting Linux to SPARC) accounts for almost 11 percent of total patch signoffs by himself.

  As the Linux Foundation concludes in its report, the Linux kernel is one of the biggest and most successful open source software projects ever. Linux’s growing dominance in the consumer electronics market is attracting more corporate contributors. For additional details, you can refer to the complete report, which is available for download from the Linux Foundation’s website.

• 26Nov

  University of Warwick to spend £1.3m on Linux supercomputer

  Open Source News

  The University of Warwick has awarded a contract for a new Linux-based High Performance Computing (HPC) facility to OFC.

  Under the £1.3 million contract, HPC solutions provider OFC will deliver the facility at the university’s Centre for Scientific Computing (CSC), where it will be mainly used for research in the field of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). MHD is the study of dynamics of electrically-conducting fluids such as plasma and metal liquids.

  The facility will also be used to support research from other disciplines at the university.

  The centre is looking to develop a facility that is a Linux cluster comprised of multi-core nodes interconnected at high-bandwidth and low-latency. It will also have an attached high-performance storage and parallel file system.

  An existing datac entre at the research centre will house the new facility. The datacentre is equipped for up to 100KW of additional IT load and has chilled water infrastructure to accommodate water-cooled racks.

  The project is expected to last 12 months from the award of contract, 21 November, with up to three contract renewals possible.

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