As we reported a few weeks ago, OpenSSF in conjunction with the White House and others has launched a 10-point plan and funding with the aim of improving the security of the software supply chain.

OpenSSF has also announced a number of new members including premier members, Atlassian and Sonatype, who will join the OpenSSF governing board.

Continue reading →

White House officials, The Linux Foundation, OpenSSF and 37 private sector tech companies have announced a 10-point open source and software supply chain mobilization plan and $150 million of funding over two years.

At a summit meeting yesterday several participating organizations came together to collectively pledge an initial tranche of funding towards implementation of the plan. Those companies are Amazon, Ericsson, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and VMWare, pledging over $30M.

Continue reading →

In recent years we've seen a trend towards attacks targeting the software supply chain rather than being directly against businesses.

Attacks can include poisoning the software components, stealing secrets to compromise an account, or modifying code repositories to allow for exploits.

Continue reading →

Open source adoption rates are growing globally, with non-propriety code proving to be both efficient and cost-effective for a variety of organizations. Approximately 82 percent of IT decision-makers are more likely to choose a vendor that actively gives back to the open source community, according to a recent report from Red Hat. ­In the UK in particular, much of the reason for this open source drive is down to increased public cloud usage, the growing demand for rapid digital transformation and a greater understanding of open source’s cybersecurity resilience. 

To help continue this open source upsurge in a sustainable manner, organizations utilizing the technology need to be contributing back to the community, to best enable the development of the technology. 

Continue reading →

Open source software provides much of the backbone of our digital society. Yet many of the developers and maintainers working on some of the most critical projects embedded across networks and products remain unpaid or underpaid.

To help address this, Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform Appwrite is launching a new Open Source Software Fund (OSS Fund), which will award $50,000 in its first year to open source maintainers whose projects provide the very foundation for today's digital infrastructure but who aren't being compensated as such.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has released a number of programs as open source over the years, and today it digs deep into its back catalog to make 3D Movie Maker freely available to all.

First released in 1995, 3D Movie Maker lets you put together animated scenes using 3D characters, props, backgrounds, text, sound, and special effects. This release also comes with a build of BRender from Argonaut software. While it’s a welcome move, you shouldn’t get too excited by today’s news because there is a catch.

Continue reading →

The developers over at Canonical have been busy baking a yummy new version of Ubuntu recently, and following a brief beta period, it is finally time to take the open-source operating system out of the oven. Yes, folks, the stable Ubuntu 22.04 is finally here!

Code-named "Jammy Jellyfish," Ubuntu 22.04 is an "LTS" version, which stands for "Long Term Support." Yeah, that means exactly what it sounds like. The Linux distribution will be supported for a long time -- five years to be exact. Very nice.

Continue reading →

MX Linux ranks number one for popularity over on DistroWatch, but truth be told, I do not know anyone that uses the distribution regularly. Don't get me wrong, it is a fine operating system, but it really isn't anything special. Quite frankly, the distro's need to exist is questionable at this point, but whatever.

Despite the rather negative opening paragraph, I am pleased to tell you that the newest version of the operating system is ready to be downloaded. Huzzah! Given the codename "Wildflower," MX Linux 21.1 is a rather ho-hum point release. The developers share the changes below.

Continue reading →

Linux Mint is a very popular operating system, so any news surrounding upcoming versions is highly sought after by members of the open source community. Today, the developers of that operating system have shared some very interesting information -- the name of Linux Mint 21!

The Linux Mint developers always use female names (alphabetically) as codenames, and version 21 is no different. You see, following version 19 ("Tara") and version 20 ("Ulyana"), version 21 of Linux Mint is named "Vanessa." According to Think Baby Names, it is a Greek name meaning "butterfly."

Continue reading →

Just a couple days ago, Fedora 36 Beta was released, and now, Ubuntu Linux 22.04 Beta follows suit. Called "Jammy Jellyfish," this pre-release version of the Ubuntu operating system uses Linux kernel 5.15, Mesa 22, and the GNOME 42 desktop environment by default.

Don't like GNOME? Hey, that's cool. There are several flavors of Ubuntu that use alternative desktop environments, such as Kubuntu (KDE Plasma), Lubuntu (LXQt), and Xubuntu (Xfce) to name a few.

Continue reading →

Canonical has announced the general availability of OpenStack Yoga on Ubuntu 22.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Beta and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

What does this mean? Yoga, the latest version of OpenStack, provides a foundation for next-generation, highly performant infrastructure as needed by telco NFV (Network Functions Visualization), media streaming, traffic analysis and high-performance computing (HPC) services.

Continue reading →

Today is the day many Linux users have been eagerly awaiting -- Fedora 36 has officially reached Beta status. Yes, folks, you can download the pre-release operating system immediately! For many Linux users, Fedora is considered the most important distribution based on that open source kernel. Why? Because the distro focuses on truly free and open source software -- a pure Linux experience. Hell, the father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, famously uses Fedora.

What makes Fedora 36 Beta so exciting? Well, this pre-release version of the upcoming operating system uses the brand-new GNOME 42 as its default desktop environment. If you instead choose the LXQt spin of Fedora, you will be delighted to know it now uses version 1.0 which was released late last year. Plus, users with an NVIDIA GPU are in for a treat when using the proprietary graphics driver -- GDM will use Wayland by default.

Continue reading →

There are many great desktop environments for Linux, such as Cinnamon, KDE Plasma, and MATE to name a few. With that said, only one can be the best, and that is obviously GNOME. I mean, look, there's a reason Canonical uses it as the default DE for Ubuntu -- it's that good.

If you are a GNOME fan, I have some extremely exciting news. You see, as of today, GNOME 42 is officially here! There are many new features, such as a new dark mode, improved screenshotting, and support for RDP (remote desktop protocol). There are also performance improvements, updated apps, and new default apps including a beautiful new terminal called "Console."

Continue reading →

When the Log4Shell vulnerability appeared in December last year the effects rippled across the cybersecurity world with potentially millions of devices affected.

A new study from Qualys takes a look at how enterprises responded to the vulnerability and how successful their remediation efforts were.

Continue reading →

Open source software is usually selected for reasons like flexibility, access to development resources and cost. But the latest State of Enterprise Open Source report from Red Hat shows that 82 percent of decision makers are more likely to choose a vendor that contributes to the open source community.

Top reasons given for preferring these vendors are that they're familiar with open source processes and help sustain healthy communities -- both cited by 49 percent of respondents -- that they can influence the development of features (48 percent) and that they are likely to be more effective in the face of technical challenges (46 percent).

Continue reading →