Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 18, 2022
by sjvn01
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Open Invention Network expands Linux patent protection

Today, everyone — yes, even Microsoft — use Linux and open-source. It’s been years since Linux was under attack by SCO for imaginary copyright violations, and then Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed that Linux violated over 200 of Microsoft’s patents. So over 15-years ago, the Open Invention Network (OIN) patent consortium was formed to defend Linux against intellectual property (IP) attacks. Even so, Linux and open-source software are still under attack from patent trolls and other attackers. That’s where the Open Invention Network (OIN) steps up by expanding its patent non-aggression coverage by updating its Linux System definition.

Open Invention Network expands Linux patent protection. More>

January 13, 2022
by sjvn01
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Wireshark creator joins Sysdig to extend it to cloud security

If you’re a real network administrator, you know and love open source Wireshark. For over 15-years, it’s been the tool that professionals use for network traffic protocol analysis. Nothing else even comes close. Now, Sysdig, the container and cloud security company, has hired Gerald Combs, its creator and project leader, to join its open source team. There, Combs will help them with Sysdig-related open-source projects such as  Falco, Prometheus, eBPF, and Sysdig Inspect. In addition, Sysdig will sponsor and manage the Wireshark community and extend Wireshark to monitoring and analyzing cloud networks.

Wireshark creator joins Sysdig to extend it to cloud security. More>

January 13, 2022
by sjvn01
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EVerest: The open source software stack for EV charging infrastructure

Even if you’d never buy a Tesla, electric vehicles (EVs) are the future. There’s only one big problem. Unlike a gas-based car, where you can always find a gas station when you need to top off, there’s nothing like enough electrical charging stations. One big reason for this is that there’s no standardization to speak of behind those chargers. The Linux Foundation (LF) plans on changing this with the new LF Energy EVerest project.

It’s become an LF Energy project, Shuli Goodman, Linux Foundation Energy‘s Executive Director, explained because, “At LF Energy, we firmly believe that only open source has the speed and transformative power to change industries fast. Our mission is to decarbonize the global economy by enabling the transformation of power systems, the transition to electric mobility, and the radical efficiency of the built environment. In this regard, EVerest is the perfect addition to our ecosystem.”

EVerest: The open source software stack for EV charging infrastructure. More>

January 13, 2022
by sjvn01
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When open-source developers go bad

Chances are unless you’re a JavaScript programmer, you’ve never heard of the open-source Javascript libraries ‘colors.js‘ and ‘faker.js.” They’re simple programs that respectively let you use colored text on your node.js, a popular JavaScript runtime, console, and create fake data for testing. Faker.js is used with more than 2,500 other Node Package Manager (NPM) programs and is downloaded 2.4 million times per week. Colors.js is built into almost 19,000 other NPM packages and is downloaded 23 million times a week. In short, they’re everywhere. And, when their creator, JavaScript developer Marak Squires, fouled them up, tens of thousands of JavaScript programs blew up.

Thanks guy.

When open-source developers go bad. More>

January 12, 2022
by sjvn01
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Why not a four-day workweek?

Today, many of us think of the five-day workweek as being the way things have always been done. It’s not. It only became a standard in the United States when the labor unions got the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) passed in 1938. Before that, most people worked a 48-hour, six-day-per-week job—and were glad to have it.

Are we less productive now? We are not.

Indeed, when Henry Ford, of all people, introduced the five-day, 40-hour week for workers at the Ford Motor Company, one reason he did so was that he thought it would increase productivity. He was right; though workers’ time on the job decreased, productivity went up.

Why not a four-day workweek? More>

January 12, 2022
by sjvn01
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Open source isn’t the security problem – misusing it is

We’re going to be cleaning up Apache Log4j security problems for months to come, but the real problem isn’t that it was open-source software. It’s how we track and use open-source code.

When security vulnerabilities were found in the extremely popular open-source Apache Log4j logging library, we knew we were in trouble. What we didn’t know was just how much trouble we were in. We know now. Just ask the Belgian defence ministry. In this ongoing security disaster, many people blame open source for all our troubles.

In the Financial Times (FT), Richard Waters, the newspaper’s west coast editor, wrung his hands, saying it’s a “little alarming to discover that, more than two decades into the open-source era, glaring security holes sometimes surprise even the experts.”

Surprising? I think not. It’s software. It always has bugs. Sometimes they’re really bad bugs. As security maven Bruce Schneier said over 20 years ago: “Security is a process, not a product.” There’s no surprise here.

Open source isn't the security problem – misusing it is. More>