Free Republic

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, we are woefully short of ventilators that can give the most gravely ill a chance for life. There are many efforts afoot to build more ventilators. Now, instead of building ventilators, a group of open-source developers has a new idea: Create a firmware update, Airbreak, which can transform common Constant Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machines into non-invasive ventilators.  Their first effort -- a proof of concept -- converts the Airsense 10 CPAP machine, which is a common, inexpensive sleep apnea treatment device, into a ventilator. It does so by simply replacing its existing firmware with updated firmware. With this...

Microsoft has been betting big on open source for past few years. Apart from open sourcing a few things here and there, Microsoft is contributing a lot to Linux kernel (for its Azure cloud platform). To further strengthen its position in the open source world, Microsoft acquired the popular open source code hosting platform GitHub for $7.5 billion. Now Microsoft owned GitHub has acquired npm ( short for Node Package Manager). npm is the world’s largest software registry with more than 1.3 million packages that have 75 billion downloads a month. ...snip... Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

The Free Software Foundation really set the bar high there Good news everybody! The Free Software Foundation has blown through its self-imposed target of 7,777 signatories in its efforts to persuade Microsoft to make Windows 7 open source.We noted last week the GNU-gang's attempt to coax the born-again open-sourcerer formerly known as "The Beast Of Redmond" into making a surprise deposit into GitHub.The thinking was that since Windows 7 has now come to the end of the road, as far as free security updates are concerned, then perhaps Microsoft might release it as open software?We put it to the Free...

By Yi Whan-woo, Kim Yoo-chul As nuclear negotiations between North Korea and the United States remain in a stalemate after no "substantial outcome" from their recent encounter in Sweden, the lack of visible progress in the denuclearization dialogue is raising concerns that the North is "buying time" for its military and nuclear advancement. During an Asan Institute for Policy Studies security forum held in Seoul, Tuesday, Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the Washington-based RAND Corporation, claimed that despite North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's promise to end his nuclear program, Pyongyang has not taken any meaningful measures toward this....

From its early days, the availability of source code was one of the defining characteristics of open source software. Indeed, Brian Behlendorf of the Apache web server project, an early open source software success, favored "source code available software." Another important aspect related to user rights. Hence, the "free software" terminology that came out of Richard Stallman’s GNU Manifesto and GNU Public License (GPL). As the shorthand went, free was about freedom, not price. Christine Peterson would later coin "open source" as an alternative that avoided the confusion that regularly arose between these two meanings of free. And that’s the term...

They cite the increasing costs of commercial software as reason CERN is best known for pushing the boundaries of science and understanding, but the famed research outfit’s next major experiment will be with open-source software. The cost of various commercial software licenses has increased 10x The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, and also known as home of the Large Hadron Collider, has announced plans to migrate away from Microsoft products and on to open-source solutions where possible.Why? Increases in Microsoft license fees. Microsoft recently revoked the organisations status as an academic institution, instead pricing access to...

In the future, Facebook won't be a social-media site. Facebook is under a lot of scrutiny and pressure at the moment. It's accused of helping foreign actors to subvert elections by using ads and fake accounts to spread lies—in the US, for example—and of acting as a conduit for terrorism in New Zealand and elsewhere. There are calls to break up the company or at least to rein it in. In an evident attempt to head off those moves, and to limit the damage that recent events have caused to Facebook's reputation, Mark Zuckerberg has been publishing some long, philosophical...

Most of the internet could be affected as some Linux devs threaten to rescind code in response to CoC controversy.

Microsoft is releasing the source code for its original Windows File Manager from nearly 28 years ago. Originally released for Windows 3.0, the File Manager was a replacement for managing files through MS-DOS, and allowed Windows users to copy, move, delete, and search for files. While it’s a relic from the past, you can still compile the source code Microsoft has released and run the app on Windows 10 today.

The co-founder of Trump dossier firm Fusion GPS confirmed in court filings on Tuesday that he met last year with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and hired Ohr’s wife to help with the opposition research firm’s investigation of Donald Trump. Glenn Simpson said in a declaration filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. that he met “at [Ohr’s] request” weeks after the presidential election. Simpson stated that Ohr, who recently held the position of deputy assistant attorney general, sought the meeting “to discuss our findings regarding Russia and the election.” Simpson also disclosed that Fusion GPS hired Ohr’s wife, Nellie,...

You read the title correctly. Microsoft just joined the Linux Foundation. Believe it or not, Microsoft has joined The Linux Foundation as a Platinum member. No, this isn't The Onion and it's not April Fool's Day. Microsoft has joined The Linux Foundation. Microsoft announced that it was joining forces with The Linux Foundation at the Microsoft Connect developer event in New York. Yes, yes I know. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once said, "Linux is a cancer". Yes, Microsoft still forces Android vendors to pay for its bogus Linux patents. And, yes, Microsoft and its cronies are still scheming to...

How far is Microsoft willing to go on this open-source charm offensive? Here’s a burning question for the tech universe: Could Microsoft, which built its Windows cash cow on proprietary or closed-source software, reverse course and open-source Windows itself? That would be roughly akin to CocaCola posting its top-secret formula online. Crazy, right? Maybe not, although the very notion would have been unthinkable not too long ago. But it is now on the table considering all the things Microsoft has done over the past few years to embrace the open-source community. The most recent example is last week’s news that...

Pedro Luca has lived in a cave in northern Argentina for 40 years The 79-year-old survives without running water or electricity When he gets hungry he picks up his rifle and goes hunting

A predictable consequence of the move to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour will be the hastened transition from human to a more robotic work-force. A photo that went viral this week showed a robot "manning" the take-out window at McDonald's. You can expect to see more of this. Employers will, of course, be pilloried by the usual cast of economically-challenged Marxists in the political and chattering classes as heartless, sexist, homophobic racists, etc., who put profits before people. But the non-economically challenged among us realize that the increased use of robots is a completely rational response of...

... Telstra has invested $10.3 million in San Francisco-based open source web developer Nginx, the telco revealed today. Telstra Ventures chief Mark Sherman said the decision to invest was driven by Nginx's increasing global popularity, and technology leadership in the web application delivery and deployment market. Telstra's websites run on Nginx currently. Nginx was developed by Kazakhstan-born, Russian developer Igor Sysoev, and can be used to serve web pages, and act as a reverse proxy and load balancer for sites. The server runs on the Unix, Linux, BSD, Apple OS X, Oracle Solaris, IBM AIX and Microsoft WIndows operating systems.

With its engineers involved in more than 2,000 open source projects, you'd have to agree that open source has more than a foothold at Microsoft these days. Most recently, for example, the browser team made the Chakra JavaScript engine that powers both Edge and Internet Explorer open source, for a very practical reason. Node, the popular JavaScript runtime, currently works only with Google's V8 JavaScript engine. With Chakra now open source, Microsoft can take the fork of Node that it created to run on Chakra and contribute it back to the project -- which means developers who use Node will...

Google is replacing its implementation of the Java application programming interfaces (APIs) in Android with OpenJDK, the open source version of Oracle’s Java Development Kit (JDK). The news first came by a “mysterious Android codebase commit” from last month submitted to Hacker News. Google confirmed to VentureBeat that Android N will rely on an OpenJDK implementation, rather Android’s own implementation of the Java APIs. “As an open-source platform, Android is built upon the collaboration of the open-source community,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. “In our upcoming release of Android, we plan to move Android’s Java language libraries to an OpenJDK-based...

Docker today announced that Ian Murdock, a member of the startup's technical staff and a former Sun and Salesforce employee known for founding the Debian Linux operating system, has passed away. He was 42. A cause of death was not provided in the blog post announcing the news. Docker declined to comment. The San Francisco Police Department did not immediately have information on Murdock's cause of death.

As promised earlier in the year, Apple’s Swift team has now posted source code for the Swift compiler and standard library functions and objects. Open-sourcing Swift is a big win for the developer community as it means Swift can now be setup to run on a server and many other use cases, bringing Apple programming talent and expertise beyond ‘just’ making apps iOS devices and Macs.Making Swift open-source also gives the developer community as a whole more confidence in the language. Theoretically, if Apple ever decided to move away from Swift (which is unlikely), the language could be picked up...