FOSS and IBM Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 22, 2024

• Arun Raghavan ☛ Arun Raghavan: Asymptotic: A 2023 Review

  It’s been a busy few several months, but now that we have some breathing room, I wanted to take stock of what we have done over the last year or so.

  This is a good thing for most people and companies to do of course, but being a scrappy, (questionably) young organisation, it’s doubly important for us to introspect. This allows us to both recognise our achievements and ensure that we are accomplishing what we have set out to do.

  One thing that is clear to me is that we have been lagging in writing about some of the interesting things that we have had the opportunity to work on, so you can expect to see some more posts expanding on what you find below, as well as some of the newer work that we have begun.

  (note: I write about our open source contributions below, but needless to say, none of it is possible without the collaboration, input, and reviews of members of the community)

• New Relic Adds Native Kubernetes Support to Observability Platform

  New Relic is now providing native Kubernetes support for OpenTelemetry and Prometheus-instrumented hosts.

• CNX Software ☛ SB Components’ Trekko Pico is an open-source, RP2040-powered GPS logger with multi-GNSS support

  After the success of their Kickstarter campaign, SB Components has now made the Trekko Pico GPS logger available for pre-order. The Trekko Pico is a small location logger for travelers and outdoor enthusiasts that makes it easy to track routes and record their travels. A Raspberry Pi RP2040 powers the Trekko Pico, providing the programming, connectivity, and data logging functionality. The Quectel GNSS L76K module supports the concurrent reception of GPS, GLONASS (or BeiDou), Galileo, SBAS, and QZSS signals, with 32 tracking and 72 acquisition channels. There is a JST 2-pin connector that can be used to attach an external battery, and the Microchip MCP73831 controller is responsible for battery charging and management.

• Ubuntu Pit ☛ 10 Best Windows Alternative Open-source OS

  There are many factors that you should consider before buying a desktop, laptop, or notebook, right? You always want to have an attractive-looking device with updated features. Thanks for such kind of thinking. But have you ever thought about the operating system?

• LWN ☛ Untangling the Open Collectives

  Name collisions aren't just a problem for software development—organizations, projects, and software that have the same or similar names can cause serious confusion. That was certainly the case on February 28 when the Open Collective Foundation (OCF) began to notify its hosted projects that it would be shutting down by the end of 2024. The announcement surprised projects hosted with OCF, as one might expect. It also worried and confused users of the Open Collective software platform from Open Collective, Inc. (OCI), as well as organizations hosted by the Open Source Collective (OSC) and Open Collective Europe (OC Europe). There is enough confusion about the names, relationships between the organizations, and impact on projects like Flatpak, Homebrew, and htop hosted by OCF, that a deeper look is warranted.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • [digiKam] Splashscreen contributions

    For the next digiKam releases, the digiKam team needs photographs for digiKam and Showfoto splash-screens. Proposing photo samples as splash-screens is a simple way for users to contribute to digiKam project. The pictures must be correctly exposed/composed, and the subject must be chosen from a real photographer’s inspiration. Note that we will add a horizontal frame to the bottom of the image as in the current splashes.

• Fedora Family / IBM

  • Red Hat Allies With Docker, Inc. for Testcontainers Cloud Framework

    Red Hat extended an alliance with Docker Inc. to provide access to Testcontainers Cloud from the Red Bait OpenShift platform deployed on Kubernetes clusters.

  • LWN ☛ Questions about machine-learning models for Fedora

    Kaitlyn Abdo of Fedora's AI/ML SIG opened an issue with the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) recently that carried a few tricky questions about packaging machine-learning (ML) models for Fedora. Specifically, the SIG is looking for guidance on whether pre-trained weights for PyTorch constitute code or content. And, if the models are released under a license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), does it matter what data the models were trained on? The issue was quickly tossed over to Fedora's legal mailing list and sparked an interesting discussion about how to handle these items, and a temporary path forward.