open source licenses

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DHS-Developed Krona Software Powers Humanitarian Project

Tammy Waitt | American Security Today | March 10, 2017

Software originally developed at the at the U. S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) to sequence DNA for biodefense is now being used by Microsoft to sequence mosquito DNA in the fight against disease. Developed by the NBACC’s National Bioforensic Analysis Center Genomics Team for bioforensics applications, Krona is a unique visualization tool that enables users to quickly analyze massive quantities of data – such as more than 100 million sequences of DNA in a single mosquito sample, according to Microsoft...

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Don't Believe the Hype, AGPL Open Source Licensing Is Toxic and Unpopular

Matt Asay | Tech Republic | September 5, 2017

Reading Black Duck Software's newest paean to the Affero General Public License (AGPL) ("The Quietly Accelerating Adoption of the AGPL"), one could be forgiven for thinking AGPL is rocking the open source licensing planet. After all, Black Duck executive Phil Odence laced his post with fancy charts showing explosive growth of the license, ultimately declaring the AGPL "very popular," and a license his firm sees frequently in audits. Maybe, maybe not...

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How To Make App Stores Friendly To Open Source

Microsoft recently seemed to propose that Open Source software didn’t belong in the Windows app store. Excuse me? After the news broke, Giorgio Sardo, Microsoft’s General Manager of the Microsoft Store, argued on Twitter that it wasn’t Microsoft’s intent. “We absolutely want to support developers distributing successful OSS apps. In fact, there are already fantastic OSS apps in the Store! The goal of this policy is to protect customers from misleading listings.” Predictably, confusion results. And the kerfuffle over FairEmail and the Google Play Store earlier this year is a good example of how this sort of confusion is not entirely new, leading to questions about intent. I’ve talked with developers and business managers about their experience in preparing software packages for commercial app stores. Universally, everyone reports having issues with app stores’ packaging. These include...

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Interview with Simon Phipps-Patent Trolls and Open Document Format

Gordon Haff interview with OSI's Simon Phipps conducted on July 31st. Phipps talks recent US software patent case decisions and why they're so significant as well as the recent UK government decision about open document formats. Who are the winners and the losers? Read More »

Interview with Stefano Maffulli First Executive Director of the Open Source Initiative

The Open Source Initiative has served as the key steward of open source software since its formation in 1998. In September 2021, the Open Source Initiative board hired Stefano Maffulli as its first Executive Director. I recently interviewed Stefano to learn more about him and his vision for the Open Source Initiative.

Is Open Source A Development Model, Business Model, Or Something Else?

The OSD gives a clear definition of what open source software is, but doesn't provide much insight into how the adoption of open source affects a company's ability to build and deliver products or services that people want and need. Stated another way, there's still tremendous debate about the best ways to build a business based on open source. In this first of a multi-part series, I will lay the groundwork for understanding what products are, what product managers do, and how open source can be considered a supply chain. In future articles, I will go deeper into each of these topics, but I'll start by dissecting some common, but fundamentally confusing vocabulary.

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New Eclipse IoT Open Testbeds to Drive Industry Adoption of Open Source and Open Standards in IoT

Press Release | Eclipse IoT Working Group | April 27, 2017

Open Source for Products in Four Rules (and 10 Slides)

There are four rules to understand when building products out of open source software. A product team (engineering, product management, marketing) needs to understand these rules to participate best in an open source project community and deliver products and services to their customers at the same time. These four rules are the start of all other discussions about the open source product space...

Open Source Initiative Names Stefano Maffulli As First Executive Director

Press Release | Open Source Initiative (OSI) | September 8, 2021

The Open Source Initiative ® (OSI), stewards of the Open Source Definition that sets the foundation for the open source ecosystem, is excited to announce Stefano Maffulli as its first Executive Director.  The appointment is a key step for the transformation of OSI into a professionally managed organization, a process that the Board of Directors started in 2020. After an expansive search led by OSI’s purpose-built staffing committee, the Board of Directors appointed Maffulli, an experienced international leader in enterprise and open source environments.

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Open Source Is So Much More Than Free Code

Roger Baker | FCW | December 6, 2016

In 2011, the Department of Veterans Affairs officially moved its most critical software, the VistA electronic health record system, into open source by establishing the Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA). Along the way, VA officials solicited and followed advice from numerous open source experts, including Red Hat, Carnegie Mellon University and the Industry Advisory Council...

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The Community-Led Renaissance of Open Source

In a revival and expansion of the principles that drove the first generation of community-led open source commercial players, creators are now coming together in a new form of collaboration. Rather than withholding software under a different license, they're partnering with each other to provide the same kinds of professional assurances that companies such as Red Hat discovered were necessary back in the day, but for the thousands of discrete components that make up the modern development platform. Today's generation of entrepreneurial open source creators is leaving behind the scarcity mindset that bore open core and its brethren. Instead, they're advancing an optimistic, additive, and still practical model that adds missing commercial value on top of raw open source.

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To Be Permissive Or Not To Be Permissive, That Is The Question For Open Source Licensors

Phil Johnson | IT World | September 3, 2014

A new study of open source project growth suggests that choosing a permissive license can help your community to grow faster...

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To Trust Artificial Intelligence, It Must Be Open And Transparent. Period.

Machine learning has been around for a long time. But in late 2022, recent advancements in deep learning and large language models started to change the game and come into the public eye. And people started thinking, “We love Open Source software, so, let’s have Open Source AI, too.” But what is Open Source AI? And the answer is: we don’t know yet. Machine learning models are not software. Software is written by humans, like me. Machine learning models are trained; they learn on their own automatically, based on the input data provided by humans. When programmers want to fix a computer program, they know what they need: the source code. But if you want to fix a model, you need a lot more: software to train it, data to train it, a plan for training it, and so forth. It is much more complex. And reproducing it exactly ranges from difficult to nearly impossible.

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VistA is Going Places, and Also Staying Put

The Veterans Health Administration's hospital software, VistA, is a computing legend. Few pieces of software have become the subject of a popular book (Best Care Anywhere), won repeated awards for their usability, or been credited with a 180-degree turn-around in an organization's quality. But VistA is getting long in the tooth, and many--including now the VA itself--are questioning whether it's time for something new.The speculations aren't just about VistA. They extend to all health care software of that generation, including the industry's leading electroinc health record (EHR) system--Epic--and the venerable Intermountain Healthcare.

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Why Use Open Source Software?

Matt Harley | Datamation | December 14, 2015

Almost everyday, someone within the open source community is talking about how folks should be using open source software. I completely agree with this point of view. To further dive into the issue, I'll share my opinion as to why using open source software offers significant advantages over proprietary alternatives. Did you know that most people run their software because it allows them to accomplish a specific task, not because it runs on a particular operating system? While mobile users may be die-hard fans of their chosen platforms, when it comes to the desktop most people simply use what is familiar to them...

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