Open Mainframe Project Launches Call for Proposals for the 3rd Annual Open Mainframe Summit on September 21-22 in Philadelphia, PA

By

-

April 21, 2022

SAN FRANCISCO, April 21, 2022 – The Open Mainframe Project, an open source initiative that enables collaboration across the mainframe community to develop shared tool sets and resources, today announced the launch of the Call for Proposals (CFPs) for the 3rd annual Open Mainframe Summit. The premier mainframe event of 2022, the Summit will take place in person on September 21-22 at Convene at Commerce Square in Philadelphia, PA.

“We are excited to host Open Mainframe Summit in person this year,” said John Mertic, Director of Program Management at the Linux Foundation. “The last two events were successful in that we enabled our messages to reach more users around the world. We hope to continue that momentum while also giving our community a safe place to engage and collaborate face-to-face.”

Open Mainframe Summit is open to students, developers, users and contributors of projects from around the globe looking to learn, network and collaborate. It will feature content tracks that tackle both business and technical strategies for enterprise development and deployment.

Submit a Proposal

The Call for Proposals is now open and will be accepting submissions until Friday, June 10, 2022. Interested speakers can submit proposals in 10 tracks with options for lightning talks, 30-minute sessions and panel discussions. Tracks include:

AI & Machine LearningFrom open source projects with a focus on AI, Machine Learning, and Data Analytics that currently run on Z to the AI accelerator on the recently announced IBM Telum processor, the mainframe will continue to be a key component of how organizations process their data. This track will look at projects, tools, and strategies currently used by organizations tackling these topics today.Building the Next WorkforceBuilding the next workforce in today’s evolving mainframe and post-COVID environment can be challenging. This track will provide strategies for helping onboard newcomers to the platform to learn from the veterans as well as detailed opportunities for the veterans to learn tooling from the newcomers that can now be leveraged for mainframe!BusinessCloud Native on the Mainframe + Hybrid CloudExplore the solutions for and benefits of integrating mainframe into your hybrid cloud environment. Topics range from incorporating mainframe into enterprise DevOps pipelines and enabling the use of popular distributed tooling such as VS Code to running containers directly on z/OS.Diversity + InclusionEducation + TrainingDiscover opportunities to add more tools to your tech toolkit! Whether you are just getting started with mainframe or you are an experienced veteran, there are programs to expand your skill set & to also share your knowledge with others.LanguagesThe mainframe supports a variety of programming languages, both on z/OS and Linux. This track will showcase some of the latest technical updates, usage statistics, and more from several of them.Linux on ZOpen Source Security on MainframeFrom security scans performed in the course of software development to security scans and audits that can be done within an organization to make sure all software is in compliance, this track will focus on what software vendors and open source software projects are doing to ensure that software being provided on the mainframe is secure.z/OS

Submit a proposal: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-mainframe-summit/program/cfp/.

Meet the Program Committee

A program committee, which includes maintainers, active community members and project leaders, will review and rate the proposals once all the submissions are in. This year, Open Mainframe Project welcomes Alan Clark, CTO Office and Director for Industry Initiatives, Emerging Standards and Open Source at SUSE, Donna Hudi, Chief Marketing Officer at Phoenix Software, Elizabeth K. Joseph, Developer Advocate at IBM and Michael Bauer, Staff Product Owner at Broadcom, Inc.

Whether a company is a member or contributor of Open Mainframe Project or is sponsoring the event has no impact on whether talks from their developers will be selected. However, being a community leader does have an impact, as program committee members will often rate talks from the creators or leaders of an open source project more highly. A key focus will be on work within Open Mainframe Project’s 21 hosted projects/working groups, or contributions that otherwise add value to the ecosystem.

Early Bird pricing of $500 for general admission or $40 for academic attendees will end July 8. Click here to register.

Sponsor Now

Open Mainframe Summit is made possible with support from sponsors, especially our first Gold Sponsor Vicom Infinity, a Converge Company. To become a sponsor, click here.

For more details about Open Mainframe or to watch the videos for Open Mainframe Summit 2021, check out the Open Mainframe Project 2021 Annual Report.

For more about Open Mainframe Project, visit https://www.openmainframeproject.org/.

About the Open Mainframe Project

The Open Mainframe Project is intended to serve as a focal point for deployment and use of Linux and Open Source in a mainframe computing environment. With a vision of Open Source on the Mainframe as the standard for enterprise class systems and applications, the project’s mission is to build community and adoption of Open Source on the mainframe by eliminating barriers to Open Source adoption on the mainframe, demonstrating value of the mainframe on technical and business levels, and strengthening collaboration points and resources for the community to thrive. Learn more about the project at https://www.openmainframeproject.org.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

###

The post Open Mainframe Project Launches Call for Proposals for the 3rd Annual Open Mainframe Summit on September 21-22 in Philadelphia, PA appeared first on Linux Foundation.

Container permission denied: How to diagnose this error

By

-

April 19, 2022

Learn what is causing a container permissions error and how to work around the issue without resorting to the –privileged flag.

Container permission denied: How to diagnose this error

By

-

April 19, 2022

Learn what is causing a container permissions error and how to work around the issue without resorting to the –privileged flag.

Linux Foundation Events Code of Conduct Transparency Report – 2021 Event Summary

By

-

April 15, 2022

For many of us, it has been several years since we’ve been in conference settings, or around many people at all. As we close in on a broader return to in-person events next month, this is the perfect time to reiterate that our events are gatherings intended for professional networking and collaboration for the open source community, that exist to encourage the open exchange of ideas. Thus, they require an environment that recognizes the inherent worth of every person and group. All event participants, whether they are attending an in-person or a virtual event, are expected to behave in accordance with our Event Code of Conduct. In short: Be kind. Be professional. Treat everyone with respect.

The importance of a diverse, welcoming and inclusive open source community has been widely understood for some time. Progress is slowly being made, but there is a long way to go. We created our Event Code of Conduct in 2011 as one of many ways we at the Linux Foundation could help create a more welcoming community. Events play a huge role in how open source communities collaborate, and it is critical that these are safe spaces, free of harassment and discrimination.

In the earlier years of our Event Code of Conduct, we received very few incident reports, but that number has grown, especially in recent years. This is a good thing. It means our event participants feel more comfortable speaking up. And the more people speak up, the sooner we can reach our shared goal of a truly inclusive community.

To that end, we will begin publishing a round-up of Event Code of Conduct reports, starting with this 2021 summary. We only held a few in-person events in 2021, so expect these reports to be longer in the future as we continue to hold more in-person events. Moving forward, these reports will be published bi-annually. We will also publish event-specific reports for events with 2,000+ in-person attendees.

We look forward to seeing you all soon, online or in person.

The Linux Foundation Events Team
events@linuxfoundation.org

———

2021 Code of Conduct Incidents By Event

KubeCon Europe (Virtual)

2 reports of concern that several CNCF ambassadors were airing grievances about not having talks accepted at the event, which belittled the work of the program committeeResolution: A warning was issued, and we published this blog outlining the review process1 report of inappropriate sexual advance in a virtual session via chatResolution: A warning was issued

Open Source Summit North America (In Person + Virtual)

1 person videotaping other attendees without their consent (In Person)Resolution: A warning was issued1 report of attendee violating the mask mandateResolution: A warning was issued

KubeCon North America (In Person + Virtual)

1 person videotaping other attendees without their consent (In Person) Resolution: A 2nd and final warning was issued and letting them know their action is illegal in California2 reports of attendees violating the mask mandate Resolution: warnings were issued 1 report of staff at a sponsor booth ignoring a woman attendeeResolution: A warning was issued1 person banned from attending the event due to behavior prior to event showed up to the JW Marriott multiple timesResolution: The individual was escorted out of the venue each time1 attendee was speaking unprofessionally to a member of the LF staff when asked to abide by Covid health + safety protocolsResolution: A warning was issued2 sponsors were handing out collateral with profanity on themResolution: A warning was issued, and they refrained from passing out the offending materials thereafter1 attendee reported (on social media) a staff member at the JW Marriott restaurant was racially profiling themResolution: LF notified JW Marriott hotel management and LF staff followed up with the attendee that alerted LF of the issueMultiple reports of harassment were received against the same attendee. Additional reports were received post-KubeCon as well, for a total of 5 reports.Resolution: The LF conducted an in-depth investigation, involving a neutral outside investigator, and the accused individual participated in the process as well as the reporters. At the conclusion of the investigation, the decision was to ban this person from attending any future Linux Foundation (or LF project) events, and from participating in any leadership position on any Linux Foundation project. The individual was notified of this decision.

PrestoCon Day (Virtual)

1 Attendee was spamming links to YouTube videos and memes for competitors in the virtual chat.Resolution: LF staff deleted posts and removed the user from the event platform. The attendee’s registration information was fake, so no further follow up could be done.

The post Linux Foundation Events Code of Conduct Transparency Report – 2021 Event Summary appeared first on Linux Foundation.

More Time on Innovating, Less Time on Compliance

By

-

April 15, 2022

I am old enough to remember when organizations developed software in-house – all of it. I also clearly remember my information systems college professor teaching it is almost always less expensive and better to use code/programs already written and adapting them for your use than to recreate the wheel from scratch.

It is a different world now – software is built on a foundation of other programs, libraries, and code bases. Free and open source software (FOSS) is key to this because it is so easy to pickup, use, share, and create code. What an opportunity to speed development and focus innovation on the next thing rather than creating what already exists. This is part of the value of open source software – collaborate on the building blocks and innovate and differentiate on top of that.

However, there are also challenges in this space, with a good example being the question of how to address licensing. There are A LOT of types of licenses that can apply to a piece of software/code. Each license needs to be understood and tracked with each piece of software it is included in for an organization to ensure nothing is missed. This can quickly multiply into a significant catalog that requires lots of manual work. On top of that, you also need to provide that license information to each of your customers, and they will have their own system and/or processes for providing that information to them and making sure it is up-to-date with each new version of the software.

You can see where this can quickly consume valuable staff resources and open doors to mistakes. Imagine the possibility of a standard way to track and report the licenses so your teams don’t need to worry about all of the digital paperwork and can instead focus on innovation and adding value to you and your customers.

This is exactly the problem a team of lawyers and governance experts sought to fix back in 2016 and created the OpenChain Project to do just that. They asked, what are the key things for open source compliance that everyone needs, and how do we unify the systems and processes. They envisioned an internationally accepted standard to track and report all of the licenses applicable to a software project. The end result is a more trustable supply chain where organizations don’t need to spend tons of time checking compliance again and again and then remediating.

The result – a ISO standard (ISO/IEC 5230) was approved in Q4 2020. The OpenChain Project also hosts a library of 1,000 different reference documents in a wide variety of languages – some are official and many more are community documents, like workflow examples, FAQs, etc.

How are organizations benefiting from OpenChain? I find it encouraging that Toyota is one of the leaders in this. As anyone who has had at least one business class in college knows, Toyota is a leader in innovations for manufacturing over several decades. In the 1970s they pioneered supply chain management techniques with the Toyota Production System (please tell me they had to do TPS reports) – adopted externally as Just in Time manufacturing. They are also known for adopting the philosophy of Kaizen, or continuous improvement. So, as they looked at how to manage software supply chains and all of the licensing, they adopted the OpenChain Specification. They implemented it, in part, with a governance structure and an official group to manage OSS risks and community contributions.

Toyota’s OSS governance structure

They are also an active participant in the OpenChain Japan Working Group to help identify bottlenecks across the supply chain, and the group enabled Toyota to develop information sharing guidelines to address licensing challenges with Tier 1 suppliers. They now see reduced bottlenecks, more data for better decision making, and decreased patent and licensing risks. Read more.

PwC is a global auditing, assurance, tax, and consulting firm. As an auditor, much of their business revolves around building trust in society. They also develop software solutions for thousands of clients around the world and receive software from providers of all sizes and maturity levels, making OSS compliance difficult. It was a tremendous effort and caused time delays for them and their clients. Now, PwC is able to provide clients with an Open Source Software compliance assessment based on the latest OpenChain specification. Their clients can share an internationally-recognized PwC audit report to verify OSS compliance. Read more.

And just last month, SAP, a market leader in enterprise application software, announced they are adopting the OpenChain ISO/IEC 5230 standard. It marks the first time that an enterprise application software company has undergone a whole entity conformance. Their reach across the global supply chain is massive – its customers are involved in almost 90% of global trade.

As the ISO/IEC standard is done, what is next for OpenChain? They are looking at security, export control, and more.

If you or your organization are interested in learning more about OpenChain, adopting the standard, or getting involved in what is next, head over to https://www.openchainproject.org/. We also host an online training course when you are ready to dig in: Introduction to Open Source License Compliance Management.

My hope is that you now spend less time on compliance and more time on innovation.

The post More Time on Innovating, Less Time on Compliance appeared first on Linux Foundation.

Open Source Networks in Action: How leading telcos are harnessing the power of LF Networking

By

Linux.com Editorial Staff

-

April 14, 2022

This post originally appeared in LF Networking’s blog.

Now in its fifth year as an umbrella organization, LF Networking (LFN) and its projects enable organizations across the globe to more quickly and effectively achieve digital transformation via the community’s shared development efforts. This includes companies of all sizes and types that rely on LFN’s breadth of commercially-ready ecosystem offerings, all based on open source innovation spearheaded within the LF Networking community.

As mature LFN projects, ONAP (Open Network Automation Platform) and OpenDaylight are currently deployed as critical components in networks around the globe. Below is a sampling of specific case studies currently implemented in the real-world that are allowing organizations to transform their networks.

Spark automates disaggregated network in just 6 months using ONAP. As Spark New Zealand Limited (Spark) approached 5G deployment, they started analyzing the status of automation across network and infrastructure and realized they needed an automation suite that would support future use cases that 5G could enable, such as network slicing, and closed loop automation. In partnership with Infosys, Spark took a relatively short six months to go from kickoff to implementation of ONAP. More details are available here.
Verizon leverages OpenDaylight as its directional SDN controller. After initial work exploring OpenDaylight (ODL), Verizon decided to pull the testing, packaging, support in-house and create their own optimized ODL distribution. ODL now serves as Verizon’s foundational and directional SDN controller with two use cases in production across the network. Verizon brings a strong developer team to the project with several employees directly participating in ODL on eleven projects. Currently, Verizon is using Yang model driven platform solutions and wants to integrate different types of data modeling technology, Open APIs, rest platforms, and more. More details are available here.
Deutsche Telekom deploys ONAP in O-RAN Town. In its O-RAN Town project, DT deployed in the city of Neubrandenburg a multi-vendor Open RAN trial network for 4G and 5G services with massive MIMO integrated into the live network — the first in Europe. To automate services on all network domains, DT introduced a vendor-independent Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) component based on ONAP open source. The SMO is to be at the heart of complete lifecycle management of all O-RAN components in this deployment. More details are available here.
Orange deploys automation framework powered by ONAP. Realizing a long-pursued goal of using ONAP, Orange has deployed and trialed an automation framework powered by ONAP. The current use case, in production in Orange Egypt, includes automating network services, network connectivity and resource management inside IP/MPLS, and configuration changes such as provisioning virtual private networks. Through this initiative, Orange has demonstrated that ONAP has reached the maturity and modularity for network operators to take combinations of ONAP projects and components from proof of concept to production. More details are available here.
Bell automates a significant amount of manual configuration, recovery, and provision work by using ONAP in production across multiple use cases. Since 2017, the use of ONAP at Bell Canada has expanded to automating numerous key network services across all business units. Moving forward, ONAP is playing a major role in 5G and multi-access edge computing (MEC) rollouts. The key metric Bell uses to measure the success of ONAP is the number of recurring manual task hours saved per month. Each project that adopts ONAP for a specific service tracks this metric. In 2019 alone, Bell saved a significant amount of recurring manual work per month as a result of using ONAP. In 2020, the team will also measure the acceleration of new services on-boarded to the platform. Currently, the on-boarding process can range from a few weeks to six months. Learn more in this detailed case study.

These are just a few examples of what is possible with open networking. Stay tuned to LF Networking channels for more industry proof points across the ecosystem and follow the LFN community journey (visit our website and follow us on Twitter) to witness the power of open collaboration on the future of networking.

The post Open Source Networks in Action: How leading telcos are harnessing the power of LF Networking appeared first on Linux Foundation.

Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) Moves to the Linux Foundation

By

Linux.com Editorial Staff

-

April 14, 2022

Leading open source network operating system enabling dis-aggregation for data centers now hosted by the Linux Foundation to enable neutral governance in a software ecosystem

SAN FRANCISCO– April 14, 2021 – Today, the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, announced the Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC, an open source networking operating system), is now part of the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation provides a venue for continued ecosystem, developer growth and diversity, as well as collaboration across the open source networking stack.

“We are pleased to welcome SONiC to the Linux Foundation family of open networking projects,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “SONiC is a leader in open source data center NOS deployments, and we’re looking forward to growing its developer community.”

The Linux Foundation will primarily focus on the software component of SONiC, and continue to partner with Open Compute Platform(OCP) on aligning hardware and specifications like SAI.

“Microsoft founded SONiC to bring high reliability and fast innovation to the routers in Azure cloud data centers. We created it as open source so the entire networking ecosystem would grow stronger. SONiC already runs on millions of ports in the networks of cloud scalers, enterprises, and fintechs. The SONiC project is thrilled to be joining the Linux Foundation to take the community to its next jump in scale, participation, and usage,” said Dave Maltz, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Azure Networking.

About SONiC

Created by Microsoft for its Azure data centers, SONiC is an open source network operating system (NOS) based on Linux that runs on over 100 different switches from multiple vendors and ASICs. It offers a full-suite of network functionality, like BGP and RDMA, that has been production-hardened in the data centers of some of the largest cloud-service providers. It offers teams the flexibility to create the network solutions they need while leveraging the collective strength of a large ecosystem and community.

Existing Ecosystem

SONiC brings a strong existing ecosystem, with premier members including Alibaba, Broadcom, Dell, Google, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA and 50+ global partners. The SONiC community will host its first hackathon later this year. Stay tuned for details and registration information. More information about SONiC, including how to join, is available at SONiC (azure.github.io).

Support from Key Stakeholders & Customers

Alibaba

“This is a big milestone for the SONiC community. After joining the Linux Foundation, the SONiC community will play a much more important role in the networking ecosystem,” said Dennis Cai, Head of Network Infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud. “Congratulations! As one of the pioneering SONiC users and contributors, Alibaba Cloud has widely deployed SONiC- based whitebox switches in our data centers, edge computing cloud, P4- based network gateways, and will extend the deployment to Wide Area Networks. With modern network OS design and operation- friendly features, we already gained tremendous value from the large-scale deployments. Alibaba is committed to the SONiC community, and will continue bringing our large-scale deployment best practices to the community, such as open hardware specs , network in-band telemetry, high performance networking, and network resiliency features, SRv6, etc.”

Broadcom

“Large hyperscalers agree that merchant silicon, hardware independence, and open source protocol and management stack are essential for running their data center networks. Broadcom has wholeheartedly supported this vision with leading-edge, predictable silicon execution and contributions to the SONiC project. We are excited to see the SONiC initiative join the Linux Foundation and look forward to working with the streamlined ecosystem to drive the data center and hyperscale needs of the future,” said Mohammad Hanif, senior director of engineering, Core Switching Group, Broadcom.

Dell Technologies

“We believe SONiC will continue its accelerated adoption into the modern data center, delivering the scale, flexibility and programmability needed to run enterprise-level networks,” said Dave Lincoln, vice president of product management at Dell Technologies. “As a leading SONiC contributor, we see the advantages it brings to the supporting open source community and customers. As we continue the drive to take open-source-based solutions mainstream, we look forward to working with the Linux Foundation and its supporting communities to drive SONIC’s development and adoption.”

EBay

“eBay operates a large-scale network infrastructure to support its growing global business. eBay cares about the openness and quality of NOS to operate its network infrastructure. eBay is an active participant in the SONiC community and deploys SONiC at scale in its infrastructure. eBay is excited to see this next step of growth of the SONiC community,” said Parantap Lahiri, vice president, Network and Datacenter Engineering at eBay.

EPFL

“At EPFL, we have been looking for a vendor neutral and flexible NOS that can provide HaaS capabilities for our Private Cloud Environment. SONiC OS provides us the solution we have been looking for in our Data Centre, allowing us to migrate to a powerful and modern Data Centre network. We are looking forward to this next phase in the SONiC community,” said Julien Demierre, Network and System architect at EPFL.

Google

“We believe moving SONiC to the Linux Foundation is very important as it will further enhance collaboration across the open source network, community and ecosystem. Google has more than a decade of experience in SDN; our data centers and WAN are exclusively SDN controlled, and we are excited to have helped bring SDN capabilities to SONiC . We fully support the move to the LF and intend to continue making significant upstream contributions to drive feature velocity and make it easier for operators to realize the benefits of SDN with PINS/SONiC and P4,” said Dan Lenoski, vice president, Engineering, Network Infrastructure, Google.

Intel

“Intel has a strong history of working with SONiC and the Linux Foundation to help to propel innovation in an open, cooperative environment where ideas are shared and iterated. We continually promote open collaboration, encompassing open-source technologies such as the Infrastructure Programmer Developer Kit and P4 integrated networking stack (PINS), using Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Infrastructure Processing Units and Tofino Intelligent Fabric Processors as base hardware,” said Ed Doe, vice president and general manager, Switch and Fabric Group at Intel. “Joining the Linux Foundation will help SONiC to flourish, and in turn create greater benefit for cloud service providers, network operators and enterprises to create customized network solutions and transform data-intensive workloads from data center to the edge.”

NVIDIA

“This is an important milestone for SONiC and the community behind it,” said Amit Katz, vice president of Ethernet Switches at NVIDIA. “NVIDIA is committed to supporting the community version of SONiC that is 100 percent open source, enabling data center operators to control the code inside their cloud fabrics, accelerated by state-of-the-art platforms with SONiC support, such as NVIDIA’s Spectrum family of switches.”

Open Compute Project

“The Open Compute Project Foundation is pleased to continue its collaboration with SONIC as part of the OCP’s new hardware – software co-design strategy. The open source SONiC Network Operating System is enabling rapid innovation across the network ecosystem, and it began with the definition of the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) at OCP. Hardware – software co-design focuses on software that requires intimate knowledge of the hardware to drive maximum hardware performance, and speed time-to-market for hardware where system performance and ecological footprint can be highly dependent on software and hardware interactions,” said George Tchaparian, CEO Open Compute Project Foundation.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

# # #

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

The post Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) Moves to the Linux Foundation appeared first on Linux Foundation.

A Rarity in Open Source

By

Jason Perlow

-

April 14, 2022

About 3 ½ years ago, Sanath Kumar Ramesh and his wife welcomed their son, Raghav, into the world. Like any new parents, he immediately became their everything. And, as new parents do, they threw him a 1st birthday bash where many of their friends and family were meeting Raghav for the first time.

As Sanath was getting ready to cut the cake, he received a call from Raghav’s doctor. The doctor informed him hey received the results from a battery of tests and, “We think he has an ultra-rare genetic disease called SSMD (Spondylometaphyseal Dysplasia), but, unfortunately, we don’t know much about the disease because all of the other kids died just a few weeks after birth. Your son is lucky to be alive.”

Sanath recounts, “I was taken aback. I was standing at my son’s first of many birthday parties to come and someone was telling me that Raghav was lucky to be alive. This was a turning point in my career – in my whole life.”

In plain English, he has a typo in his GPX4 gene. The G became A. Consequently, he can’t sit, stand, walk, or eat by mouth.

Raghav has what is called an ultra-rare disease. Only 9 other children have been diagnosed around the world.

He called hundreds of hospitals, doctors, researchers, etc. and found no treatments. So, he took matters into his own hands. He tried 5 different drugs and saw some improvements, but not enough to “give him the life he deserves.” Raghav did lift his head up at 13 months – something he never did before. At 3, he is still unable to sit, stand, walk, and talk, and it looks like his disease is progressing faster than they anticipated.

While SSMD only has a handful of known patients, 400 million people around the world live with over 7,000 rare diseases and disorders. 93% have no FDA-approved treatment.

So, Sanath began asking researchers, How do we bring treatments to all of the rare diseases? Unfortunately, there is no simple solution. The drug development process is a maze and the biology of most is a complete mystery. But the advice he got was to foster open collaboration, lower the cost, and operate at a global scale.

Source: Open Treatments Foundation

Well, that sounds exactly like the open source model – something Sanath knows well. So, in March 2021, he started the Open Treatments Foundation with the mission to, “Create a society where there is at least one treatment for all genetic diseases accessible to all patients.” That is one giant BHAG.

They settled on four strategies:

Put every disease on the map: increase disease awareness, build a robust patient community
Make diseases easy to work with: open source animal models, assays, and natural history data
Generate more money for research: crowdfunding, incentive-based funding, etc.
Create more drug developers: decentralize drug development, go global

They also chose to collaborate with The Linux Foundation on the open source software and created the RareCamp project to house the source code under an Apache 2.0 license and to create and foster a community. The ball is rolling.

On a more personal level, I spent the previous five years working for individuals with rare disorders and diseases. Specifically, I worked at the National Fragile X Foundation. Fragile X syndrome is an inherited, intellectual/developmental disability and is rare (but not ultra-rare). My advocacy extended to all individuals with rare diseases/disorders through groups like the EveryLife Foundation and the Friends of the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disorders – so I am especially excited to see this work.

Our Fragile X parents would often say this isn’t the life they anticipated or hoped for, but they are better for it. I would say our world will be a better place because of sweet Raghav and all the work he is inspiring. Are you inspired? Join us! As Jim Zemlin said when Sanath spoke at the 2021 Open Source Summit, this project is about, “personal motivation and a collective response.” Can you be part of the collective response? Visit rarecamp.org.

This is just one of the many projects at The Linux Foundation that has the potential to make a major, positive impact on the world. As Jim also stated, “We are just getting started addressing huge issues like rare diseases.”

The post A Rarity in Open Source appeared first on Linux Foundation.

T-Mobile joins the Zephyr Project as Platinum Member

By

Linux.com Editorial Staff

-

April 14, 2022

Zephyr RTOs Powers T-MOBILE First Dev Kit That Inspires 5G Innovation

Zephyr RTOS Powers T-Mobile’s First Developer Kit, Designed to Increase Developer Innovation & Make Connection to the Network Easy

SAN FRANCISCO, April 14, 2022 – Today, the Zephyr® Project announced that T-Mobile has joined as a Platinum member, leveraging the Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) to power its new Developer Kit, which gives innovators fast and easy access to build on T-Mobile’s network. The Zephyr Project is an open source project at the Linux Foundation that builds a safe, secure and flexible RTOS for resource-constrained devices. T-Mobile is the first wireless carrier to join the project.

“As a leader in the industry and our first telecom member, T-Mobile brings a unique perspective and expertise to the Zephyr ecosystem,” said Kate Stewart, Vice President of Dependable Embedded Systems at The Linux Foundation. “Zephyr’s existing wireless capabilities (Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi, and 802.15.4), coupled with DevEdge, T-Mobile’s new developer platform, will unleash innovators to create new solutions for the connected future.”

Zephyr RTOS is easy to deploy, secure, connect and manage and supports more than 350 boards running embedded microcontrollers from Arm and RISC-V to Tensilica, NIOS, and ARC as single and multicore systems. It has a growing set of software libraries that can be used across various applications and industry sectors such as Industrial IoT, wearables, machine learning and more. Zephyr is built with an emphasis on broad chipset support, security, dependability, long-term support releases and a growing open source ecosystem.

“T-Mobile is thrilled to be the first wireless provider to join the Zephyr Project. As we shared when we launched DevEdge earlier this month, we envision a future where everything that can be connected, will be. And that requires massive innovation.” said Rob Roy, SVP of Emerging Business Innovation at T-Mobile. “Zephyr’s RTOS will help T-Mobile enable developers to build better and faster, unlocking massive innovation on our network.”

T-Mobile’s new Developer Kit, which will run on Zephyr RTOS, gives developers immediate access to T-Mobile’s network – no out-of-pocket costs, no testing hardware, no lengthy build time required. And for a limited time, T-Mobile is giving away Developer Kits for free while supplies last to developers who sign up now. To learn more, and to sign-up for a kit, developers can visit devedge.t-mobile.com/solutions/iot-developer-kit.

T-Mobile joins other Platinum members including Antmicro, Baumer, Google, Intel, Meta, Nordic Semiconductor, NXP, Oticon and Qualcomm Innovation Center. T-Mobile will join the Zephyr Governing Board and its commitment to ensure balanced collaboration and feedback that meets the needs of its community.

Other Zephyr Project members include AVSystem, BayLibre, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), Eclipse Foundation, FIWARE, Foundries.io, Golioth, Infineon, Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS), Laird Connectivity, Linaro, Memfault, Northeastern University, Parasoft, Percepio, Research Institute of Sweden (RISE), RISC-V, SiFive, Silicon Labs, Synopsys, Texas Instruments and Wind River.

Zephyr Developer Summit

The Zephyr community will gather virtually and in-person at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, on June 8-9. The second annual Zephyr Developer Summit will feature speakers from Antmicro, AVSystem, Bitergia, Boston Technology Law, Entropic Engineering, Circuit Dojo, Facebook/Meta, Golioth, Google, Huawei, Intel, Laird Connectivity, Lattix, Linaro, The Linux Foundation, Nordic Semiconductor, Percepio, Samsung, ST Microelectronics, Synopsys, Wind River and Zonneplan.

The Summit is open to the public with various registration rates to attend in-person or virtually. Learn more and register here: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/zephyr-developer-summit/register/.

A few of highlights of the Zephyr Developer Summit include:

An Intro to Zephyr Day on June 7 that offer several presentations and overviews for new developers. It will also feature in-depth hands-on tutorials from Golioth and Nordic Semiconductor.A Mini-Conference for Testing & Traceability that features sessions about design and testing, unit tests and emulators, new framework for testing fleet of platforms, and a Birds of a Feather (BoF) for quality and testing processes for Zephyr.A Mini-Conference for RISC-V collaboration with presentations about SMP support, what it is currently and what lies ahead, as well as the use of the RISC-V architecture in the Zephyr ecosystem.

The complete schedule for the Summit can be found here. The Zephyr Developer Summit is made possible thanks to Diamond Sponsors Antmicro, Google and Intel; Platinum Sponsor Nordic Semiconductor; Gold Sponsor NXP; Silver Sponsors Golioth and Memfault and Session Recording Sponsor BayLibre.

Last year, almost 700 people registered for the first-ever virtual Zephyr Developer Summit in June. The event consisted of 5 mini-conferences, 28 sessions and 51 speakers who presented technical content, best practices, real-world use cases and more. Videos are available on the Zephyr Project YouTube Channel.

To learn more about Zephyr RTOS, visit the Zephyr website and blog.

About the Zephyr Project

The Zephyr Project is an open source, scalable real-time operating system (RTOS) supporting multiple hardware architectures. To learn more, please visit www.zephyrproject.org.

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

###

The post T-Mobile joins the Zephyr Project as Platinum Member appeared first on Linux Foundation.

How to Manage Linux Endpoints with Automation

By

The Linux Foundation

-

April 14, 2022

Endpoint security is traditionally treated separately from the broader network security plan, and usually falls under responsibility of the IT admins team rather than the security team. However, endpoints are becoming a more critical part of the extended network ecosystem as many organizations will continue encouraging remote work after the Great Office Return.

The IT admins approach not only limits visibility and control but also makes it difficult to assess a device’s security level. It’s challenging to take the necessary automated steps in the event of a compromise due to a lack of access to vital threat intelligence. These challenges are even greater for Linux users, which is the preferred system of many developers and DevOps-led organizations.

Stack Overflow’s 2020 developer poll cites that professional developers will increase by more than 28 million by 2024. Thus, long-term integration and automation of Linux systems and infrastructure into IT operations is an even bigger priority for organizations moving forward.

Why organizations lack control and visibility over their Linux endpoint devices

Unfortunately, Linux infrastructure is not generally straightforward to automate. Without extra tooling, some administrators may face a long road to achieving their automation targets in the first place. To automate Linux systems, IT administrators must have complete control over their security and configuration settings. They must also possess the ability to monitor systems afterward to ensure everything is running smoothly.

Challenges of Linux endpoint management

Many endpoints currently connected to corporate networks are not official corporate assets. IT departments can’t quickly assess or monitor them to ensure they get the updates and patches they need because they don’t own these devices. This makes them vulnerable to threats, but it also makes them a relatively unknown threat vector, posing a threat to the entire fleet of devices.

Another significant barrier to visibility is mobility. Endpoint devices were once considered corporate assets kept behind the corporate firewall. Users of these endpoint devices today can connect to corporate resources, access corporate data, and even work on it using a variety of applications. They don’t need to be connected to a VPN to access physical or cloud-based resources. This is becoming more common across organizations of all sizes.

These devices spend the majority of their time related to non-corporate network resources which significantly reduces IT visibility. According to a 2020 Ponemon Institute report titled “The Cost of Insecure Endpoints,” two-thirds of IT professionals admit to having no visibility into endpoints that connect to the network regularly when they work outside of it.

There is also the challenge of Shadow IT. Employees can easily install and run traditional and cloud-based applications on their phones and computers and on corporate-owned assets assigned to them without having to go through IT. If IT administrators don’t have insight into all of the programs operating on these devices, they won’t be able to verify that essential access controls are in place to mitigate threats or govern the spread of data and other business assets. Self-compliance and security are not ideal for Linux endpoints.

Why manage your Linux devices in real-time?

Having complete visibility over IT asset inventory for security and productivity monitoring is critical to helping identify and eliminate unauthorized devices and apps.

What should IT teams monitor in real-time? Important metrics to keep an eye on include the number of unknown, checked-in, and total devices in the fleet, as well as devices installed and outdated and rarely used apps. IT professionals should look for a tool that keeps a constantly updated and monitored inventory of IT assets, including Linux.

Maintaining endpoint health with security controls is another advantage of managing Linux devices in real-time. Every day, numerous activities take place at an endpoint. It is critical to keep an eye on everything, including suspicious activity.

IT practitioners need a tool that conducts regular endpoint health checks to protect your endpoints, enforces firewall policies, quarantines or isolates unnecessary devices, kills rogue processes and services, hardens system configurations, and performs remote system tune-ups and disc clean-ups. This will help identify and eliminate unauthorized devices and applications.

Otherwise, allowing any random device or application in the network will gouge a hole in IT security and employee productivity. That’s why disabling or blocking illegal devices and programs from entering your network is critical.

Moreover continuous monitoring and remediation must be enabled. Continuous monitoring of your endpoints requires security tasks to be executed periodically. Chef Desktop helps achieve this without worrying about connectivity and maintenance issues and helps to ensure that endpoints remain in the desired state

Conclusion

Long-term integration of Linux systems and infrastructure into IT operations is common in organizations that have them.  Continuous monitoring of endpoints requires security tasks to be executed even remotely, without relying on physical access of devices. IT administrators must have complete control over their security and configuration settings to automate Linux systems, as well as the ability to monitor systems after the fact to ensure everything runs smoothly. 

IT managers must reduce costs and optimize time by leaning off manual processes. Instead, they should configure the entire linux fleet in a consistent, policy-driven manner. This boosts efficiency and productivity as well as maintains detailed visibility into the overall status of the Linux and desktop fleet. Easy-to-implement configuration management capabilities can assist IT teams in managing and overcoming some of the challenges they face when managing large Linux laptop fleets.

AUTHOR BIO

Sudeep Charles is a Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Progress. Over a career spanning close to two decades, he has held various roles in product development, product marketing, and business development for application development, cybersecurity, fintech and telecom enterprises. Sudeep holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and a Master’s in Business Administration.