With 2012 right around the corner, this Wrap Up takes a look back over the past year in open source news. There have been a lot of milestones in 2011: Linux celebrated its 20th birthday, Eclipse turned 10 and LibreOffice surpassed the 1 year mark. The tech world grieved the loss of a visionary and welcomed many new projects into the open source family. It’s been a big year for open source and I’ve captured the highlights for you here:
New Open Source Projects and Code:
- ITProPortal.com reported, in February, that Canonical released its large database of hardware components: “Canonical Releases Linux Compatible Component Database.”
- In June 2011, the Apache Software Foundation accepted the proposal from Oracle to transfer the OpenOffice.org project to the Apache Incubator program.
- Rip Empson, on TechCrunch, covered Ford announcing at TechCrunch Disrupt that they were partnering with Bug Labs to develop open source hardware and software for new Ford cars: “Ford Partners With Bug Labs To Develop Open Source Platform For In-Car Innovation.”
- The launch of Tizen, the Linux-based open source mobile platform supported by Intel, Samsung and the Linux Foundation was covered in Nathan Eddy’s eWeek article, “Intel Merges MeeGo Into Open Source Tizen Platform.”
- The PCMag.com article, “Google Reveals Dart, New Open-Source Programming Language” by Jill Duffy, covered Google presenting the details of the programming language, Dart, that’s used to create structured Web applications.
- On FierceBioTechIT, Ryan McBride covered the Outercurve Foundation taking over Microsoft’s .NET Bio library and API: “Microsoft donates open source bio project to Outercurve.”
- Brian Proffitt published “Google serves up Android 4.0 source code,” on ITWorld about the much talked about release of Ice Cream Sandwich.
- On ZDNet, James Kendrick blogged about Amazon releasing the Kindle Fire source code: “Kindle Fire source code already available.”
- Matthew Broersma reported on eBay’s new open source programming language, called ql.io, in his eWeekUK article, “eBay Open Sources New Query Language.”
- On ZDNet, Jason Perlow’s blog, “HP’s webOS is going Open Source. Now what?” discussed what the future may hold for webOS.
- Joab Jackson, on PCWorld, reported on LinkedIn open sourcing their recently acquired IndexTank search-engine software: “LinkedIn Open Sources Search Engine.”
- On Wired, Caleb Garling reported on Twitter releasing its TextSecure Whisper Systems code: “Twitter Open Sources Its Android Moxie.”
Open Source Data:
- It was a big year for Hadoop, the Apache software framework that supports large-scale data processing. John Furrier wrote, “Exclusive: Yahoo HortonWorks Funding Details $20m Raise @ $200m Valuation – EMC, NetApp Pass, Benchmark Steps in” on SiliconANGLE about Yahoo’s Hadoop spin-off, Hortonworks, raising $20 million at launch.
- One of the most in depth stories about Data.gov, was “White House to open source Data.gov as open government data platform” by Alex Howard on O’Reilly Radar.
- Glyn Moody’s ComputerWorldUK blog, “More UK Open Data Moves – and Why That Makes Sense,” detailed the 2011 Autumn Statement announcing the creation of a new Open Data Institute (ODI).
Open Source Government:
- Ken Terry wrote, “VA, DOD Choose Open Source to Combine EHRs,” on InformationWeek about the creation of the Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DOD).
- The Open Technology Foundation (OTF) launched by the Australian and New Zealand Governments was covered on opensource.com by Stephen Schmid: “Australia and New Zealand governments launch open technology initiative.”
- Glyn Moody gave a breakdown of the Open Source Procurement Toolkit that was published by the UK Government, in his ComputerWorldUK Blog “Dipping Into the UK Government’s Open Source Procurement Toolkit.”
- On Guardian Government Computing, SA Mathieson wrote “CESG asserts security of open source software,” about the UK Cabinet Office and CESG dispelling the myth that open source can’t be used in government because it’s not secure.
- The H Open reported on IT authorities in Germany and Switzerland working with the Open Source Business Alliance to improve how OOXML documents are presented in the open source office suites, Libre and OpenOffice: “European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenOffice.”
Open Source Education:
- The Associated Press published this article in The Seattle Times, “Students could save millions on open source texts,” reporting on Washington State investing $1 million to make open source textbooks available to college students.
- CNet’s Matt LaMonica wrote about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launching the open source platform, MITx, to allow anyone to take MIT online courses: “MIT open-sources online learning.”
Other Notable Open Source News:
- Scott M. Fulton, III and ReadWriteWeb were given exclusive access to IBM’s Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol proposal, which will use open source messaging technology to potentially revolutionize machine-to-machine communications; read more in his “IBM Open-Sources Potential ‘Internet of Things’ Protocol.”
- Cade Metz wrote an in-depth article on Wired about Microsoft’s progression toward contributing to the open source Samba project: “How Microsoft Learned to Stop Worrying and (Almost) Love Open Source.”
Think I left out any other important stories in open source from 2011? Write a comment and let me know what other stories you think should have made it into this Yearly Wrap Up. See you in 2012!
