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Tag: Linux Foundation

  • Microsoft Joins LF Energy to Decarbonize the Grid

    Microsoft Joins LF Energy to Decarbonize the Grid

    LF Energy, a Linux Foundation nonprofit, announced that Microsoft is joining its efforts to decarbonize the grid.

    LF Energy’s goal is to help combat climate change by decarbonizing the energy grid, and eventually the economy. Microsoft has joined the LF Energy Foundation, and one of its executives has been chosen to be General Member representative to the foundation’s governing board.

    The very ethos of open source and LF Energy is that we can accomplish digital paradigm shifts faster, more securely, and with less costs to the bottomline. We are better together than going at it alone. That collaborative might is needed now more than ever to decarbonize our power grid and, eventually, our economy to save the planet from climate change.

    Against that backdrop–and the urgency we face with climate change–we are thrilled to announce that Dr. Audrey Lee, Senior Director of Energy Strategy at Microsoft, has been elected to serve as the General Member representative to the LF Energy Foundation Governing Board.

    Microsoft has also said “that, by 2030, 100% of its electricity consumption, 100% of the time, will be matched by zero carbon energy purchases.”

    Such a large, influential company joining LF Energy is a big win in the fight to combat climate change.

  • Linux Foundation: Open Source Hiring a Top Priority

    Linux Foundation: Open Source Hiring a Top Priority

    The Linux Foundation has released its 9th annual Open Source Jobs Report, and the outlook is positive for the open source job market.

    Open source software and platforms offer a number of advantages over commercial options, not the least of which is cost. In addition to cost, open source software provides organizations more control, as well as the potential for improved security and privacy.

    According to the Linux Foundation, in partnerships with edX, 97% of hiring managers cite hiring open source talent as a top priority. In addition, 50% of those managers plan on hiring more open source talent this year. Some 44% of hiring managers said they wanted to hire individuals who had actively contributed to an open source project.

    Open source professionals are noticing the uptick in demand.

    Interestingly, open source professionals report being headhunted more in 2021 than during the past several years, with 55% of professionals receiving more outreach in the past six months than the prior six months. During the pandemic in 2020, only 29% reported receiving more outreach, while 21% heard from recruiters less often. Only 10% of respondents this year stated the volume of recruiter outreach has decreased for them.

    The Linux Foundation’s report is good news for open source professionals and the community at large.

  • Microsoft, Linux Foundation and Others Launch The Green Software Foundation

    Microsoft, Linux Foundation and Others Launch The Green Software Foundation

    Microsoft, the Linux Foundation, Accenture, GitHub and ThoughtWorks have launched The Green Software Foundation to promote sustainable software development.

    Software development may not be the leading contributor to climate change, or even come up in most conversations about it, but estimates place data center electricity usage at 1%. Over the next decade, data center electricity usage is expected to increase to 3-8% of global usage.

    Microsoft and its fellow organizations founded The Green Software Foundation nonprofit with the intention of building “a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tooling and leading practices for building green software.” The foundation will work to help the information and communications technology sector meet its Paris Climate Agreement goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030.

    “The scientific consensus is clear: the world confronts an urgent carbon problem,” Microsoft president Brad Smith said. “It will take all of us working together to create innovative solutions to drastically reduce emissions. Today, Microsoft is joining with organizations who are serious about an environmentally sustainable future to drive adoption of green software development to help our customers and partners around the world reduce their carbon footprint.”

    The foundation outlined its three primary goals:

    Establish green software industry standards: The foundation will create and publish green software standards, green patterns and practices across various computing disciplines and technology domains. The group will encourage voluntary adoption and help guide government policy toward those standards for a consistent approach for measuring and reporting green software emissions.

    Accelerate innovation: To grow the green software field, we need to nurture the creation of trusted open-source and open-data projects that support the creation of green software applications. The foundation will work alongside our nonprofit partners and academia to support research into green software.

    Drive awareness and grow advocacy: If we want companies to build greener applications, they need people who know how to build them. As such, one of our key missions is to drive widespread adoption of green software across the industry through ambassador programs, training and education which leads to certification and events to facilitate the growth of green software.

  • Linux Foundation Launches FD.io Open Source IO Services Framework

    Linux Foundation Launches FD.io Open Source IO Services Framework

    The Linux Foundation announced Fido (FD.io), which is an open source product aimed at providing an IO services framework for network and storage software. It’s initial software is now available as is a validation testing lab.

    6WIND, Brocade, Cavium, Cisco, Comcast, Ericsson, Huawei, Inocybe Technologies, Intel, Mesosphere, Metaswitch Networks (Project Calico), PLUMgrid and Red Hat are among those supporting FD.io.

    “Architected as a collection of sub-projects, FD.io provides a modular, extensible user space IO services framework that supports rapid development of high-throughput, low-latency and resource-efficient IO services,” the Foundation says. “The design of FD.io is hardware, kernel, and deployment (bare metal, VM, container) agnostic.”

    “The adoption of open source software has transformed the networking industry by reducing technology fragmentation and increasing user adoption,” said executive director Jim Zemlin. “The FD.io project addresses a critical area needed for flexible and scalable IO services to meet the growing demands of today’s cloud computing environments.”

    Early contributions include Vector Packet Processing from Cisco, a vSwitch/vRouter utilizing the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), a full build, tooling, debug, and development environment, an OpenDaylight management agent, and a Honeycomb agent.

    You can check out FD.io for yourself here.

  • Linux Foundation Partners With Linux Academy on Training

    The Linux Foundation recently announced a new partnership with Linux Academy on discounted Linux training for SysAdmins.

    The Foundation says it negotiated a special rate for Sysadmins around the world ($75 for 3 months).

    “Subscription-based training opportunities offer SysAdmins another way to access Linux and open source training materials,” the Foundation said. “A quarterly subscription allows SysAdmins to spread out the cost of Linux and open source training, making it more feasible for more people to take advantage of material that can lead to the most lucrative careers in technology. This aligns with The Linux Foundation’s mission to increase access to quality Linux and open source education to as many individuals as possible.”

    The training consists of thousands of videos, labs, access to full-time instructors, downloadable study guides, graded exercises (carried out on real servers), and performance-based practice exams. The material covers a “wide range” of topics on Linux, Amazon Web Services, OpenStack, and DevOps.

    Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin said, “Our partnership with Linux Academy allows us to expand the number of individuals able to take quality Linux training, whether they are new to the community or trying to improve their skills. It’s fantastic to be able to provide subscription-based training as another offering, to complement The Linux Foundation’s existing online, in-person and onsite training options.”

    “The Linux Foundation is an ideal partner for spreading the word about how subscription-based Linux training can provide individuals with a huge variety of educational content and materials for ongoing learning opportunities,” said Linux Academy founder Anthony James. “We are pleased that Linux Academy’s expertise and materials will be available even more widely through this partnership, helping bring even more people into the Linux and open source community.”

    You can check out the Academy’s offerings here.

  • Linux Foundation Announces Real-Time Linux Collaborative Project

    The Linux Foundation announced the new Real-Time Linux (RTL) Collaborative Project, which sees Altera, ARM, Google, Intel, IBM, National Instruments, OSADL, Texas Instruments, and others working together to work on technologies for industries including robotics, telecom, manufacturing, aviation, and medical, among others.

    The foundation says the RTL kernel supports the largest range of architectures of any operating system and can leverage Linux device drivers, file systems, etc. from the mainline kernel. Thanks to its real-time properties, robots can be controlled by RTL applications, as can data acquisition systems, manufacturing plants and other things that are time-sensitive.

    “The work we’ve been doing on Real-Time Linux has been critical in advancing complex real-time computing systems. But technology is moving fast, and the RTL project, with support from across the industry, will allow us to sustain this work and successfully integrate with the mainline kernel for long-term support of these technologies,” said Thomas Gleixner, Linux kernel developer and Linux Foundation Fellow.

    “Code that is built and maintained collaboratively is better and less expensive than software that is not,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “By coming together to advance Real-Time Linux as a community, products and systems will be supported by the best developers in the world for years to come.”

    Google is a founding Platinum member. National Instruments, OSADL, and Texas Instruments are Gold members. Altera, ARM, Intel, and IBM are Silver.

    More on the project here.

    Image via Linux Foundation

  • Linux Foundation Launches Linux Certification Program

    The nonprofit Linux Foundation announced a new Linux Certification Program to help systems administrators show off some credentials and get jobs based upon them. There are two certifications – one for early career admins and one for engineer-level admins.

    The foundation says, “Combined with increased Linux training offerings and a free ‘Introduction to Linux’ Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) introduced earlier this year, The Linux Foundation Certification Program will help expand the talent pool of Linux professionals worldwide. Demand for experienced Linux professionals continues to grow with this year’s Linux Jobs Report showing that managers are prioritizing Linux hires and paying more for this talent. Because Linux runs today’s global technology infrastructure, companies around the world are looking for more Linux professionals yet most hiring managers say that finding Linux talent is difficult.”

    “Our mission is to address the demand for Linux that the industry is currently experiencing. We are making our training program and Linux certification more accessible to users worldwide, since talent isn’t confined to one geography or one distribution,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the foundation. “Our new Certification Program will enable employers to easily identify Linux talent when hiring and uncover the best of the best. We think Linux professionals worldwide will want to proudly showcase their skills through these certifications and that these certificates will become a hallmark of quality throughout our industry.”

    The Foundation announced that it’s giving away about 1,000 free exams to attendees of LinuxCon and CloudOpen, and offering exams to 500 more people for $50. Regular exam price is $300.

    More on the certifications here.

    Image via Linux Foundation

  • The Linux Foundation Finds A Friend In Twitter

    The Linux Foundation is one of the best non-profits you can support. You may use Windows or OS X for your computer, but they wouldn’t be half as good as they are if it weren’t for Linux. In short – Linux is in everything. The continued success of the Foundation rests upon more major players in the tech community joining.

    TechCrunch reports that Twitter has joined the Linux Foundation. The company is known for being very friendly to the open source community while open sourcing their own software. It’s a natural fit for Twitter to join the foundation and help them spread the good news of Linux across the land.

    “Linux and its ability to be heavily tweaked is fundamental to our technology infrastructure,” said Chris Aniszczyk, Manager of Open Source, Twitter. “By joining The Linux Foundation we can support an organization that is important to us and collaborate with a community that is advancing Linux as fast as we are improving Twitter.”

    Twitter is supported by thousands of Linux servers. Joining the foundation gives them a leg up on the latest developments in the Linux community while simultaneously offering their expertise to other members of the community. It’s a win-win for everybody.

    The formal announcement of Twitter joining the Linux Foundation will be made next week during LinuxCon. Intank and Servergy will be joining Twitter as newly minted members within the Foundation.

    To top it all off, Aniszczyk will be at LinuxCon presenting a talk titled, “The Open Source Technology Behind A Tweet.” It sounds like Twitter and the Linux Foundation are already getting off to a great start. With the help of others within the Linux Foundation, Twitter may even be able to improve upon the already great open source Boostrap project.