OPNsense 17.1 is now available as the newest release of this network-focused FreeBSD-based operating system forked from pfSense.

It's now been two years since the first official release of OPNsense and to celebrate they have out a big update. OPNsense 17.1 re-bases to using FreeBSD 11.0, there's now a SSH remote installer, new language support, more hardening features used from HardenedBSD, new plugins, integrated authentication via PAM, and many other improvements. Some of the new plug-ins include FTP Proxy, Tinc VPN, and Let's Encrypt support.

Public administrations in Austria need to increase their use of free and open source software, the government of Austria says in its Digital Strategy. The strategy proposes to ‘push’ (forcierung) open source by public administrations. This is intended to accelerate its uptake, explains Federal Chancellery for Digitalisation.

• Be the open source supply chain

  I would bet that whoever is best at managing and influencing the open source supply chain will be best positioned to create the most innovative products. In this article, I’ll explain why you should be a supply chain influencer, and how your organization can be an active participant in your supply chain.

• Leon Anavi’s Open Source News Vlog

  All of us at the FOSS Force office have become big fans of this new open source news blog from Leon Anavi and can’t wait until the next edition comes out in February. Don’t worry Leon, your English is fine. Keep ’em coming.

• Announcing the Google Code-in 2016 Winners!

  Drum roll please! We are very proud to announce the 2016 Google Code-in (GCI) Grand Prize Winners and Finalists. Each year we see the number of student participants increase, and 2016 was no exception: 1,340 students from 62 countries completed an impressive 6,418 tasks. Winners and Finalists were chosen by the 17 open source organizations and are listed alphabetically below.

• LinuxCon, CloudOpen, and ContainerCon Come to China for the First Time in 2017

  The Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization promoting the adoption of the latest Linux and Open Source technologies to the enterprise industry, is announcing the upcoming schedule for LinuxCon, CloudOpen, and ContainerCon conferences.

  Taking in place for the first time in China, between June 19-20, 2017, the LinuxCon, ContainerCon and CloudOpen events will be held at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, where it is expected that thousands of attendees will share their knowledge, collaborate on new technologies, and learn about the latest Open Source and GNU/Linux technologies, including cloud, containers, microservices, and networking.

• 5 new guides for working with OpenStack

  OpenStack experience continues to be among the most in-demand skills in the tech world, with more and more organizations seeking to build and manage their own open source clouds. But OpenStack is a huge domain of knowledge, containing dozen of individual projects that are being actively developed at a rapid pace. Just keeping your skills up to date can be a challenge.

• C++ Support Added To GCC's libcc1, Benefiting GDB

  Another late feature addition to GCC 7 is C++ support for libcc1.

  Libcc1 is the GCC cc1 plugin for the GDB debugger. With the latest GCC SVN/Git code tonight is now C++ support to complement the C interfaces.

• Developing open leaders

  For many people, that requires a profound mindset shift in how to think about leaders. Yet in some ways, it's what we all intuitively know about how organizations really work. As Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has pointed out, in any organization, you have the thermometers—people who reflect the organizational "temperature" and sentiment and direction—and then you have the thermostats—people who set those things for the organization.

• ​Monash University gets multi-petabyte computing boost from Red Hat, Dell EMC

  Monash University has implemented a multi-petabyte deployment at its eResearch Centre, giving the Melbourne-based advanced computing facility the capacity to store and manage massive workloads of data.

  The university implemented a software-defined solution that uses Red Hat Ceph Storage on Dell EMC PowerEdge R630 and R730xd rack servers that it expects will accelerate application performance, simplify systems management, and address the university's growing data storage requirements.

• Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) Downgraded by Vetr Inc.