• Rust-Written Redox OS Closer To Self-Hosting

  The Redox operating system, the interesting original OS written around the Rust programming language, is closer to self-hosting as a result of this year's Google Summer of Code.

  The GSoC's goal has been to get Redox OS self-hosting where it can natively run a compiler toolchain for itself from within Redox rather than needing to build support on another platform.

  This summer has seen Redox OS now running on it GNU binutils, GCC, GNU Make, Dash, Curl, LLVM and Rustc, and more, but with these packages there are some limitations.

• Podcast: CLUECON SPECIAL REPORT – The open source developer show bringing open source telephony together

  FreeSWITCH is a scalable open source cross-platform telephony platform designed to route and interconnect popular communication protocols using audio, video, text or any other form of media. It was created in 2006 to fill the void left by proprietary commercial solutions. FreeSWITCH also provides a stable telephony platform on which many applications can be developed using a wide range of free tools.

• What are the differences between SDN open source and vendor products?

  Choosing between SDN open source and vendor-provided options is easier when you know some of the available choices. Industry analyst Lee Doyle lists some of the options.

• Serverless launches open source Event Gateway to tie cloud functions together

  There’s a new open source tool in town for tying different event-driven functions together. Serverless, a startup that builds tools for building applications without having to worry about underlying infrastructure, announced a new Event Gateway project today that provides developers with a platform-agnostic tool for passing events from one program to another.

  Event Gateway combines two different sets of functionality: an API gateway that lets developers monitor and manage connections between different applications, and a publish-subscribe (Pub/Sub) service that is designed to route information from one to another.

• Toad in the (open source data toolset) hole [Ed: openwashing proprietary software merely because it "supports" MySQL]

  Systems management and security software company Quest Software has announced its Toad Edge product.

  This is a commercial database toolset for software application development teams and database administrators (DBAs) to develop and manage open source database environments with the first release supporting MySQL.

• Where are You Running Off To? Open Source GIS and Fitness Route Tracking

• Juniper Wants OpenContrail to Garner More of the Spotlight

  Juniper Networks is looking to increase its focus on OpenContrail, noting the community around the open source software-defined networking (SDN) controller has been overshadowed by its commercial Contrail platform.

• Visual Search Goes Open Source

  The Zappen visual search repository is available on Github under the LGPL license at https://github.com/ZappenVDNS. Future planned enhancements include machine learning and integration with the EmerDNS distributed domain name system.

• HAMMER2 File-System Looks Like Its Getting Closer To Being Usable On DragonFlyBSD

  Matthew Dillon began developing the HAMMER2 file-system in 2012 and back then he talked about it being until at least 2013 when it would be usable, etc. Five years later, it's looking like HAMMER2 is closer to being usable on DragonFlyBSD systems.

  HAMMER2 offers greater redundancy, native compression support, writable snapshtos, and other improvements over Dillon's original HAMMER file-system.

• Logging, backups, and newsyslog.conf on FreeBSD

  Disk space is cheap, and time is not.

• Richard Stallman made me change the name of my music project

  What do music and software have in common, and how far can you apply the principles of the free software movement to the music industry? Those are questions that pianist Kimiko Ishizaka and I set out to answer in 2012 when we released the Open Goldberg Variations and again in 2015 with the Open Well-Tempered Clavier. Now, we are asking for support for our next big Bach project on Kickstarter.com.

• Making an online survey? Try EUSurvey with upgraded features!

  The European Commission has released a new version of its multilingual online survey software EUSurvey. The enhanced OSS version 1.4.0.1 makes it easier to create and edit questionnaires thanks to new useful features.

• Open core, open perimeter, and the future of enterprise software [Ed: So openwashing is the "future of enterprise software"?]

  Today, software development is built around APIs. Instead of embedding a vendor's product into their application, developers can call an API to consume services from a vendor. The developers don't need to know what's responding to their calls on the backend; they simply need to know what the vendor's API expects from their code and what they can expect to receive back from the API. It is, in many senses, wonderfully non-intimate.

  This is an inversion of the traditional open core model behind many commercial open source strategies for enterprise application layer products. In open core, the product's core is open source, and in the enterprise edition, vendors provide and support proprietary enhancements. Using the API approach, the product's core is often not visible in the cloud, and the only way in and out of the product is through the API.

  Because of APIs, we are seeing the differentiation, enhancement, and value in enterprise editions migrating to the perimeter via tools, widgets, and components. These can be closed source and/or open source, but we should see more open source in the perimeter, because many vendors can make money by supporting their core and charging for API calls or transactions. The two best examples of this are Twilio and Stripe.

• After Cybersecurity Shift, Black Duck Is Growing Fast & Eyeing Deals [Ed: Anti-FOSS company finds that by attacking FOSS it can make money]

• Understanding the Hows and Whys of Open Source Audits [Ed: Black Duck threw some money at the Linux Foundation and got its anti-FOSS agenda included in the site]

• Black Duck Streamlines DevSecOps with New Hub Detect Capability [Ed: Here they are selling purely proprietary software]

• Here's Why We Need More Open Source Software For Buttplugs

In any collaborative environment, it's important to have good tools for communication. What tools work best for you depends a bit on your situation, but might include anything from mailing lists for email communication, Git or Subversion for version control, a wiki or Etherpad for collaborative authoring, a shared task list for organizing workflow, or even a full fledged project management suite.

Do you spend a lot of time thinking about Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons? Unless you run a retail store, probably not. But if you do run a store (or stores) along with an e-commerce operation, BLE is a hot new thing you are either using already or thinking about using before long.

Why? Because the graffiti is on the wall, and it says, “Sales in physical stores are going down every year, and most retailers aren’t seeing enough online sales gains to take up the slack.” BLE may help stop the retail sales slide or at least slow it down. It’s cheap enough, especially with open source beacons, that it’s certainly worth a try.