It Turns Out RISC-V Hardware So Far Isn't Entirely Open-Source

While they are trying to make it an open board, as it stands now Minnich just compares this RISC-V board as being no more open than an average ARM SoC and not as open as IBM POWER. Ron further commented that he is hoping for other RISC-V implementations from different vendors be more open.

Perl 5.28.0 released

Version 5.28.0 of the Perl language has been released. "Perl 5.28.0 represents approximately 13 months of development since Perl 5.26.0 and contains approximately 730,000 lines of changes across 2,200 files from 77 authors". The full list of changes can be found over here; some highlights include Unicode 10.0 support, string- and number-specific bitwise operators, a change to more secure hash functions, and safer in-place editing.

Today in Techrights

• Patent Extremism — Like All Extremes — Leads to Bad Outcomes
• Even After SAS Institute, Inc. v Iancu (Decision on PTAB) There’s No Stopping the Crackdown on Bogus US Patents
• Can Alice/35 U.S.C. § 101 Stop Microsoft-Connected Patent Trolls in the US?
• TC Heartland is Still Deterring and Suppressing Patent Trolls in the United States
• The ILO Tribunal: Is It Still Worthy of Our Trust?
• The Dangerous Adoption of Patents on Life and Nature
• Stronger Patents or None at All: How the Greed of Patent Law Firms and the Patent Office Contributes to Bogus Software Patents Being Amassed
• Patent Strengthening Would Necessarily Mean Lowering the Number of Patents Granted After Alice/35 U.S.C. § 101

Will Microsoft’s Embrace Smother GitHub?

Microsoft has had an adversarial relationship with the open-source community. The company viewed the free Open Office software and the Linux operating system—which compete with Microsoft Office and Windows, respectively—as grave threats. In 2001 Windows chief Jim Allchin said: “Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer.” That same year CEO Steve Ballmer said “Linux is a cancer.” Microsoft attempted to use copyright law to crush open source in the courts. When these tactics failed, Microsoft decided if you can’t beat them, join them. It incorporated Linux and other open-source code into its servers in 2014. By 2016 Microsoft had more programmers contributing code to GitHub than any other company. The GitHub merger might reflect Microsoft’s “embrace, extend and extinguish” strategy for dominating its competitors. After all, GitHub hosts not only open-source software and Microsoft software but also the open-source projects of other companies, including Oracle, IBM, and Amazon Web Services. With GitHub, Microsoft could restrict a crucial platform for its rivals, mine data about competitors’ activities, target ads toward users, or restrict free services. Its control could lead to a sort of surveillance of innovative activity, giving it a unique, macro-scaled insight into software development.