Open source software

Open source software (OSS) has become an important part of many enterprise IT strategies, and OSS products are available to support a wide range of IT needs. Products such as Linux, Apache, Ubuntu, MySQL and Firefox are widely used. We look at the latest trends and technologies.

Opinion 04 Jun 2024
Building a more secure, and sustainable, open source ecosystem

In April 2024, the discovery of an intentionally-placed backdoor in the open source XZ Utils data compression caused concern. Sentry's Chad Whitacre says a more thoughtful approach is needed to balance the individual freedom and creativity of open source, with more rigorous security practice. Continue Reading
News 31 May 2024
IBM, AI Singapore to bolster Sea-Lion LLM

IBM will work with AI Singapore on technical exchanges to enhance Sea-Lion and make the region’s first LLM available to data scientists and engineers through its AI use case library Continue Reading

Opinion 29 May 2024

How to avoid joining the Dead Java Code Society

Unused or dead Java code is bogging down software engineers and developers, causing weird dependencies and security risks. Eric Costlow of Azul shares some advice on how to avoid becoming a member of a rather unpleasant club Continue Reading
E-Zine 28 May 2024

Digital border problems are stacking up

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we examine the government’s post-Brexit plans for digital borders as problems begin to emerge. We find out about AI PCs and ask whether they will make any difference for enterprise IT. And we talk to Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks about the open source opportunities from AI. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
E-Zine 21 May 2024

Can AI supercharge human creativity?

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we talk to Getty Images about the challenges of balancing human creativity with the risks and opportunities of generative AI. Our latest buyer’s guide examines the latest best practice in desktop IT management in a world of flexible working. And we review the benefits of open source software in the enterprise. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
News 20 May 2024

Red Hat CEO on OpenShift evolution and AI moves

Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks talks up how OpenShift AI and RHEL AI can work together to lower the cost of training and inferencing to drive AI adoption and the company’s traction with customers looking to move away from VMware Continue Reading
News 09 May 2024

Red Hat bullish on APAC growth, targets automakers and SMEs

Red Hat is expanding its reach into smaller firms as well as the automotive and other industries to fuel its ‘high-double digit’ growth in the region Continue Reading
News 07 May 2024

Red Hat eyes AI workloads in platform moves

Open source juggernaut rolls out offerings to make it easier to fine-tune large language models, among other moves to ease deployment of artificial intelligence workloads Continue Reading
Blog Post 07 May 2024

Mamma mia, Red Hat now in tune with AI Sweden

At the risk of starting with an Alan Patridge quote. “The Swedish don’t have a bad life when you think about it,” said Partridge. “They get up in the morning, have a bowl of suede, hop into the ... Continue Reading
Blog Post 07 May 2024

Red Hat OpenShift AI expands predictive & generative AI

If there are three z-heavy terms that describe the current shape of functional cloud computing deployments then they might be compartmentalisation, individualisation and customisation in the face ... Continue Reading
Feature 07 May 2024

Polar Bear Pitching: Hot mobile apps come in from the cold

Flexing its current technological muscle, the city of Oulu in Finland shows that in addition to being a hub of 5G and 6G development, it is also a hot house for mobile apps, even from a hole in the ice Continue Reading
News 03 May 2024

Patch GitLab vuln without delay, users warned

The addition of a serious vulnerability in the GitLab open source platform to CISA’s KEV catalogue prompts a flurry of concern Continue Reading
News 01 May 2024

Secure coding benchmark to increase standards among developers

Developer security advocate Secure Code Warrior has launched what it claims is the industry’s first benchmark designed to quantify the security competence of its customers’ software developer teams Continue Reading
News 30 Apr 2024

IBM boss discusses long-term VM migration opportunity

IBM sees a big opportunity to migrate customers to containers and OpenShift, with its $6.4bn acquisition of HashiCorp part of the plan Continue Reading
News 24 Apr 2024

Mandatory MFA pays off for GitHub and OSS community

Mandating multifactor authentication for select developers has been a huge success for GitHub, the platform reports, and now it wants to go further Continue Reading
Blog Post 24 Apr 2024

Drop in the ocean? OVHcloud open sources schematics for water-cooled datacentres

Euro cloud company OVHcloud is taking part in the 2024 Open Compute Project (OCP) EMEA Regional Summit this month in Lisbon. Drawing upon (pun not necessarily intended) the organisation's some 20 ... Continue Reading
Feature 22 Apr 2024

Tips for migrating to OpenJDK

Interest in OpenJDK, and in commercial support for it, has intensified as Oracle Java SE becomes increasingly expensive Continue Reading
News 17 Apr 2024

ODI and Arup collaborate on data-sharing initiative to help companies reach net-zero goals

The built environment is responsible for 40% of the UK’s carbon footprint. Better data sharing could be the key to reducing that Continue Reading
News 15 Apr 2024

More social engineering attacks on open source projects observed

In the wake of the recent XZ Utils scare, maintainers of another open source project have come forward to say they may have experienced similar social engineering attacks Continue Reading
News 10 Apr 2024

Cyber crooks poison GitHub search to fool developers

Researchers share data on new technique whereby malicious actors are manipulating GitHub’s search function and using cleverly crafted repositories to distribute malware Continue Reading
News 10 Apr 2024

Salesforce helps customers establish bug bounty programmes

Salesforce has added new learning content to its Trailhead platform designed to help customers develop their own bug bounty programmes Continue Reading
News 01 Apr 2024

Open source alert over intentionally placed backdoor

A backdoor in the open source XZ Utils data compression library could have led to widespread compromise across the Linux ecosystem - and the community is on the trail of a developer who seems to be behind it Continue Reading
Opinion 28 Mar 2024

A local government GDS might work - but only on top of standard technology

The old debate about an equivalent of the Government Digital Service for local authorities has swung round again - but it will only ever work if it's founded on common standards and technologies Continue Reading
News 27 Mar 2024

Generative AI: Databricks unveils open source large language model

Enterprise customers are shifting to open source options to build customised generative AI tools using their own data, says Databricks Continue Reading
News 26 Mar 2024

Goldman Sachs discusses virtues of Kubernetes for virtual machine management

Kubernetes is not only a platform for orchestrating containers – Goldman Sachs has found it offers the same benefits when used to manage virtual machines Continue Reading
News 25 Mar 2024

Interview: Priyanka Sharma, executive director, CNCF

We speak to the Cloud Native Computing Forum chief about her own journey in software development and the continuous drive towards greater inclusivity Continue Reading
Podcast 25 Mar 2024

Cloud Native Computing: A Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast

We speak to Priyanka Sharma, the executive director of the Cloud Native Computing Forum about having blind faith in tech innovation Continue Reading
News 22 Mar 2024

The evolution of DevOps: Why platform engineering is gaining momentum

Platform teams are extending their responsibilities to security as platform engineering takes DevOps to the next level Continue Reading
Blog Post 22 Mar 2024

No slacking at #TeamCloudNative hacking: CNCF CloudNativeHacks hackathon

What’s a hard-core cloud-native focused conference without a solid fingers-to-keyboard code challenge? Well, nothing, clearly. Thankfully the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) knows this ... Continue Reading
Feature 11 Mar 2024

Open source promises advantages for business applications

Open source software may provide a cost-effective approach to building business applications, as well as ensuring transparency, but there are challenges to keep in mind Continue Reading
News 08 Mar 2024

OSS leaders detail commitments to bolster software security

CISA has announced a number of actions to help secure the global open source ecosystem, as leading package repositories including the Python and Rust foundations advance their own initiatives Continue Reading
Definition 27 Feb 2024

OpenSSL

OpenSSL is an open source cryptographic toolkit that facilitates secure communications between endpoints on a network. Continue Reading
Feature 23 Feb 2024

LLMs explained: A developer’s guide to getting started

A guide to help enterprise developers use large language models securely, efficiently and cost-effectively in their applications Continue Reading
Opinion 12 Feb 2024

Why AI will push enterprises to eliminate the silos that slow innovation

Generative AI offers a way to transform developer productivity, by expediting a cultural shift in the way enterprises organise themselves Continue Reading
News 09 Feb 2024

The outlook for open source? Growing, but there are challenges

While more companies are using open source technologies, not everyone may realise it Continue Reading
Blog Post 08 Feb 2024

A powerful case for more open data

A panel discussion at the recent State Open Con 24 conference has shone a spotlight on the red tape, inefficiency and political moves that prevent opening up data sets to tackle a crisis affecting ... Continue Reading
News 07 Feb 2024

The challenges of open source in government

Public sector bodies may find their policy decisions are stymied due to the inflexibility of the software they deploy. Is open source the answer? Continue Reading
Feature 05 Feb 2024

Why developers must work smarter, not just faster, with generative AI

With a lot to play for, including legal precedents, how can dev teams approach GenAI risks with a view to strong mitigation strategies? Continue Reading
Definition 25 Jan 2024

Google ChromeOS

Google ChromeOS, formerly Chrome OS, is a lightweight operating system (OS) built on ChromiumOS, an open source OS that shares the same code base as ChromeOS. Continue Reading
News 17 Jan 2024

Data on Kubernetes Community aims at K8S storage scaling solution

DoKC works on community solutions for Kubernetes. It aims to develop storage scaling automation for the containerised platform outside the orbit of the big vendors Continue Reading
News 15 Jan 2024

EU amendment changes open source definition

The EU Cyber Resilience Act has the potential to cause confusion among open source developers, with questions remaining over open development Continue Reading
Definition 10 Jan 2024

GNU Project

The GNU Project is a mass collaborative initiative for the development of free software, specifically a free operating system called GNU. Continue Reading
Blog Post 10 Jan 2024

OpenUK details UK open source 'heatmap' & 2024 honours list

OpenUK has shared its fourth New Year’s Honours List for 2024, celebrating what it calls the ‘social influencers of open source’ in the UK. Known well at Computer Weekly, OpenUK is a not-for-profit ... Continue Reading
News 15 Dec 2023

Alibaba debuts LLMs for Southeast Asia

Alibaba’s SeaLLMs are built to address the linguistic diversity and nuances in Southeast Asia, enabling businesses to deploy localised chatbots and translation applications Continue Reading
News 05 Dec 2023

Singapore to develop Southeast Asia’s first large language model

Singapore has spearheaded a S$70m initiative to build research and engineering capabilities in LLMs, including the development of Southeast Asia’s first LLM Continue Reading
Blog Post 30 Nov 2023

Can contributing to open source get you a job?

Could voluntary work on open source projects be a stepping stone to employment? That was one of the intriguing prospects held out at the launch last week of a report with the slightly ominous title ... Continue Reading
Blog Post 16 Nov 2023

Custom chatbots and model gardens: putting Private AI to work

Part 2: More to think about It’s essential to decide where to run your Private AI - or who you will get to run it for you, in some cases - but that is just the start. Assuming that you also want ... Continue Reading
Blog Post 11 Nov 2023

Day, me say day, me say day, Linux Foundation say DAOS

Harry Belafonte might have said ‘me say day, me day day-o’ back in the day, but The Linux Foundation say DAOS. The newly launched DAOS Foundation is an initiative aimed at advancing the governance ... Continue Reading
News 01 Nov 2023

Bosch Rexroth adds Nokia to automation ecosystem

Comms tech provider collaborates with global engineering firm to integrate virtualised operating system into its MX Industrial Edge on-premise operational technology to support private wireless 5G campus network and Industry 4.0 products Continue Reading
News 31 Oct 2023

How much is enough to support those who maintain open source?

Without the ongoing work of developers, open source projects would become stale and riddled with unfixed bugs and security issues. We look at the issues of funding and fairness Continue Reading
News 27 Oct 2023

Google launches bug bounties for generative AI attack scenarios

Google expands its bug bounty programme to encompass generative AI and takes steps to grow its commitment to supply chain security as it relates to the emerging technology Continue Reading
Blog Post 20 Oct 2023

Endor Labs: The value of (zooming into) call graphs

This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Henrik Plate in his capacity as a security researcher at Endor Labs - a company known for its approach to ‘reachability ... Continue Reading
Blog Post 19 Oct 2023

CNCF firms up Cilium cell structure

Cilium is a software project. It is also the name of a membrane-bound organelle found on most types of eukaryotic cell, although cilia are absent in bacteria - thank you Wikipedia. The name was ... Continue Reading
Blog Post 10 Oct 2023

OpenStack Bobcat scales new heights

Virtualised cloud services need sharp teeth. That may be why Bobcat is called Bobcat, or there may be some other unknown rationale. The OpenStack community has this month announced the release of ... Continue Reading
Tip 05 Oct 2023

Red Hat vs. SUSE: How do these Linux distributions stack up?

Deciding between Red Hat and SUSE may not seem simple, but comparing training, pricing and certifications should help companies understand which would best suit their employees. Continue Reading
Feature 26 Sep 2023

IBM reorients to offset historic storage hardware decline

Storage profile: We look at IBM and the strategic shifts it has made towards the cloud, cloud-native and as-a-service offerings that aim to reverse a long-term decline in revenues Continue Reading
News 22 Sep 2023

How ready does the world need to be for the quantum era?

Great use cases may exist for quantum computing, but no one knows for sure how long they will need to wait for a production-ready machine Continue Reading
News 22 Sep 2023

How Confluent is tapping the groundswell in data streaming

Confluent CEO Jay Kreps talks up the misconceptions of Kafka and what the company is doing to help customers better leverage the capabilities of the technology Continue Reading
Blog Post 20 Sep 2023

Camara: The Linux Foundation telco API project

The Linux Foundation has made note of its Camara (stylised as CAMARA officially) project now having graduated to a funded model. The news was shared onsite during the opening keynote at Open Source ... Continue Reading
Blog Post 20 Sep 2023

Cross-architecture unification: Linux Foundation forms Unified Acceleration (UXL) Foundation

As part of the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit 2023, the foundation has announced the formation of the Unified Acceleration (UXL) Foundation. This is a cross-industry group committed to ... Continue Reading
News 19 Sep 2023

38TB Microsoft data leak highlights risks of oversharing

An accidentally disclosed SAS token with excessive privileges enabled researchers to access nearly 40TB of Microsoft’s data, highlighting the risks of privilege mismanagement and oversharing Continue Reading
Blog Post 19 Sep 2023

CNCF: Developer training is key, the challenge is time & cost

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has conducted a survey (the team modestly called it a microsurvey of just 135 contributors, but size is not important and small is beautiful, right?) to ... Continue Reading
News 18 Sep 2023

CMA focuses on data for AI foundation model

Foundational AI models require vast amounts of data. Without access to diverse datasets, the market for foundational models risks being stifled Continue Reading
News 13 Sep 2023

GitHub fixes race condition that could have led to ‘repojacking’

A subtle flaw in how GitHub handled repository creation and user renaming could have had serious consequences for the open source community, but has now been fixed. Learn more about how it worked Continue Reading
News 13 Sep 2023

ExtraHop open sources 16 million rows of threat domain data

NDR specialist ExtraHop says making its entire machine learning dataset available for anybody to view will help organisations better defend against cyber attacks originating from malicious domains generated by algorithms Continue Reading
12 Sep 2023

Red Hat ’s CEO on AI moves and source code kerfuffle

Matt Hicks tells us about the company’s efforts to support generative AI and the issues surrounding its decision to limit access to RHEL source code. Continue Reading
E-Zine 12 Sep 2023

The dangers of breaking encryption

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we detail the concerns of the BCS and other IT experts about the UK’s Online Safety Bill’s proposals to weaken end-to-end message encryption. Our buyer’s guide continues to look at the issues around integrating software-as-a-service applications, with a particular eye to the proliferation of SaaS during the Covid pandemic. Red Hat’s CEO Matt Hicks retails the company’s efforts to support generative AI. And we discover how immersive technologies can shape a brave new world of training and design. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
Opinion 12 Sep 2023

Consciousness to address AI safety and security

The co-founder of KikenAI discuses why he has decided to make the technology for protecting LLMs open source Continue Reading
News 11 Sep 2023

Salesforce and Zoom embrace ethical hackers. You should, too

Software companies Salesforce and Zoom discuss their successful bug bounty programmes, what they learned at a recent in-person hackathon in which they participated, and why others shouldn’t be scared of hackers Continue Reading
News 24 Aug 2023

NHS SBS to launch £1.5bn digital workplace solutions framework

NHS Shared Business Services is planning on a second iteration of its digital workplace solutions framework before the current one expires in August 2024 Continue Reading
News 22 Aug 2023

IBM uses generative AI to modernise mainframe Cobol

In combination with code discovery, IBM plans to offer artificial intelligence-based Cobol to Java application modernisation Continue Reading
News 21 Aug 2023

Red Hat CEO on AI moves and source code kerfuffle

Matt Hicks talks up Red Hat’s efforts to support generative AI adoption through OpenShift AI and weighs in on the issues surrounding the company’s decision to limit access to RHEL source code Continue Reading
Blog Post 14 Aug 2023

What to expect from Open Source Summit Europe 2023

Just for a (welcome) change, the Computer Weekly Open Source Insider team is not off to San Francisco, Las Vegas, Barcelona, Boston or London’s glittering ExCeL centre, this time it’s Bilbao. The ... Continue Reading
Feature 13 Aug 2023

Tips for improving software developer productivity

Developers tend to enjoy solving problems and coding, but only with the right tooling can they produce their best work Continue Reading
Blog Post 12 Aug 2023

Confluent - don’t blink, stream in sync with Apache Flink

Data streaming company Confluent has billowed new functionalities upwards into its Confluent Cloud platform. The new capabilities are designed to provide confidence that data is trustworthy and ... Continue Reading
News 31 Jul 2023

SUSE takes aim at Red Hat in Linux, Kubernetes play

SUSE CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen outlines strategy to capture the Kubernetes opportunity and offer enterprises an alternative to RHEL following Red Hat’s decision to limit access to RHEL source code Continue Reading
News 10 Jul 2023

Alibaba Cloud debuts AI image generator

The cloud supplier’s Tongyi Wanxiang generative AI model can respond to text prompts in Chinese and English to generate detailed images in an array of styles Continue Reading
News 10 Jul 2023

How Confluent is maintaining its edge in event streaming

Confluent co-founder Jun Rao talks up the company’s business and how it competes with hyperscalers and other suppliers of managed Kafka services Continue Reading
News 07 Jul 2023

TTTech Auto, ZettaScale extend collaboration to launch in-vehicle, V2X service

Collaboration looks to bring about what software-defined vehicle technology provider and open-source communication middleware firms say is a much-needed unification across the cloud-to-microcontroller communication continuum Continue Reading
Definition 05 Jul 2023

open system

In computing, an open system is a platform that can be modified and extended and has freely available documentation. Continue Reading
Feature 26 Jun 2023

Could social media revolutionise war crimes trials?

Computer Weekly speaks with open source investigators about how they use social media to gather evidence of war crimes, and the trouble with using such evidence in legal proceedings Continue Reading
News 25 Jun 2023

Aussie-built database migration tool makes global debut

MongoDB’s engineering team in Australia has built a database migration tool to help customers migrate traditional relational databases to its document database Continue Reading
News 21 Jun 2023

Software spending grows fastest as finance firms spend $652bn on tech in 2023

Banks and investment firms are increasing their spending on IT despite gloomy economic outlook, but priorities have changed Continue Reading
News 15 Jun 2023

Enterprise software price hikes risk derailing digital transformation

Buying software and cloud services for strategic initiatives is all very well as long as the price is stable. But costs are escalating, which is impacting value Continue Reading
News 13 Jun 2023

RISC-V rises to software ecosystem challenge

The open source hardware and software system on a chip specification has recognised the need to coordinate low-level software development Continue Reading
Opinion 31 May 2023

Security Think Tank: A brief history of (secure) coding

From controlling who was allowed to work with IBM mainframes to present-day DevSecOps techniques, the concept of secure coding has a longer history than you might think Continue Reading
Opinion 26 May 2023

Security Think Tank: Why “secure coding” is neither

Ensuring the security of code is just one element of a complex software lifecycle and risk management process that people need to think about more holistically, says Ed Moyle Continue Reading
Blog Post 19 May 2023

A Full Monty for Python: KX open sources PyKX

KX is one of those companies. It’s one of those companies with 15 offices across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific with a fairly weighty installed base of users - largely in the financial ... Continue Reading
News 16 May 2023

CW Innovation Awards: SensorFlow reaps returns with re-architecture

Smart building management specialist SensorFlow re-architected its entire platform to reduce cost, complexity and implement a real-time business intelligence dashboard for its customers Continue Reading
Opinion 15 May 2023

Security Think Tank: To secure code effectively, verify at every step

Verification at every step is an important part of ensuring your code is secure, writes Petra Wenham Continue Reading
News 25 Apr 2023

Lloyds Bank joins industry IT standards group

UK banking giant Lloyds Banking Group has joined an industry group which promotes global IT standards Continue Reading
Definition 17 Apr 2023

Red Hat OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift is a multifaceted, open source container application development platform from Red Hat Inc. for the development, deployment and management of applications. Continue Reading
News 17 Apr 2023

Government launches Smart Data Council to lower utility bills

The council aims to find ways to use and encourage uptake of smart data to make it easier to switch utility providers and save money Continue Reading
News 30 Mar 2023

OSC&R supply chain security framework goes live on Github

The OSC&R framework for understanding and evaluating threats to supply chain security has made its debut on Github to allow anybody to contribute to the framework Continue Reading
News 30 Mar 2023

Wales is building a dragon of an NHS app

As NHS Wales is due to launch the public version of its own app, Computer Weekly takes a deep dive into the technical aspects of the Welsh NHS app, future plans and whether the expectations for the programme have stacked up to reality Continue Reading
News 28 Mar 2023

How ChatGPT will become a programmer’s best friend

ChatGPT has shown it can produce code. It can also identify bugs and even figure out what a code snippet is trying to do Continue Reading
Blog Post 06 Mar 2023

Where is the ‘economic value’ of open source?

The Linux Foundation has analysed the state of open source software value to specifically look at the ‘economic value’ of open source. Its work may suggest that companies perceive the greatest ... Continue Reading
Blog Post 01 Mar 2023

What to expect from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2023

It’s time to avoid the ‘coffee shops’ and one or two of Amsterdam’s other famed attractions (there’s no time for canal barge cruises and a visit to the Anne Frank museum) and get over to the ... Continue Reading
E-Zine 28 Feb 2023

The race to net zero

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we examine the role of green technology in helping businesses contribute to the government’s 2050 net-zero targets. We talk to Spotify about the importance of open source technologies in the music streaming service. And we look at the way hybrid working is evolving as the post-pandemic workplace continues to change. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
Blog Post 24 Feb 2023

Java: Time to try a different brew

Last year, during an interview at the reClosure virtual conference, posted on YouTube, James Gosling, the father of the Java programming language, said: “Being a project in Oracle Labs is not a ... Continue Reading
Definition 21 Feb 2023

GitHub

GitHub is a web-based version control and collaboration platform for software developers. Continue Reading
Podcast 16 Feb 2023

Enterprise open source: A Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast

We speak to Spotify’s open source tech lead, Per Ploug, on supplier relationship management in open source Continue Reading