Open source news for your reading pleasure.

August 16 - 22, 2014

In this week's edition of our open source news roundup, we share news on virtual certifications from the Linux Foundation, Mesosphere partnering with Google, government and GitHub, and more!

Linux Foundation introduces new Linux certifications

On ZDNet this week, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols covers the news on the Linux Foundation introducing new certifications. With continuing demand for Linux professionals, HR departments look for degrees and certifications. In reponse, the Linux Foundation announced a new certification program at LinuxCon. The program applies to "both early-career and engineer-level systems administrators." As reported by Vaughan-Nichols, the program is virtual, available anytime, anywhere in the world. The program is performance-based and distribution-flexible. Equally important, "the Linux Foundation certifications are designed to be complementary to Red Hat and the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certifications."

Mesosphere comes to the Google Cloud Platform

TechCrunch writer Frederic Lardinois covers the company Mesosphere's partnership with Google to bring Mesos to the Google Cloud Platform. As we reported earlier this month on Opensource.com, Twitter is also using Apache Mesos. So, it's no surprise to read in Lardinois' article that Mesos is "quickly becoming important tools for companies that want to be able to easily scale their applications, no matter whether that's in their own data centers, in a public cloud service, or as a hybrid deployment." Mesosphere will also integrate Googles Kubernetes service for managing Docker containers right into Mesosphere. More on this news at InfoWorld.

GitHub may drag government into the 21st century

Lauren Orsini, writer at ReadWrite, covers GitHub as the most popular web-based hosting service for open source projects. In her article, she starts with an interesting fact: GitHub "has just surpassed 10,000 active users within [U.S.] federal, state, and local governments." So, is GitHub dragging government into the 21st century? It looks like it, with some good examples mentioned in Orsini's article, specifically focused on Chicago and Philadelphia, where government employees and citizens work side-by-side.

"GitHub began training its sights on government last fall with the launch of GitHub and Government," she writes. Ben Balter, GitHub's official Government Evangelist, is fighting an uphill battle, and "it’s finally beginning to pay off." For more, check out this list of governments, cities, and organizations using GitHub.

Why your company needs to write more open source software

At ReadWrite, Matt Assay makes the point that companies should write more open source software. Why? As Assay says, "there is far more to be gained by open sourcing in-house software than keeping it closed." Customers know they can spend their budget not on licenses, but on implementation, thereby getting a "more tailored result." This gives open source more momentum. "Today real software innovation doesn't happen behind closed doors," he concludes.

How to crack an open source community

How do you join and contribute to an open source project? Or, as Assay writes in his InfoWorld piece, how to crack an open source community? As we covered on Opensource.com in an interview with Google's Chris Dibona, open source can be brutal.

Assay wonders if open source projects are the welcoming meritocracies we think they are. He touches on the top obstacles that keep people from contributing to an open source project. For example, social interaction: "the newcomer has to learn how to participate and how to build an identity." Another obstacle can be documentation, or as he writes, whether communities help newbies get started. As Assay concludes, it "requires effort on both the parts of the community."

My advice, don't get scared off in the beginning. Take your time and read some tips here on Opensource.com on how you can contribute.

In other news

A big thanks, as always, to staff members Jen Wike and Michael Harrison, and moderator Scott Nesbitt for their help this week.