On the Prevalence of Open Source
November 11, 2015
Who would have thought, two decades ago, that open source code was going to dominate the software field? Vallified’s Philip O’Toole meditates on “The Strange Economics of Open-Source Software.” Though the industry gives so much away for free, it’s doing quite well for itself.
O’Toole notes that closed-source software is still in wide use, largely in banks’ embedded devices and underpinning services. Also, many organizations are still attached to their Microsoft and Oracle products. But the tide has been turning; he writes:
“The increasing dominance of open-source software seems particularly true with respect to infrastructure software. While security software has often been open-source through necessity — no-one would trust it otherwise — infrastructure is becoming the dominant category of open-source. Look at databases — MySQL, MongoDB, RethinkDB, CouchDB, InfluxDB (of which I am part of the development team), or cockroachdb. Is there anyone today that would even consider developing a new closed-source database? Or take search technology — elasticsearch, Solr, and bleve — all open-source. And Linux is so obvious, it is almost pointless to mention it. If you want to create a closed-source infrastructure solution, you better have an enormously compelling story, or be delivering it as part of a bigger package such as a software appliance.”
It has gotten to the point where developers may hesitate to work on a closed-source project because it will do nothing for their reputation. Where do the profits come from, you may ask? Why in the sale of services, of course. It’s all part of today’s cloud-based reality.
Cynthia Murrell, November 11, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
TemaTres Open Source Vocabulary Server
November 3, 2015
The latest version of the TemaTres vocabulary server is now available, we learn from the company’s blog post, “TemaTres 2.0 Released.” Released under the GNU General Public License version 2.0, the web application helps manage taxonomies, thesauri, and multilingual vocabularies. The web application can be downloaded at SourceForge. Here’s what has changed since the last release:
*Export to Moodle your vocabulary: now you can export to Moodle Glossary XML format
*Metadata summary about each term and about your vocabulary (data about terms, relations, notes and total descendants terms, deep levels, etc)
*New report: reports about terms with mapping relations, terms by status, preferred terms, etc.
*New report: reports about terms without notes or specific type of notes
*Import the notes type defined by user (custom notes) using tagged file format
*Select massively free terms to assign to other term
*Improve utilities to take terminological recommendations from other vocabularies (more than 300: http://www.vocabularyserver.com/vocabularies/)
*Update Zthes schema to Zthes 1.0 (Thanks to Wilbert Kraan)
*Export the whole vocabulary to Metadata Authority Description Schema (MADS)
*Fixed bugs and improved several functional aspects.
*Uses Bootstrap v3.3.4
See the server’s SourceForge page, above, for the full list of features. Though as of this writing only 21 users had rated the product, all seemed very pleased with the results. The TemaTres website notes that running the server requires some other open source tools: PHP, MySql, and HTTP Web server. It also specifies that, to update from version 1.82, keep the db.tematres.php, but replace the code. To update from TemaTres 1.6 or earlier, first go in as an administrator and update to version 1.7 through Menu-> Administration -> Database Maintenance.
Cynthia Murrell, November 3, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Free InetSoft Data Tools for AWS Users
September 14, 2015
Users of AWS now have access to dashboard and analytics tools from data intelligence firm InetSoft, we learn from “InetSoft’s Style Scope Agile Edition Launched on Amazon Web Services for No Extra Cost Cloud-based Dashboards and Analytics” at PRWeb. The press release announces:
“Installable directly from the marketplace into an organization’s Amazon environment, the application can connect to Amazon RDS, Redshift, MySQL, and other data sources. Its primary limitation is a limit of two simultaneous users. In terms of functionality, the enterprise administration layer with granular security controls is omitted. The application gives fast access to powerful KPI reporting and multi-dimensional analysis, enabling the private sharing of dashboards and visualizations ideally suited for individual analysts, data scientists, and small teams in any departmental function. It also provides a self-service way of evaluating much of the same technology available in InetSoft’s commercial offerings, applications suitable for enterprise-wide deployment or embedding into other cloud-based solutions.”
So now AWS users can pick up free tools with this Style Scope Agile Edition, and InetSoft may pick up a customers for its commercial version of Style Scope. The company emphasizes that their product does not require users to re-architect data warehouses, and their data access layer, based on MapReduce principles, boosts performance. Founded in 1996, InetSoft is based in New Jersey.
Cynthia Murrell, September 14, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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