OSSG

Activities directly related to the OSSG, rather than Open Source in general


New OSSG committee

At the Annual General Meeting (AGM) yesterday evening, a new committee was voted in:

  • Chair: Terence Eden
  • Treasurer: Dr Richard Miller
  • Membership Secretary: Dr Donal Stewart
  • Inclusion officer: Prof Cornelia Boldyreff
  • Web supremo: Simon Worthington
  • Early career/Student representatives: Pietra Fereira, Rohit Goswami
  • Committee members: Andy Bennett, Dr Jeremy Bennett, Daniel Hall

With particular thanks to Terence, Donal, Pietra, Rohit and Daniel who have all stepped up and are joning the committee for the first time.

After the elections our new Chair gave a rousing speech and presented ideas for how to make the OSSG successful. There was also much discussion of establishing new communication tools for OSSG members involving Mastodon and Matrix.

The AGM was recorded and will soon be available on our YouTube channel.


OpenUK “State of Open” survey is open

OpenUK’s second “State of Open Survey” #StateofOpen is live and runs until midnight BST on 12 June https://bit.ly/OpenUKStateofOpen2022.

In OpenUK’s first “State of Open : The UK in 2021” Report we began the process of bringing together data for the UK. This country specific data had not been seen before and firmly demonstrated the UK as a world leader in open source software, the biggest centre of excellence in Europe and the 5th biggest contributor globally despite its diminutive size. This year’s report will be a single report and build on the work from last year to look at both the journey organisations go on throughout consumption, to contribution and distribution and the impacts of that maturation, alongside the impact of open source software, being adopted as the spine of the UK’s digital infrastructure.  Time to consider it a public good and to fund it as such?

The 2021 report was three phases:

  • Phase one:  a Literature Review with analysis of the data available in existing reports and in particular a calculation of the economic contribution to GDP based on the Commission’s formula:
  • Phase two: looked at Adoption through the output of a survey across people based in the UK with case studies exploring UK adoption; and
  • Phase three : a shift to the Values of open source software, considering the broader contribution it makes beyond economic contribution, and an attempt to value open source software’s economic contribution looking beyond Total Cost of Ownership… and of course, more case studies, focusing on finance, health care and energy.

The Report was exceptionally well received, largely down to its pragmatic approach.  Silona Bonewald Executive Director of IEEE SA OPEN, added “Oftentimes I need to explain to government officials and those in the public sector why Open Source is so important.  OpenUK State of Open’s reports have been very valuable for bridging that gap.  Even in countries that are very different from the UK people find they can relate to the report content. I have cited these OpenUK reports in so many slide decks –  I have lost count.”

 I can’t overstate the value of this report. It’s rare to find one that delves into the business value of open source and provides numbers to back it up. As an open source strategist, a resource like this is priceless to me,” commented VM (Vicky)  Brasseur, Open Source Business Strategist and author of Forge your Future with Open Source

However, in the last 12 months , three events had a major impact on our thinking: the Log4J security vulnerability, the first Open Technology for Sustainability event at COP26, and the UK Energy Sector Digitalisation Task Force Report calling for an open source software “Spine” for our energy sector and utilities. These affected OpenUK’s 2022 focus on Security, Skills and Sustainability as the grand challenges in open source software today in the UK and the survey has been significantly adjusted in an attempt to pull this data together. 

The 2022 survey again captures UK adoption levels and data to facilitate an updated calculation of economic value, it also aligns to these challenges with a deep dive into the impacts and consequences of maturing open source software consumption, contribution and redistribution. This will help companies on the journey to open source maturity

The White House’s work with OpenSSF leading to vast sums of money being invested in securing and maintaining open source software may be a tipping point whilst the rest of the world appears to look on. No viable solution to such challenges should ever come from any one country, and it is time to see coordinated thinking across Governments to manage the challenges. 

Outputs of the survey will be used in the “State of Open : The UK in 2022” Report to be published in early July. This will be launched at face to face events across the four nations in the North of England, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, but will also feed into the work OpenUK is doing to establish Societal Value Metrics for Open Technology. The results will feed into our second Open Technology for Sustainability event which will take place in October in Wales. We’ll issue a further report on this and share the analysis and thinking led by our Chief Sustainability Officer Cristian Parrino and our new Sustainability Advisory Board.

Security, funding and investment in open source software are top of both the Enterprise and State agenda. 

 “This Report will underline that there is work to be done to communicate the importance of open source software to the UK, and specifically to support  organisations to create resilience across their supply chains”  commented FlyingBinary’s  Dr Jacqui Taylor, one of OpenUK’s Security Board Advisers. Another of these Control Plane’s Andrew Martin who is also OpenUK’s Chief Security Tech Officer added “This data gives OpenUK an insight into the prevalence of open source within the UK market, and supports our mission of ensuring the right incentives and outcomes for maintainers and end users in a safe and secure manner”.

Dr Jennifer Barth, founder, Smoothmedia and her team supported the innovative approach taken in State of Open 2021 and will again lead the survey analysis. You can also look forward to case studies and opinion pieces from key figures which were super popular in last year’s Report. 

If you have a UK case study you would like to suggest, do get in touch.

And please, if you are based in the UK, take 20 minutes to complete the survey and if you are based elsewhere please share across your networks, 

https://bit.ly/OpenUKStateofOpen2022


Affiliation with Rust London Community

The BCS Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) is excited to affiliate with the Rust London Community and our new affiliation and support page.

The OSSG is a body of IT professionals consisting of more than 1,500 open source specialists from industry and academia. The Rust programming language is a community project with a vibrant open source ecosystem that brings together the performance of C with the memory safety of Java. 

With the affiliation to the Rust London community, the OSSG will support the community by co-organizing events, announcing events for the Rust community in its calendar, providing letters of endorsement, and giving access to facilities and funding on demand. The first jointly organized event will be revolving around “Embedded Rust” in August.

Statement from the Rust London Community

The Rust London Community is pleased to be affiliated with the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. The Rust programming language has the ethos of empowering through collaboration in its DNA. We here at Rust London are excited to open up our community and connect with the OSSG.

The Rust ecosystem keeps growing and maturing every day. The positive moves forward are reflected in the 2020 Stack Overflow Survey. Rust was voted the most loved programming language for the 5th year in a row, and this is also reflected in the growth of the programming language’s adoption commercially. Several companies and community projects are starting to use Rust more extensively, from web development to space satellites, embedded devices, and game engines. 

Rust London is a place where these companies and individuals can showcase what they are currently doing, what they aspire to do with the language, and how they will positively contribute to the Rust ecosystem. We have grown the community to over 2100 members on Meetup.com, and have more than 700 followers on Twitter. 

The OSSG and the Rust London Community are both excited about what our friendship and connection will bring.


Space: the final frontier for Open-source technology

Space for the few

Since the 1950s, the exploration of space has been dominated by a relatively small number of well-funded state space agencies, of which NASA is perhaps the most celebrated.

This has resulted in such spectacular achievements as the first moon walk, the numerous Shuttle missions, the exploration of Mars and the outer planets. However, the financial, human and technical risks of such projects has been exceedingly high.

During this early phase of Space exploration, national space agencies and their contractors have invested billions of dollars in developing proprietary technologies, with inevitable concerns about the safeguarding of intellectual property.

Space for the many

However, the Space sector is set to embrace a new model, based around the use of open-source technologies and data. This new spirit of collaboration has been spurred by a demand for more nations to gain access to the booming Space sector, the success of the collaborative International Space Station and the growth of relatively low cost technologies. And then of course, there has been the growing influence of the open-source movement within business, government and academia.

An evolving view is that open-source can provide a way to bring together developers, entrepreneurs, academic researchers and national agencies. Through this process, a global community has evolved, with the aim of reducing costs, sharing expertise and widening access to Space.

Open-source to the rescue

We can already see how this new more open approach to Space exploration has started to bear fruit.

For example, did you know that the NASA ‘Ingenuity’ helicopter which recently flew on the surface of Mars was built using the Linux operating system and off the shelf hardware components?

Diagram of NASA 'Ingenuity' helicoptor

Looking further towards the future, NASA have announced that their planned VIPER Lunar Rover will employ open-source software to navigate the lunar surface.

These two examples show that open-source solutions are taking on a critical role in the burgeoning new Space economy. This bold new age of ‘open space’ has created active roles for entrepreneurs, citizen scientists, universities, corporations and national agencies within this evolving business ecosystem.

Open-source in action

At this point, let’s take a quick tour of the numerous roles that the open-source software, hardware and data have come to play in the collaborative exploration of space. These contributions range in scope from small Javascript frameworks through to running vast supercomputers.

Software solutions

It should come as no surprise that NASA has emerged as major champion a champion of open-source software.  A wealth of projects are publicly accessible and NASA has even published a helpful guide to its code repository.

The European space Agency (ESA) is another active sponsor of open-source software for the Space industry. The purpose of the European Space Software Repository (ESSR) is described as follows:

ESA informational web portal was created to promote reuse of Software – including Open Source Software (OSS) – and to provide all parties involved in the European Space software development (in particular SMEs) with access to results of previous investments.

Note the stated importance of providing SMEs with access to existing open-source repositories, with the clear benefits of lower costs, working code and greater participation by smaller companies.

In addition to the ESSR repository, ESA also maintains a register of open source software, specifically for developing downstream space applications such as GNSS and Satellite Communications.

Frameworks and Libraries

A wide range of open-source programming language libraries and frameworks is available to developers . Here are just a few examples :

  • the Javascript library, spacekit.js, is an open-source JavaScript library for creating interactive 3D space visualizations
  • the Python Satellite Data Analysis Toolkit (pysat) is a package which provides a simple and flexible interface for downloading, loading, cleaning, managing, processing, and analyzing scientific measurements
  • SpacePy provides basic data analysis, modelling and visualization for the space sciences
  • Mars Simulation Project builds computer models that characterize important aspects of establishing human settlements on Mars.

Data

There is a vast amount of open-access data which relates to Astronomy and Space exploration:

  • NASA maintains an Open Data Catalogue of all data received from its spacecraft projects.
  • Asterank provides data about 600,000 Asteroids, accessible via their API
  • the “unofficial” REST API for Space X provides access to a wide range of data about Space-X missions
  • IBM’s Space Situational Awareness project seeks to use data and Machine Learning to minimise the risk of objects colliding in the increasing crowded Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) zone.

Hardware

Open source hardware designs have the potential to lower costs and widen access to cutting-edge technology. For example, the EU-funded De-RISC project aims to develop a RISC-V multicore platform and hypervisor for Space and Aeronautical applications.

Computing in Space

These days, Linux runs on most of the world’s supercomputers. But a recent NASA project led to the deployment of significant computing power in space. The Spaceborne project saw the deployment in 2017 of a HP Spaceborne computer to the International Space Station. It was build using COTS hardware and ran the Linux operating system.

The Rise of the Citizen Cosmonaut

So you have decided that you would like to get more involved in the Space sector but you don’t have billions of dollars to spend on your next project?

No worries. Cubesats are small satellites that are launched into low-earth (LEO) orbit. Their relatively affordability has made them made them a firm favourite with both students and entrepreneurs alike. Indeed, a number of early projects such as CubeSat started life as crowd-funding initiatives on Kickstarter

Cubesat technology is now big business, with conferences, workshops, formal standards, and a thriving marketplace for Cubesat technology.

If your annual Space budget is limited to $100 or less, there are still opportunities to get involved at a more modest level.

Check out initiatives such as OpenLuna or the hugely ambitious Humanity for Space.

If you are fascinated by rocketry but have not yet received an invitation to dine with Elon Musk, then Copenhagen Suborbitals might be more in your league. It claims to be the world’s only manned amateur space programme, building and testing their own rockets.

Whatever level of involvement you are seeking, all open source projects are actively looking for volunteers to provide expertise or donate cash, or else you might choose to back a Kickstarter project.

Conclusion

We are just at the start of a revolution in Space exploration. Open-source hardware, software and data will help to lower the barriers to entry and make Space more accessible to a broad range of players. Expect new projects to embrace emerging technologies such as AI, Robotics and Blockchain applications.

Who knows, perhaps the Starship Enterprise of 100 years hence may be a collaborative venture between all nations of planet Earth and built using exclusively open-source technologies.

To learn more about Open Source in Space, join our free evening meeting on Thursday 20 May. Details here.

All images Copyright (C) NASA


Grant-funded Competition for Development of the ‘Digital Security by Design’ Software Ecosystem

Robin Kennedy, Knowledge Transfer Manager – Cyber Security, KTN

Innovate UK currently have a grant-funding competition open for one more week which may be of particular interest to the open-source community. It’s part of the Digital Security by Design (DSbD) challenge which is investing in projects that help the UK digital computing infrastructure to become more secure.

Development of the ‘Digital Security by Design’ Software Ecosystem

An opportunity for SME stakeholders from across the software development spectrum to explore and investigate requirements, dependencies, and a range of potential complexities associated with the adoption of the Digital Security by Design technologies.

Full competition details are here – the Dates tab includes a link to the recording of the briefing event from late November.

The competition headlines are

  • Only open to applications from UK registered SMEs
  • Fast-Start Short-Term Projects – six months of maximum project length
  • Total Eligible Costs per project : £40,000 – £80,000
  • Closing Date NEXT WEEK – Wednesday 13th January 11:00am
  • Total funding available £1.5 million – will be paid de minimus (i.e. 100% funded)

More background on the Digital Security by Design (DSbD) challenge is here www.dsbd.tech and on Twitter @DSbDTech


OpenUK Review of the Year

Our sibling organization, OpenUK, represents the interests of the UK open source industry.  As 2020 draws to a close we invited its CEO, Amanda Brock, to reflect and celebrate its work, developing UK leadership in Open Technology, during her first full year at the helm.

What a year OpenUK has had.  The second half of the year has been a busy 6 months with the Awards, our Kids Competition, a number of Legal and Policy activities and the launch of our Supporter model.

The First Edition of the OpenUK Awards sponsored by the law firm Bristows, was celebrated on 20 October, with almost 150 attendees, receiving a Good box. Described as the best event of 2020 by many of the attendees and with a ‘Wow…just wow” from keynote, Jono Baon, its interactive and hybrid format, is something OpenUK will be doing more of.

Guests were able to table hop and rub shoulders with old friends as they celebrated our winners:

  • Open Source Software – Hospital Run
  • Open Hardware – LowRisc Foundaton
  • Open Data – National Library of Wales
  • Finance and Fintech sponsored by FINOS – Parity.io
  • Young Person – Josh Lowe
  • Individual – Liz Rice

A heartfelt congratulations to all of our Awards winners who each received a trophy created by Garner Osborne.

We were also able to share their prizes with our Kids Competition sponsored by Red Hat. The winners were Altrincham Grammmar School for Girls, in the North of England, Durlston College in the South of England, Rathmore Grammar School in Northern Ireland and Scottish and National Winner Morrison’s Academy.

The Awards were co-hosted by Double Grammy Award winning singer Imogen Heap who added a touch of glamour to the evening as she recognised the contribution of the open source communities to her MiMU glove project and spent some time with the kids from each of the winning schools.

This hasn’t just been a time for OpenUK to give out Awards, but also to receive one, as the OpenUK Kids Competition and Digital Kids Camp is a Phase two winner of the GNOME Community Challenge. An incredible achievement to be one of the final 5 participants in this global challenge, from an initial pool of 149 entries. Not only have we received this accolade, but Red Hat have committed sponsorship for year two of both the Competition and Kids Course and we will share more information on these in January.

The Awards were also a great opportunity to launch our Supporter Model, allowing individuals to support funding OpenUK and to benefit from a number of opportunities including Supporter events and discounts, but most importantly the ability to stand for and vote in the OpenUK Board elections. The first election will take place in Autumn 2021. Half the Board seats will be available for election and anyone who has been a Supporter, paying their monthly subscription for 6 months will be able to vote. More information at our website.

We are waiting for the Supreme Court of the US Decision in Google v Oracle, where OpenUK joined with the Python Foundation, Tidelift and others in an amicus brief explaining the risk of copyright in API’s to open source and have only just completed a response to the National Data Strategy Consultation in the UK. As our final Brexit looms fast, these and other global activities are of great significance to the UK’s Open Technology Communities and CEO, Amanda Brock has given a number of keynotes and written extensively on this and GaiaX. In joining Gaia X as a Day One Member, OpenUK was described as the UK’s lifeline and will be leading the way for UK corporate and public sector involvement. You can read a couple of different views on this in  this article and this article in Computer Weekly

And listen to Amanda discussing Brexit, Global Shift and open technologies in a number of places including: YouTube.

A busy year, but even more to come in 2021. If you are interested in any of our activities or in getting more involved, please contact hello@openuk.uk, follow us on twitter @openuk_uk or LinkedIn

We wish you all an enjoyable festive break and health, wealth and happiness in 2021


Adding an Instruction to the GNU Assembler

Binutils is a huge piece of code and new users can often feel lost and out of their depth when navigating it alone. To help ease the shock, in this post we’ll look at the very simplest step of adding a new basic instruction to an already defined extension and how to add a corresponding GNU Assembler (GAS) test.

While the examples and files given are all RISC-V specific, the information is transferable to other architecture ports, however tables and structures may differ. More information can be found through the binutils project page.

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Facial Recognition: a role for Open Source software and Transparent data

The accuracy of facial recognition has improved dramatically over the past five years. Advances in both hardware and software have led this technology to the cusp of becoming an everyday part of daily life.

It has the potential to bring many practical benefits. However, it is surrounded by accusations of inaccuracy, bias against ethnic groups and has the potential for flagrant abuse by both corporations and governments.

This post provides a basic introduction to the technology, the controversies which surround the use of facial recognition. It then explores what role open source software and transparent data sets can play in helping people understand the technology.

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