Makakatulond din ito para sa hanap buhay ng mga programmers ng Open Source.

Nakikinabang na talaga ang mga companies na closed source sa mismong open
source.
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8:58 am ET
Apr 24, 2014  Security
<http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/category/security/> Microsoft, IBM,
Google and Other Tech Giants Team Up to Prevent the Next
‘Heartbleed’

   - By
   - Steven Norton

Reuters

Technology giants including Google and International Business
Machines<http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=IBM>have
committed to collectively give more than $3 million to support the
free, widely used computer code that underpins the Internet.

As participants in the Core Infrastructure Initiative, the companies will
each provide $100,000 a year for a minimum of three years. The money will
back projects aimed at improving open source software, code that can be
modified and used by individuals and companies for free. While the total
may be loose change for the tech firms, it could be quite a sum for open
source developers, many of whom do work in their free time for little or no
pay.

The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates for the growth of
Linux and collaborative software development, announced the project
Thursday. Along with the foundation, other founding participants include
Microsoft<http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=MSFT>Corp.,
Facebook <http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=FB>Inc.,
Cisco 
Systems<http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=CSCO>Inc.,
Dell Inc., 
Fujitsu<http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=6702.TO>Ltd.,
Intel <http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=INTC>Corp.,
NetApp <http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=NTAP>Inc.,
VMWare <http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=VMW>Inc.,
Amazon.com<http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=AMZN>Inc.and
Rackspace
Hosting <http://online.wsj.com/public/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=RAX>Inc.

Recruiting for the initiative kicked into gear following the disclosure of
the Heartbleed bug, a vulnerability in OpenSSL, an open source encryption
tool used by a large portion of the Internet. The flaw could have affected
two-thirds of active websites and potentially exposed troves of sensitive
customer data.

Open source software is often seen as more secure than proprietary
software. The more eyes on the code, the thinking goes, the more
opportunity there is to improve on that code and spot potential issues.

“In this case, no one was looking at the code,” Jim Zemlin, executive
director of the Linux Foundation, told CIO Journal. Heartbleed was the
catalyst for launching the project, he said. “Can we together take a
broader view and maybe lower the risk that the next Heartbleed will happen?
I do think that is the case, with a modicum of resources.”

Open source software pervades the systems and software companies and
consumers use every day, but many open source developers do so for little
or no pay during their free time. “We have to provide resources in a way
that allows them to operate the way they have been operating, in a way that
allows them to do it full time without having to worry about their next
meal,” Zemlin said.

The initiative will look across the spectrum of open source projects and
determine which ones could be significantly aided by some funding. Support
could include paying developers to work on new projects, funding security
audits or improving computing infrastructure.

The first project being considered for funding will be OpenSSL, according
to a statement from the Linux Foundation. Project proposals would be
brought to a steering committee that would then vote on how to allocate
money, Zemlin said. The WSJ reported earlier that at the time of
Heartbleed’s discovery, OpenSSL was managed by just four European
programmers<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303873604579495362672447986>,
only one of whom counted it as his full-time job.

Shortly after the bug was disclosed, some firms floated the possibility of
professionally testing open source software
projects<http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/04/10/heartbleed-raises-debate-about-testing-of-open-source-software/>.
“Testing of the core libraries has not been done in a highly orchestrated
and organized manner*,* and I think it is time for that to be done,” said
Trey Ford, global security strategist at Rapid7, an Internet security
company. He noted that his firm does not provide the kind of source code
review discussed at the time.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Linux operating system distributor Canoncial
Ltd., voiced his “full support for this initiative.” He said Heartbleed
“opened the world’s eyes to the extent to which open source is vital to
vast tracts of infrastructure and makes it real to a much broader cross
section of business and society.”

Still, he said the initiative should only be a first step in developing
institutions capable of policing open source software. Ultimately, he said,
other institutions will have to be created in order to ensure that not only
software developers, but also security researchers and others involved in
cybersecurity, have access to these kinds of resources. “The deep challenge
is to figure out how to create a combination of openness and governance and
sustainability for these widely used pieces of open source software that
doesn’t just address the crisis of the day, but ultimately gives us more
confidence in our ability to both avoid and respond to potential crises in
the future,” he told CIO Journal.

Zemlin, who said future backers could include governments and members of
the financial services industry, among others, hopes the initiative will
serve as an outlet for anyone with a stake in open source to propose a
project.

Calling open source “core to our strategy and development,” New England
BiolabsInc.  CIO Ken Grady said many of the company’s scientific apps, such
as those used for gene assembly and other experimental design tools, are
open source. He said the firm’s heavy reliance on open source makes it
“critical that we monitor and patch frequently to address threats,”
including for serious flaws such as Heartbleed.

TradeMonster Group Inc., an online trading platform in Chicago, uses open
source software as much as possible both in its trading system and
internally, chief technology officer Sanjib Sahoo said. The company goes
through a lot of work to test open source software before running it in its
network.

Many companies that want to save money with open source software don’t do
enough testing, he said. “They don’t go through a lot of security,
performance and compatibility testing.” TradeMonster was not impacted by
the Heartbleed flaw in OpenSSL as it didn’t use the version of the software
that was vulnerable, Sahoo said.

*– Michael Hickins, Rachael King and Clint Boulton contributed to this
article.*
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/04/24/microsoft-google-other-tech-giants-unite-to-prevent-next-heartbleed/

-- 
Computer user:
* Ubuntu - Free operating system for your desktop/laptop
* Mac OS X 10.6.3 - Mac Book
* Windows 7 - Microsoft Operating System

g1sleeping (power saving)

"Once you're in technology, you have to keep on learning", Samuel Mayanja,
Network Engineer, Newton Public Schools
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