Giving open source projects and contributors a boost – Open Source Matters

Welcome to the November 2022 edition of Open Source Matters where we cover the latest news in open source technology. I’m your host, Ben Lloyd Pearson, let’s dive in.

2023 State of Open Source Survey

The Open Source Initiative and OpenLogic have teamed up to launch the 2023 State of Open Source survey that surveys engineers and engineering leadership about the open source software they’re using and the challenges they face. The cherry on top, for every valid survey submission, the OSI has pledged a donation of one U.S. dollar to the World Food Program which will provide two meals to people in need. The survey is open until the end of November and takes about 10 minutes to complete. So, if you want to share your opinions about select open source software, click this link to participate.

AlmaLinux Expands Board

As we reported in our last episode, our friends over at the AlmaLinux project ran their very first board election since the project’s launch. Until now, the community had been led by a small group of founders that were heavily involved in the early days of the project. The AlmaLinux folks put a heavy emphasis on the importance of being community-led, so it’s important to them that the community selects the leadership. Nearly 300 members participated in the voting process in recent weeks and elected 7 new board members who will serve a three-year term. Congrats go out to the AlmaLinux community for this huge milestone in their community’s growth and to the 7 new board members who were chosen to lead it.

Intel Supports Krita

Intel has long been active in many open source communities, and they recently formalized financial support for Krita, an open source painting program used by a wide range of professionals. Intel is the very first company to become a corporate backer for the Krita Development Fund and hopes to build a tighter relationship with the community to improve performance on Intel chipsets. I’m always a fan of seeing companies provide financial support to open source communities, so this is fantastic to see. You can head over to fund.krita.org for more details on the Krita Development Fund.

Google Awards Open Source Peer Bonus to OSS Contributors

Google has announced a list of open source contributors that have been selected to receive an open source peer bonus. This is the 2nd time Google employees nominated external open source contributors from around the world and they selected 141 contributors from 36 countries across 110 open source projects. Google’s goal is to recognize great open source contributors, even if the company doesn’t benefit directly from their work. Head over to the Google Open Source blog to learn more.

Open Source Projects to Watch

Now, it’s time for the open source launch rapid fire, here are the new projects we’re watching:

• varc – A security tool that captures snapshots of systems to help investigate security incidents.
• Metlo – An API scanning and security tool for endpoint discovery, security testing, and threat detection.
• Whisper – a general-purpose speech recognition model from OpenAI.
• Outerbridge – a low code workflow automation application to help integrate Web3 and Web2 apps.
• Workerd – A JavaScript WebAssembly runtime from Cloudflare
• KataOS – a security-oriented operating system for machine learning on embedded devices from Google.
• Alinea – a headless content management system written in TypeScript.

That’s your open source matters for November 2022. We’ll see you soon.