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This article is part of an interview series highlighting the speakers of the upcoming All Things Open 2013 conference in Raleigh, NC A writer, community manager, and standards pundit—John Mertic is a jack of all trades. At SugarCRM, his official title is Solutions Architect and Community Manager. He is the author of two books: The Definitive Guide to SugarCRM: Better Business Applications and Building on SugarCRM: Creating Applications the Easy Way. And, he is a frequent conference speaker. We look forward to John's expertise at the upcoming All Things Open conference on October 23 and 24!

Valve has been very clear that there will be a number of manufacturers making a number of living room-centric boxes running the recently announced SteamOS. Still, there's a lot of attention being paid to the prototype box Valve is creating and distributing free to 300 lucky beta testers this year (before the boxes get a wider launch next year). Here's a list of hardware that will be in those prototype boxes, straight from Valve:

This has the look and smell of a business play all the way through, although that might not be immediately evident when reading what ad giant Google and open source Mozilla have to say. At first glance, their reasoning makes sense. Flash is just too darn ubiquitous. It’s everywhere; buried in everything. Including Flash in “click to play” would put too much of a burden on the user.

Being from Canada, interested in technology and the markets, and a privacy advocate, BlackBerry, formerly known as Research In Motion (RIM), has been on my radar for a number of years, so I would like to add my two cents regarding its demise (2, 3, 4, 5).

At the LinuxCon meeting in New Orleans, Linus Torvalds was asked if he had ever been approached by the US government to insert a backdoor into the Linux kernel. Here's his characteristic answer: Torvalds responded "no" while shaking his head "yes," as the audience broke into spontaneous laughter.

Obviously, it's hard to tell from that whether he really meant "yes" or "no". But the question does touch on an important issue: whether open source might be less vulnerable than traditional applications to tampering by the NSA or other intelligence organizations.

Google, Twitter, Amazon and other major entities in computing and on the internet hold a great deal of power.

We are especially keen on Froman’s feigned concern for the proposed ban’s “effect on U.S. consumers.” Evidently studies have been done that have proved that the American psyche would be irrevocably damaged if we couldn’t buy old, outdated versions of Apple products. Oh, did we forget to tell you that this ban is on Apple devices that are all at least a year old?

The CableCard—that small slab that lets a TiVo tune into cable by authenticating its connection—would lose a regulatory safeguard under a bill nearing introduction in Congress. The "‘Consumer Video Device Cost Savings Act" proposes to squelch the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make cable operators use CableCards in their own boxes—a rule enacted in 2007 that discourages second-class treatment of third-party devices like TiVo DVRs.

OpenOffice 4.0 was released yesterday by the Apache Software Foundation, bringing with it a new sidebar designed to make better use of widescreen monitors and improved compatibility with Microsoft Office documents.

We're forecasting sunnier skies in Hawaii today, as Gov. Neil Abercrombie is scheduled to sign the state's first open data bill into law. The bill requires data already deemed public to be made available online and requires the state CIO to set policy and procedures that include "whenever practicable, the use of machine readable, non-proprietary technical standards for web publishing." Sen. Glenn Wakai, Chair of Hawaii's Technology and Art Committee, co-sponsored bill HB632.

The European Commission (EC) recently published an important report, officially a Communication: Against lock-in: building open ICT systems using standards. The Communication introduces and explains the need for the accompanying: Guide for procurement of standards-based ICT—Elements of Good Practice, which was released at the same time.

At its BUILD developer conference in San Francisco, Microsoft developer and C++ Committee chair Herb Sutter talked about what Visual Studio users can look forward to over the coming years. Sutter also outlined Microsoft's ambition to comply with both the existing and still current C++11 standard, and the forthcoming update to that spec that should be completed in 2014.

Wind River has announced a KVM-based virtualization extension to Wind River Linux designed for the telecom industry. The Wind River Open Virtualization Profile offers an open source, real-time kernel virtualization platform that features CPU isolation and under 3-second latency, and supports future network functions virtualization (NFV) standards, says Wind River.

In a world with hundreds of Linux distributions, standardization is the key to fighting fragmentation for the sake of both users and developers. How to achieve such conformity? Look no further than the Linux Standard Base, which offers a way to standardize the file-system hierarchy and application and operating system software structures used by Linux.

Inside Secure announced that its Linux- and Android-ready SafeZone Encryption Toolkit has achieved U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) FIPS 140-2 certification. SafeZone, which is integrated within Inside Secure's MatrixDAR and QuickSec VPN Client for Android products, now secures data in transit over SSL/DTLS and IPSEC, as well as "data at rest" on Android devices.

Last year, Cisco took its case against the Microsoft-Cisco merger to court in Europe. While it didn't oppose the merger, the networking giant wanted EU regulators to impose rules about "standards-based interoperability." In a blog post, Cisco VP Marthin De Beer said the very future of video communications was at risk.

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz finds himself conflicted at Google's decision to remove open protocol XMPP in favor of a proprietary 'Hangouts' solution. Read why.

On March 15, 2013, ComputerWeekly.com, the “leading provider of news, analysis, opinion, information and services for the UK IT community” published an article by Bryan Glick entitled: Government mandates 'preference' for open source. The article focuses on the release of the UK’s new Government Service Design Manual, which, from April 2013, will provide governing standards for the online services developed by the UK’s government for public consumption.

Microsoft announced its support for an international standard on secure software development, while an industry group offered a free training program for developers. A collection of large software companies has thrown its weight behind two initiatives that attempt to make the process of developing secure software more attainable to smaller software makers.

I've been a professional UNIX/Linux systems administrator for 18 years now. I've had to implement, maintain and support servers from all of the enterprise distributions and a few distributions not generally used in the enterprise as well for my employers and customers over the years. I'm a big advocate for Red Hat and the various free clones (CentOS, Scientific Linux and Springdale Linux) as the best solution for most organizations.

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz explains why Red Hat Enterprise Linux' "LSB Certification" means not only stability, but breeds reliability and lowers operating cost.

Last week, The White House published an Executive Order by which the default method for government data collection and dissemination must now be open and machine readable.

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz takes a look at Linux Kernel cgroups and how they are a BIG WIN for systemd. Read why.

Does your Distro use systemd? Did anyone ask you if that was okay? Choice has been taken away, quietly. Dietrich Schmitz takes issue and resolves to take back what was taken.

Last week Open Source, Open Standards 2013 took place in London, an event focused on the public sector. Naturally these being two topics we’re very keen on here at OSS Watch I went along too. Overall the key message to take away from the event was just how central to public sector IT strategy these two themes have become, and also how policy is being rapidly turned into practice, everywhere from the NHS to local government.

It's not too late to take corrective action. Dietrich Schmitz sees trouble looming in the Linux Community. Read why.

Dietrich Schmitz takes a look at Slackware Linux, the oldest Linux Distro, to assess the state of affairs concerning systemd compliance. Read what Founder Patrick Volkerding has to say about it.

Churnalism US is a new web tool and browser extension that allows anyone to compare the news you read against existing content to uncover possible instances of plagiarism. It is a joint project with the Media Standards Trust.

I thought it was going to be easy. Just click, listen, and get back to work. Wrong. My Chrome browser told me I needed to install the QuickTime plugin if I wanted to hear Mr. Bell.

A question that every Linux user should be asking: Where will your Linux Distro be in 5 years? Dietrich Schmitz sets forth his reasons for why Fedora 18 is the best choice.

On Wednesday, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) held a conference? to discuss open standards and the question "Who makes the internet?" in preparation for its annual meeting in Berlin at the end of July. Hans-Joachim Otto, parliamentary state secretary of the German Federal Ministry of Economics, took this occasion in the German capital to reassure the internet standards committee that it has a firm ally in the German government. "We keep having to promote the freedom of the internet on an international level", said the FDP (Liberal) politician. "This is by no means a given."

Since we have been looking at FreeBSD, OpenVZ, and ProxMox, it seems only right to mention the other open source player in this market: OpenNode. OpenNode, like ProxMox, is a management layer built on top of OpenVZ containers and KVM virtual machines. Unlike ProxMox, which is built on Debian, OpenNode is similar to CentOS and Scientific Linux in that it is built off of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. A good fit, since the stable OpenVZ kernel is also released for RHEL.

The 10-year-old Xen hypervisor was formerly a community project sponsored by Citrix, much as the Fedora operating system is a community project sponsored by Red Hat. Citrix was looking to place Xen into a vendor-neutral organization, however, and the Linux Foundation move was announced today. The list of companies that will "contribute to and guide the Xen Project" is impressive, including Amazon Web Services, AMD, Bromium, Calxeda, CA Technologies, Cisco, Citrix, Google, Intel, Oracle, Samsung, and Verizon.

On the horns of a dilemma, Fuduntu Founder Andrew Wyatt announces his retirement from Lead Developer and 'End of Life' for Fuduntu in the wake of newly imposed Linux systemd infrastructural change requirements.

The tension is palpable in the Linux Distro Developer community. Systemd is being 'force fed'. And it's either sink or swim to deal with it.

Networking giant Cisco Systems is no stranger to the world of open source software. In 2009, Cisco was identified as one of the top contributors to the Linux kernel and its core IOS XE operating is based on Linux as well.

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz shares a story about a fundamentally broken system: Email. Read how a fix is under way and how a new 'de facto' email privacy standard may emerge.

Roughly six months after the launch of its “Folsom” release last fall, OpenStack on Thursday unveiled version 2013.1 “Grizzly,” the seventh and latest release of the open source software for building public, private and hybrid clouds.

Standardization in Linux is "not going to happen," said Mobile Raptor blogger Robin Lim. "What should be done instead is to stop lumping all the Linux distributions under the name 'Linux,' and just call them Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint and so on," Lim offered. "They are that diverse." In fact, "if we woke up tomorrow and only one desktop Linux distribution was left in development, we would all be better for it."

One constant that is ever-present on the Internet: Change. In a story on TechCrunch Google made the decision today to fork WebKit to 'Blink' to advance their projects in the name of "speed and simplicity".

Today something struck home and really punctuates the current state of affairs we now have with Linux Desktops. Insync 1.0 was introduced, which, by itself, is a good thing, particularly because Google chose to pass on writing a Drive client for Linux but provided one for Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX last Spring of 2012. That's to be expected I guess. After all, they represent two very big markets with essentially one codebase for each operating system--fairly simple in view of long-term maintenance. I think that's a safe assumption.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is running its annual Document Freedom Day campaign today to raise awareness of the importance of open standards. This year's Document Freedom Day involves over 50 groups from 30 countries and focuses on open standards in web-based streaming technologies, especially on increasing the awareness and usage of HTML5. This year's campaign is sponsored by Google and openSUSE.

Data on the products we buy is rarely viewed as something to be opened. But in fact, the international standards that make it possible for products to be traded across borders can be used by consumers for their own ends—to help improve information—sharing and choice across the planet. There is currently no public database of this information, but we’re working to change that at Product Open Data.

More than two years after LibreOffice came into being, it's hard to call the open source office software anything but a success. There are possibly tens of millions of people who use it—or at least have it installed on their computers. But how close is LibreOffice to overtaking OpenOffice, the king of open source productivity suites?

The short answer is that LibreOffice has a long way to go.

Founded in 2010 by trading technology experts, OpenFin is growing on the heels of HTML5 standards edging out ill-fitting older Web solutions. Built onto an open source platform, OpenFin Desktop helps financial institutions to bridge the security gaps in their outdated Web-browser technology. OpenFin is developing software to bring the next generation of trading applications to the financial services industry via HTML5.

The European Commission (EC), the central governing body of the EU, has in the past several years pursued ICT policies that increasingly have been good for "openness" in the areas of standards, data, and software. Its recent announcements on cloud computing have continued this theme. However, as with any broad strategy of this magnitude, there are parts of the strategy (many well-meaning) that could lead to trouble. Attention, engagement, and follow-up with the Commission are needed to assure a positive outcome.

A single TCP connection reaches more than 50 Gbps by using Multipath TCP to pool six 10 Gbps interfaces together.

I must confess, I was neither surprised nor disturbed by last month’s announcement that the Opera web browser was switching to the WebKit rendering engine. But perhaps I’m in the minority among geeks on this topic. The anxiety about the possibility of a “WebKit monoculture” is based on past events that many of us remember all too well. Someday, starry-eyed young web developers may ask us, “You fought in the Web Standards Wars?” (Yes, I was once a Zeldi Knight, the same as your father.) In the end, we won. As someone whose memory of perceived past technological betrayals and injustices is so keen that I still find myself unwilling to have a Microsoft game console in the house, my lack of anxiety about this move may seem incongruous, even hypocritical. I am open to the possibility that I’ll be proven wrong in time, but here’s how I see it today.

Besides representing open source organizations like the Linux Foundation and scores of standards organizations, attorney and open source advocate Andy Updegrove is also a novelist.

I received an interesting message from Angela Kahealani with a challenge: "Here's what I'd like to see in Work the Shell: a full-blown shell script template. It should comply with all standards applicable to CLI programs.