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Microsoft launches Azure

location based services

Addressing a gathering at

Automobility LA 2017 in Los

Angeles, California, Sam George,

director – Azure IoT, Microsoft

said, “Microsoft is making

an effort to solve mobility

challenges and bring government

bodies, private companies and

automotive OEMs together,

using Microsoft’s intelligent

cloud platform.”

The new location capabilities

will provide cloud developers

critical geographical data to

power smart cities and Internet

of Things (IoT) solutions

across industries. This includes

manufacturing, automotive,

logistics, urban planning

and retail, etc.

TomTom Telematics will

be the first official partner for

the service, supplying critical

location and real-time traffic data,

providing Microsoft customers

with advanced location and

mapping capabilities.

Microsoft’s Azure location

based services will offer

enterprise customers location

capabilities integrated in the

cloud to help any industry

improve traffic flow. Microsoft

also announced that Azure LBS

will be launched in 2018, and

will be available globally in

more than 30 languages.

For more news, visit www.opensourceforu.com

It has become increasingly evident that the future of AI needs more than just

ethical direction and government oversight. It would be comforting to know that

the tech giants are on the same page too. The machines, and the humans who will

rely on them, need the biggest companies building AI to take on a fair share of

responsibility for the future.

Four tech giants using Linux change their

open source licensing policies

The GNU Public License version 2 (GPLv2) is arguably the most important

open source licence for one reason—Linux uses it. On November 27, 2017,

three tech power houses that use Linux—Facebook, Google and IBM, as

well as the major Linux distributor Red Hat, announced they would extend

additional rights to help companies who’ve made GPLv2 open source licence

compliance errors and mistakes.

The GPLv2 and its close relative, GNU Lesser General Public License

(LGPL), are widely used open source software licences. When the GPL version

3 (GPLv3) was released, it came with an express termination approach. This

termination policy in GPLv3 provided a way for companies to correct licensing

errors and mistakes. This approach allows licence compliance enforcement that is

consistent with community norms.

FreeNAS 11.1 provides greater performance

and cloud integration

FreeNAS 11.1 adds cloud integration and OpenZFS performance improvements,

including the ability to prioritise ‘resilvering’ operations, and preliminary Docker

support to the world’s most popular software-defined storage operating system.

It also adds a cloud sync (data import/

export to the cloud) feature, which lets

you sync (similar to back up), move

(erase from source) or

copy (only changed

data) data to and from

public cloud providers

that include Amazon

S3 (Simple Storage

Services), Backblaze B2

Cloud, Google Cloud

and Microsoft Azure.

OpenZFS has

noticeable performance improvements for handling multiple snapshots and large

files. Resilver Priority has been added to the ‘Storage’ screen of the graphical user

interface, allowing you to configure ‘resilvering’ at a higher priority at specific

times. This helps to mitigate the inherited challenges and risks associated with

storage array rebuilds on very large capacity drives.

The latest release includes an updated preview of the beta version of the

new administrator graphical user interface, including the ability to select display

themes. It can be downloaded from freenas.org/download.

JANUARY 2018

OPEN SOURCE FOR YOU