Roundup of Interesting Software News
In this roundup of interesting software news, you'll read up on a new report from the Linux Foundation that says collaborative development between companies is on the rise and how the US Federal Aviation Administration is ordering a fix for a software glitch affecting some Boeing planes.
New Linux Foundation Report Shows Collaborative Development on the Rise
Remember, there’s no “I” in team—or software development. That’s the takeaway from the Linux Foundation’s new Collaborative Development Trends Report, which explains “that companies are increasing collaborative development and view it as essential to success. Developers, too, are benefiting from this trend.“
Based on a survey of roughly 700 developers and managers, which the Linux Foundation says was “invitation-only,” the report claims that 91 percent of executives admit that having companies collaborate with each other on software development is “very important to their business.”
Additionally, the report describes how collaborative software has been picking up steam among companies within the past three years with 44 percent of polled managers saying that within the next six months they plan on investing more into the process.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of ZDNet takes a look at the report as well as Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin’s keynote speech at the Linux Collaboration Summit and concludes that “80 percent of technology value—whether it's from smartphones, TVs, or IT—will be coming from open source software development with only 20 percent coming from proprietary programming.”
From ZDNet:
In particular, this survey looked at open source collaborative projects. As Zemlin said in his keynote, "The rise of Linux and open source tools and components in the enterprise software industry over the past decade has been well documented. More recently, a new business model has emerged in which companies are joining together across industries to share development resources and build common open source code bases on which they can differentiate their own products and services. … In the past, collaboration was done by standards committees; now it's being done by open source foundations."
US Federal Aviation Administration Orders Fix to Airplane Software Glitch
If news on the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has you nervous about flying, sit back and take a deep breath as you read this next sentence. A report from Reuters states that “The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday ordered an immediate fix to the latest version of [The] Boeing Co[mpany]'s 747-8 plane, saying a software glitch could cause it to lose thrust when close to landing and fly into the ground.”
Don’t panic just yet, however, as Boeing claims that the software glitch has not caused any current problems.
Aviation Week’s Guy Norris explains in technical terms what the FAA is looking for in regards to the software glitch causing the “possible in-flight deployment of the thrust reversers.”
From Aviation Week:
The action, mandated in an FAA airworthiness directive (AD), follows recommendations issued by Boeing to operators in a service bulletin in December. Although no incidents of thrust-reverser deployment have occurred on the General Electric GEnx-2B powered aircraft, Boeing says “Our recommendation was based on analysis of data that led us to conclude while extremely remote and already prohibited by operational standards, this was a potential scenario. There has been no occurrence of this condition in service or in testing.”
