US national parks to be smothered under blanket of liquid-hot Magma. Yes, the open-source 5G software AccessParks, broadband provider to the US National Park Service, has signed up FreedomFi to deploy 5G networking over hundreds of sites using Magma open source 5G software. The deal is a multi-year affair and the network itself will use the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) to punt a 5G service required by AccessParks. …
I had to remind myself of the meaning... I was amused by the example given:
(of a person, especially a woman) attractive in a way that suggests a passionate nature. ‘a sultry French au pair’
Nice.
The advantage of the free software movement is that, once the basic list of requirements are set up, things can be added under public scrutiny and the software can evolve according to the needs of the users, not the budgets of the providers.
Free Software is the death knell of closed voting machines, whose controller nobody knows. It is the end of Windows (yeah, okay, not anytime soon, but still), an OS that is decided by a company that thinks it knows better than you what you need. At some point in time, it will even make IoT reliable and secure (not holding my breath either).
Closed, proprietary software is dead, it just doesn't know it yet.
Red Hat were smart. They realised that the future of their business was in support contracts, not in the software itself. That's what corporations want. They don't particularly care how much the software costs, what they care about is accountability. Free software is a tricky thing to convince offices to use, because they need to have somebody to call when things go wrong, or somebody to blame.
And "free" software is driven by the companies that pay its development - not the users using it.
Soon you won't be able to use much of it outside some cloud contract, don't worry. They will let you use graciously the software they pay to develop only on their systems, as long as you pay. The software will be free, accessing it won't. And you'll never own it.
Sure, you could still maybe fork it, modify it and use it - just most people have not nor the skills nor the resources. You'll just have the same lock-in, just under a different disguise. With less competition, and less innovation, once everybody use exactly the same software because there's no incentive to write a different one - the "lemming culture".
There's also a lot of benefit in actually "owning" a version of the software on your system.
Looking at cloud based software, or software that auto updates when it feels like it can cause more problems than it fixes. A lot of the "managed" platforms get updated with features many clients don't actually want, most businesses also hate the way the software they use, updates outside their control thus causing support and training issues.
I had one medical client who was unable to print legally required labels from their 12 label printers across 3 sites last month - all because they had "auto update" turned on as their "security policy" requires them to install "official updates within 14 days". Look at the Android issues last month as another example of lack of control and how it impacts YOUR business.
You can have Microsoft Office for £7/month or a one off fee of £70 - what are you paying for? Most users already have Email and Cloud Storage, so why pay monthly? Nobody rents their TV, Video or Fridge any more do they?
Closed, proprietary software is dead
Yawn. "X is dead", for whatever value of X the author dislikes, is the most feeble, threadbare claim in IT. It's the flag waved by those who have no actual argument to make.
Nothing lasts forever, but most of the things in IT which some self-appointed expert has confidently declared "dead" are still around.
are off grid. Seriously. Go and hike over the Hardangervidda for a week (bring own tent and food, don't use the comfort of DNT accomodations, just refill water there - also hot water for the day, so that you have to schlepp and burn less fuel).
Both landscape and lack of internet are a great detox for your mind.
Or travel through Australia, yeah, you can check your mails when at major camping grounds, but other than that you are quite free of distractions. I had a great time on the West Coast, up to the North West Cape, down to Cape Leuwin (or how it is spelled... sorry). Avoid the cities, enjoy landscape and nature, try not to get bitten / stung / eaten / step on a stoney ;)
I've certainly enjoyed holidays in places where there's no phone service. But different people enjoy different things. Not everyone is you.
I'm not particularly interested in "relaxing", either. I'm pretty relaxed in much of my daily life; I don't need a vacation for that. I take vacation to spend more time with my extended family and enjoy a variety of activities I don't normally have much time for. But "relaxing" is not my goal.
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Yeah, this is a big difference with the 5G deployments. Not strictly speaking related to the 5G standard (it's not suddenly more specific compared to 2G, 3G, and 4G, in specifying how the backend equipment hooks together... it'll still be entirely possible to make a 100% 5G compliant system with 100% vendor lockin.) But de facto, a lot of the new vendors are using full open source (which is probably following OpenRAN interoperability standards), and several of the cell cos (at least in the US) have insisted on interoperable hardware so several of the "traditional" vendors (Nokia etc.) so they are also using OpenRAN.
Keep in mind (to make sense of "radio controllers"), the cell cos have used software defined radio systems for years now -- the radios on top of the cell site are JUST radios (no cell standard processing done there), the software defined radio processing is done by a radio controller (probably at the cell site base, but part of OpenRAN is that you could have like a shed with controllers for a whole group of cell sites in it rather than having to have one at each cell site, assuming fast enough fiber or whatever between them.)
So, Verizon Wireless (and T-Mobile if I recall correctly) have insisted on OpenRAN hardware -- the switch, the radio controllers, the radios themselves, etc., are supposed to actually be interchangeable now, for a vendor to get "vendor lockin" they have to provide superior performance, pricing, or customer service. In theory if a cell site's radios croaked out (lightning strike?) on an OpenRAN site it should be possible to pop them off and pop on new ones without consideration of what brand hardware is on the site.
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