| The 12 News Days of Xmas 11 - November |
| Written by Editor | |||
| Thursday, 03 January 2019 | |||
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... in many places the start of the holiday season - how do we get any work done? After the uproar earlier in the year the purchase of GitHub by Microsoft went though without any problems. Even at the end of the year there is no obvious sign of any Microsoft influence on GitHub - unless you know different of course! Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub for $7.5 billion was finalized in October and now Nat Friedman has completed his first week as its CEO. What impact will his leadership have on the world's biggest open source community. Are you still with Java 8? Why not, if it works? The need to move on is a constant pressure and sooner or later the threat of not being supported gets to everyone. Most Java developers are sticking with Java 8 or older versions despite Java 11 now being available, according to a new survey of Java developers. More than 10,000 developers completed the survey, making it the largest JVM survey ever undertaken. I can't see what is wrong with REST myself - in fact REST is to theoretical. Making a GET or POST request is simple enough why do we have to repackage it to the extend that the simplicity is lost. No matter what I might think GraphQL has enough momentum to deserve a foundation. Facebook has set up a new open source foundation for its GraphQL project, hosted under the Linux Foundation. The aim is to enable widespread adoption and help accelerate development of GraphQL and the surrounding ecosystem. This next news should have been on the day of the dead but it missed it by more than a week. Of course it is obvious that as Facebook ages it is going to have to deal with death as will all social networks. What is less obvious is what to do about it. Facebook has had a huge impact on the lives of its users, connecting individuals to their family and friends as never before. As time passes so do people, and there will come a point when more Facebook profiles will belong to deceased users than to living ones. The Commons Clause reared its head again and it probably isn't the last time. The FSF has decided that it is incompatible with the goals of open source. This I can understand but I can also understand the irritation and annoyance when companies make lots of money out of open source software without putting anything back. There has to be a middle road. The Free Software Foundation has added the Commons Clause to its list of non-free licenses among a number of recent updates to its licensing materials. Other changes clarify the GNU GPL position on translating code into another language and how to handle projects that combine code under multiple licenses. And talking of open source Linux developers got excited by the fact that the GNU library was seemingly refusing to add Linux calls. That seems fine but it is strange that Linux doesn't have an official library that wraps all its sys calls. Sad thing is that nothing much seems to have happened since. The world of open source software, and Linux/GNU in particular, is a strange one, governed by internal politics and beliefs. Now frustration seems to have the better of the Linux developers who are now considering creating their own Linux call library.
The name "Perl" lies at the heart of the drama developing between the two languages, Perl 5 and Perl 6. This is a long way from the once desirable unification and moves towards breaking the ties between former sister languages now emerging as total foes. The Apple antitrust suit took another step forward but now Apple is arguing that it is just a middle man and people who buy apps from it have no right to sue. It is obvious that Apple has a monopoly on iOS apps, but it is using a very slippery argument to thwart the current class action being brought against it for being said monopoly. Related ArticlesThe 12 News Days of XmasTo be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. 
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 04 January 2019 ) |
Things are getting heated, but only a little, in the Perl camp. The problem is that the tension between Perl 5 - classic Perl and Perl 6 - new Perl is getting worse. Is it the camel v the butterfly? The argument is the Perl 6 is a new language and really shouldn't be called Perl and shouldn't be squatting on the version 6 designation. It raises the question of when is a language a different language?
