In 1974, Donald Knuth wrote, "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97%% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil." With computers available now that are millions of times faster than those available then, today's programmers have even less reason to worry about shaving cycles and saving bytes than those a generation ago. But "less" isn't "none": every once in a while, squeezing the last ounce of performance out of the machine really does matter.This book is written by over a dozen developers who have grappled with slow code, memory leaks, or uncontrollable latency in open source software. They share their mistakes and successes, and give the reader an over-the-shoulder view of how they approached their specific challenges. With examples from bioinformatics research code to web browsers, the solutions are as varied as the problems.This book will help junior and senior developers alike understand how their colleagues think about performance.
The corporate market is now embracing free, "open source" software like never before, as evidenced by the recent success of the technologies underlying LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Each is the result of a publicly collaborative process among numerous developers who volunteer their time and energy to create better software. The truth is, however, that the overwhelming majority of free software projects fail. To help you beat the odds, O'Reilly has put together Producing Open Source Software, a guide that recommends tried and true steps to help free software developers work together toward a common goal. Not just for developers who are considering starting their own free software project, this book will also help those who want to participate in the process at any level. The book tackles this very complex topic by distilling it down into easily understandable parts. Starting with the basics of project management, it details specific tools used in free software projects, including version control, IRC, bug tracking, and Wikis. Author Karl Fogel, known for his work on CVS and Subversion, offers practical advice on how to set up and use a range of tools in combination with open mailing lists and archives. He also provides several chapters on the essentials of recruiting and motivating developers, as well as how to gain much-needed publicity for your project. While managing a team of enthusiastic developers -- most of whom you've never even met -- can be challenging, it can also be fun. Producing Open Source Software takes this into account, too, as it speaks of the sheer pleasure to be had from working with a motivated team of free software developers.
With the development of computing technologies in today’s modernized world, software packages have become easily accessible. Open source software, specifically, is a popular method for solving certain issues in the field of computer science. One key challenge is analyzing big data due to the high amounts that organizations are processing. Researchers and professionals need research on the foundations of open source software programs and how they can successfully analyze statistical data. Open Source Software for Statistical Analysis of Big Data: Emerging Research and Opportunities provides emerging research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of cost-free software possibilities for applications within data analysis and statistics with a specific focus on R and Python. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as cluster analysis, time series forecasting, and machine learning, this book is ideally designed for researchers, developers, practitioners, engineers, academicians, scholars, and students who want to more fully understand in a brief and concise format the realm and technologies of open source software for big data and how it has been used to solve large-scale research problems in a multitude of disciplines.
As we pointed out in The Architecture of Open Source Applications, architects look at thousands of buildings during their training, and study the critiques of many more. But most software developers only ever get to know a handful of programs well - usually programs they wrote themselves. This book provides you with the chance to study how 26 experienced programmers think when they are building something new. The programs you will read about in this book were all written from scratch to solve difficult problems. A web server, a pedometer, a Python interpreter, a web-based spreadsheet, and many more applications are written, in 500 lines of code or less, and described by their creators so that you can learn from their insights and their mistakes.
Open source software is changing the world of Information Technology. But making it work for your company is far more complicated than simply installing a copy of Linux. If you are serious about using open source to cut costs, accelerate development, and reduce vendor lock-in, you must institutionalize skills and create new ways of working. You must understand how open source is different from commercial software and what responsibilities and risks it brings. Open Source for the Enterprise is a sober guide to putting open source to work in the modern IT department. Open source software is software whose code is freely available to anyone who wants to change and redistribute it. New commercial support services, smaller licensing fees, increased collaboration, and a friendlier platform to sell products and services are just a few of the reasons open source is so attractive to IT departments. Some of the open source projects that are in current, widespread use in businesses large and small include Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, JBOSS, and Perl. These have been used to such great effect by Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, and major commercial and financial firms, that a wave of publicity has resulted in recent years, bordering on hype. Large vendors such as IBM, Novell, and Hewlett Packard have made open source a lynchpin of their offerings. Open source has entered a new area where it is being used as a marketing device, a collaborative software development methodology, and a business model. This book provides something far more valuable than either the cheerleading or the fear-mongering one hears about open source. The authors are Dan Woods, former CTO of TheStreet.com and a consultant and author of several books about IT, and Gautam Guliani, Director of Software Architecture at Kaplan Test Prep & Admissions. Each has used open source software for some 15 years at IT departments large and small. They have collected the wisdom of a host of experts from IT departments, open source communities, and software companies. Open Source for the Enterprise provides a top to bottom view not only of the technology, but of the skills required to manage it and the organizational issues that must be addressed. Here are the sorts of questions answered in the book: Why is there a "productization gap" in most open source projects? How can the maturity of open source be evaluated? How can the ROI of open source be calculated? What skills are needed to use open source? What sorts of open source projects are appropriate for IT departments at the beginner, intermediate, advanced, and expert levels? What questions need to be answered by an open source strategy? What policies for governance can be instituted to control the adoption of open source? What new commercial services can help manage the risks of open source? Do differences in open source licenses matter? How will using open source transform an IT department? Praise for Open Source for the Enterprise:"Open Source has become a strategic business issue; decisions on how andwhere to choose to use Open Source now have a major impact on theoverall direction of IT abilities to support the business both withcapabilities and by controlling costs. This is a new game and onegenerally not covered in existing books on Open Source which continue toassume that the readers are 'deep dive' technologists, Open Source for the Enterprise provides everyone from business managers to technologistswith the balanced view that has been missing. Well worth the time toread, and also worth encouraging others in your enterprise to read as well." ----Andy Mulholland - Global CTO Capgemini "Open Source for the Enterprise is required reading for anyone workingwith or looking to adopt open source technologies in a corporateenvironment. Its practical, no-BS approach will make sure you're armedwith the information you need to deploy applications successfully (aswell as helping you know when to say "no"). If you're trying to sell opensource to management, this book will give you the ammunition you need.If you're a manager trying to drive down cost using open source, thisbook will tell you what questions to ask your staff. In short, it's aclear, concise explanation of how to successfully leverage open sourcewithout making the big mistakes that can get you fired." ----Kevin Bedell - founding editor of LinuxWorld Magazine
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International IFIP WG 2.13 Conference on Open Source Systems, OSS 2010, held in Notre Dame, IN, USA, in May/June 2010. The 23 revised full papers presented together with 17 short papers, 5 workshop abstracts and 4 panel descriptions were carefully reviewed and selected from 51 submissions. The papers reflect the international communities of active OSS researchers and present a broad range of perspectives on open source systems ranging from software engineering through organizational issues to law.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (officially titled the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002), signed into law on 30 July 2002 by President Bush, is considered the most significant change to federal securities laws in the United States since the New Deal. It came in the wake of a series of corporate financial scandals, including those affecting Enron, Arthur Andersen, and WorldCom. The law is named after Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael G. Oxley. It was approved by the House by a vote of 423-3 and by the Senate 99-0. This book illustrates the many Open Source cost-saving opportunities that public companies can explore in their IT enterprise to meet mandatory compliance requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley act. This book will also demonstrate by example and technical reference both the infrastructure components for Open Source that can be made compliant, and the Open Source tools that can aid in the journey of compliance. Although many books and reference material have been authored on the financial and business side of Sox compliance, very little material is available that directly address the information technology considerations, even less so on how Open Source fits into that discussion. The format of the book will begin each chapter with the IT business and executive considerations of Open Source and SOX compliance. The remaining chapter verbiage will include specific examinations of Open Source applications and tools which relate to the given subject matter. * Only book that shows companies how to use Open Source tools to achieve SOX compliance, which dramatically lowers the cost of using proprietary, commercial applications. * Only SOX compliance book specifically detailing steps to achieve SOX compliance for IT Professionals.
"Free/Open Source Software Development" uses a multitude of research approaches to explore free and open source software development processes, attributes of their products, and the workings within the development communities.
Digital Forensics with Open Source Tools is the definitive book on investigating and analyzing computer systems and media using open source tools. The book is a technical procedural guide, and explains the use of open source tools on Mac, Linux and Windows systems as a platform for performing computer forensics. Both well-known and novel forensic methods are demonstrated using command-line and graphical open source computer forensic tools for examining a wide range of target systems and artifacts. Written by world-renowned forensic practitioners, this book uses the most current examination and analysis techniques in the field. It consists of 9 chapters that cover a range of topics such as the open source examination platform; disk and file system analysis; Windows systems and artifacts; Linux systems and artifacts; Mac OS X systems and artifacts; Internet artifacts; and automating analysis and extending capabilities. The book lends itself to use by students and those entering the field who do not have means to purchase new tools for different investigations. This book will appeal to forensic practitioners from areas including incident response teams and computer forensic investigators; forensic technicians from legal, audit, and consulting firms; and law enforcement agencies. - Written by world-renowned forensic practitioners - Details core concepts and techniques of forensic file system analysis - Covers analysis of artifacts from the Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems
