Nextcloud's new release is so big it gets a rebrand, why Mozilla had a round of lay-offs, and the real possibility of Steam coming to Chrome OS.

Plus, the sad loss of a community member, and more.

Links:

• Peppermint project lead Mark Greaves has passed away. — His contributions to both Peppermint and to the desktop Linux world as a whole are incalculable and he will be sorely missed.
• Mozilla lays off 70 as it waits for new products to generate revenue — Mozilla has a strong line of sight to future revenue generation, but we are taking a more conservative approach to our finances.
• Readying for the Future at Mozilla
• DigitalOcean is laying off staff, sources say 30-50 affected
• Nextcloud Hub Announced — New generation of leading content collaboration platform integrates office document editing and collaboration apps, introduces workflows, rich work spaces, file locking and more
• Nextcloud 18 Changelog
• Huawei pitches its alternative to Google Play Store — Huawei Mobile Services wants to make a big splash in Europe, with thousands of apps already signed up
• Huawei Quick Apps is Huawei's alternative to Google Instant Apps
• Exclusive: Google is working to bring official Steam support to Chrome OS — The Chrome team is working—very possibly in cooperation with Valve—to bring Steam to Chromebooks.

Are we overloaded with open source licenses? We consider a simpler future. Results from the Debian init vote are in, and why Amazon's new open source project might be worth checking out.

Plus, our reaction to Google's search ballot scheme launch.

Links:

• Bruce Perens quits Open Source Initiative amid row over new data-sharing crypto license — Distributed app platform's proposed agreement 'isn't freedom respecting,' he says
• Debian Developers Decide On Init System Diversity: "Proposal B" Wins — In recent months there has been lots of differing views over how much Debian should care about systemd alternatives some five years after they decided to move to systemd in the first place.
• Bing loses out to DuckDuckGo in Google’s new Android search engine ballot — Google will start offering EU users a choice for their default search engine
• US Government-funded Android phones come preinstalled with unremovable malware — Phones were sold to low-income people under the FCC's Lifeline Assistance program.
• Google scolded for depriving the poor of privacy as Chinese malware bundled on phones for hard-up Americans
• Amazon’s AutoGluon helps developers deploy deep learning models with just a few lines of code — AutoGluon democratizes machine learning, and makes the power of deep learning available to all developers.
• AutoGluon: Deep Learning AutoML
• AutoGluon Documentation 0.0.1 documentation — Only Linux installation is supported for now (Mac OSX and Windows versions will be available soon). AutoGluon requires Python version 3.6 or 3.7.

It's our annual predictions episode. We review how we did in 2019, and then set out to predict what we think will happen in 2020.

We review the major moments of the year's news, and discuss how they impacted our world.

Links:

• Amazon takes aim at MongoDB with launch of Mongo-compatible DocumentDB
• MongoDB "open-source" Server Side Public License rejected
• Redis Labs raises $60 million for its NoSQL database
• Redis Labs changes its open-source license — again
• Keeping Open Source Open – Open Distro for Elasticsearch
• Chef goes 100% open source
• Google jumps into gaming with Google Stadia streaming service
• Google Stadia will be missing many features for Monday’s launch
• Supporting choice and competition in Europe
• Presenting search app and browser options to Android users in Europe
• Android Developers Blog: Welcoming Android 10!
• Project Mainline is Google’s new way to speed up security updates in Android Q
• Adiantum: encryption for the low end
• All Chromebooks will also be Linux laptops going forward
• Google gives most Chromebooks an extra year of software support
• Google and fwupd sitting in a tree
• Phoenix joins the LVFS
• Please welcome HP to the LVFS
• LVFS Project Announcement
• Announcing the Open Sourcing of Windows Calculator
• Introducing Windows Terminal
• Microsoft Will Release Their Edge Web Browser For Linux
• Microsoft Teams is now available on Linux
• Announcing WSL 2
• Ubuntu 19.04 'Disco Dingo' Released with New Features
• Intel 32bit packages on Ubuntu from 19.10 onwards
• Statement on 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS
• Enhancing our ZFS support on Ubuntu 19.10
• Ubuntu 19.10 Released
• Will Cooke, the Director of Engineering for the Ubuntu desktop, has left Canonical
• Canonical announces Ubuntu Pro for Amazon Web Services
• Red Hat Opens the Linux Experience to Every Enterprise, Every Cloud and Every Workload with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
• Red Hat crosses US$3b annual revenue for first time
• Announcing the release of Fedora 30
• IBM Closes Landmark Acquisition of Red Hat for $34 Billion; Defines Open, Hybrid Cloud Future
• Introducing Fedora CoreOS
• Presenting CentOS Stream
• Fedora 31 is officially here!

Canonical releases a "mini-cloud" on your workstation, the KDE ecosystem has some big news, and the smart home might have just become more open.

Plus Firefox's new DoH partner, and signs of life from the Atari VCS.

Links:

• Firefox adds 2nd DoH partner — Program Committing to Data Retention and Transparency Requirements that Respect User Privacy
• Apple, Google, and Amazon are teaming up to develop an open-source smart home standard
• Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard
• Ikea previews its improved 2020 smart home experience
• Z-Wave is making a huge change so it doesn’t get left behind in the smart home wars - The Verge — It’s turning into a fully open standard, according to Silicon Labs.
• Canonical Releases Multipass 1.0 As "A Mini-Cloud On Your Workstation" — "a mini-cloud on your workstation using native hypervisors of all the supported plaforms (Windows, macOS and Linux), it will give you an Ubuntu command line in just a click ("Open shell") or a simple multipass shell command, or even a keyboard shortcut."
• Krita Receives Epic MegaGrant — Epic, the makers of the Unreal game engine, have supported Krita with a $25,000 MegaGrant
• A Kubuntu-Powered Laptop Is Launching In 2020 For High-End KDE Computing — A Kubuntu laptop is launching soon that is aiming for a high-end Linux laptop experience atop the KDE flavor of Ubuntu.
• KDE Launch Video & Wallpaper Competitions with Linux PCs as Prizes
• Guidance for Atari VCS Content Developers — Initial procedures announced for more independent game and app developers to start creating and planning now for earning a place in the Atari VCS storefront.

The first desktop Office 365 app arrives, Ubuntu commits to current and future Raspberry Pi boards, and why the near-term future of Linux gaming looks a bit rocky.

Plus, our concerns with Google's clever long-term Fuchsia strategy.

Links:

• Microsoft Teams is now available on Linux — Starting today, Microsoft Teams is available for Linux users in public preview, enabling high quality collaboration experiences for the open source community at work and in educational institutions. Users can download the native Linux packages in .deb and .rpm formats.
• Zulip 2.1: Open source team chat — Zulip is the world’s most productive team chat software, used by thousands of teams as an alternative to Slack, HipChat, Mattermost and IRC. Zulip's unique topic-based threading combines the immediacy of chat with the asynchronous efficiency of email-style threading, and is 100% free and open source software.
• Why Zulip - The best group chat
• Updated images of Ubuntu for the Raspberry Pi 2, 3 and 4 — With the new images, USB ports are now fully functional out of the box on the 4GB RAM version of the Raspberry Pi 4.
• Eben Upton on Twitter — Raspberry Pi numbers get stale fast. We sold our thirty-millionth unit some time last week (we think Tuesday).
• Eben Upton on Twitter — The average is much closer to $35. I believe we're at pretty much exactly one billion dollars.
• Google's Fuchsia to support Chrome OS tablet 'Flapjack' — Chrome OS won’t be the only operating system this device supports, as Google’s Fuchsia OS team is also looking to support the “Flapjack” tablet.
• Flutter gathers pace
• Twitter wants to decentralize, but decentralized social network creators don’t trust it — Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made a theoretically huge announcement: he wanted Twitter to stop being a self-contained platform and start delivering content from a decentralized system
• A decentralized Twitter would bring the company back to its past
• Twitter Makes A Bet On Protocols Over Platforms
• DXVK To Enter Maintenance Mode — Not because it's considered feature complete and bug-free, but because the main developer considers that DXVK has become a "fragile, unreliable and frustrating maintenance nightmare".
• Feral's Lead Vulkan Developer Leaves The Company For Sony
• NVIDIA Looks To Have Some Sort Of Open-Source Driver Announcement For 2020 — Start looking forward to March when NVIDIA looks to have some sort of open-source driver initiative to announce -- likely contributing more to Nouveau

Ubuntu Pro is a click away, and their kernel goes rolling on AWS. We process the range of announcements, while Mozilla cranks up the security and impresses us with DeepSpeech.

Plus why Ubuntu is taking the Windows Subsystem for Linux so seriously.

Sponsored By:

• Linux Academy: Give yourself a year of opportunity and save $150. Get a full year of Hands-On Cloud Training. Limited time Black Friday Offer.

Links:

• Linux Academy Black Friday Sale — Give yourself a year of opportunity and save $150. Get a full year of Hands-On Cloud Training. Limited time Black Friday Offer.
• Canonical announces Ubuntu Pro for Amazon Web Services — New premium Ubuntu images with extended security, kernel live patching and more
• Introducing the Ubuntu AWS Rolling Kernel
• Canonical Announces "Ubuntu Pro" For AWS
• Canonical makes Ubuntu for Windows SubSystem for Linux a priority
• Amazon Announces Graviton2 SoC Along With New 64-Core Arm Instances — The new Graviton2 SoC is a custom design by Amazon’s own in-house silicon design teams and is a successor to the first-generation Graviton chip. The new chip quadruples the core count from 16 cores to 64.
• Graviton pulse - Memory Alpha
• AWS Goes All In On Arm-Based Graviton2 Processors
• Firefox 71 Released — Native MP3 decoding on Windows, Linux, and macOS
• Firefox 71 Linux Performance Isn't Looking All That Great
• Firefox Private Network Beta
• Firefox VPN Sign Up
• Mozilla launches the next phase of its Firefox Private Network VPN beta
• Avast Online Security and Avast Secure Browser are spying on you
• Mozilla updates DeepSpeech with an English language model that runs 'faster than real time'

We share Mozilla's concerns over Contract for the Web, and try out Kali Linux's new tricks.

Also, our thoughts on the new Alexa Voice service coming to low-end IoT devices, and much more.

Sponsored By:

• Linux Academy: Give yourself a year of opportunity and save $150. Get a full year of Hands-On Cloud Training. Limited time Black Friday Offer.

Links:

• Linux Academy Black Friday Sale — Give yourself a year of opportunity and save $150. Get a full year of Hands-On Cloud Training. Limited time Black Friday Offer.
• Contract for the Web officially launched — Inventor of web calls on governments and firms to safeguard it from abuse and ensure it benefits humanity
• Tim Berners-Lee launches Google and Facebook-backed plan to fix the web
• Mozilla and the Contract for the Web
• State of Mozilla 2018: Annual Report — This report details how Mozilla operates and includes details from our financial reports for 2018.
• Mozilla: Be Smart. Shop Safe. — How creepy is that smart speaker, that fitness tracker, those wireless headphones? We created this guide to help you shop for safe, secure connected products.
• Minimum Security Guidelines Explained — These three organizations proposed five minimum guidelines that companies making connected devices should reasonably be expected to satisfy.
• Introducing Alexa Voice Service Integration for AWS IoT Core, a cost-effective Alexa Voice on any type of connected device — VS for AWS IoT enables Alexa Built-in functionality on MCUs like ARM Cortex ‘M’ class with <1MB embedded RAM by offloading memory and compute tasks to a virtual Alexa Built-in device in the cloud
• Kali Linux 2019.4 released with Xfce by default — We are incredibly excited to announce our fourth and final release of 2019, Kali Linux 2019.4, which is available immediately for download.

Google, Mozilla, and GitLab make serious upgrades to their bug bounty programs, insights into Debian's renewed systemd debate, and how Microsoft and IBM are working together to fight patent trolls.

Plus our thoughts on LVFS for Chromebooks, and the recent Monero hack.

Sponsored By:

• Linux Academy: Give yourself a year of opportunity and save $150. Get a full year of Hands-On Cloud Training. Limited time Black Friday Offer.

Links:

• Linux Academy Black Friday Sale — Give yourself a year of opportunity and save $150. Get a full year of Hands-On Cloud Training. Limited time Black Friday Offer.
• Updates to the Mozilla Web Security Bounty Program — To celebrate the 15 years of the 1.0 release of Firefox, we are making significant enhancements to the web bug bounty program.
• GitLab: We are increasing bounties in our bug bounty program — Since we opened our bug bounty program to the public in December 2018, our community of external security researchers submitted 1,282 reports and we paid out $515,899 in bounties.
• Expanding the Android Security Rewards Program
• Google will pay $1.5 million for the most severe Android exploits
• Google and fwupd sitting in a tree
• Google To Require "Designed For Chromebook" Devices Support Fwupd Firmware Updates
• Debian init systems - what, another GR ? — Sam Hartman, the Debian Project Leader, has proposed a General Resolution (a plebiscite of the whole project) about init systems. In this posting I am going to try to summarise the situation. This will necessarily be a personal view but I will try to be fair. Also, sorry that it's so long but there is a lot of ground to cover.
• General Resolution: Init systems and systemd
• Open Invention Network Teams with IBM, Linux Foundation and Microsoft to Further Protect Open Source from Patent Trolls — Open Invention Network announced today it is partnering with IBM, the Linux Foundation and Microsoft to further protect open source software (OSS) from Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) leveraging low quality patents, also called patent trolls.
• IBM, Microsoft and Linux Foundation link arms to fight patent trolls with 'multimillion' scheme
• Official Monero website is hacked to deliver currency-stealing malware — GetMonero.org delivers Linux and Windows binaries that steal users' funds.

Docker's surprising news, new nasty Intel vulnerabilities, and why Brave 1.0 changes the game.

Plus, our thoughts on the PinePhone BraveHeart limited edition, and Stadia's potentially rocky launch.

Links:

• Mirantis acquires Docker Enterprise — Mirantis, a prominent OpenStack and Kubernetes cloud company, has acquired Docker Enterprise product line, developers, and business. 
• What We Announced Today and Why it Matters
• Docker’s Next Chapter: Advancing Developer Workflows for Modern Apps
• Docker Restructures and Secures $35 Million
• Container upstart's enterprise wing sold to Mirantis, CEO out, Swarm support faces ax
• IPAS: NOVEMBER 2019 INTEL PLATFORM UPDATE (IPU) — “67 of the 77 vulnerabilities we are addressing were internally found by Intel”
• MDS Attacks: Microarchitectural Data Sampling
• Intel Fixes a Security Flaw It Said Was Repaired 6 Months Ago
• Intel Failed to Fix a Hackable Chip Flaw Despite a Year of Warnings
• PINEPHONE – “BraveHeart” Limited Edition Linux SmartPhone For Early Adaptor — The “BraveHeart” Limited Edition PinePhones are aimed solely for developer and early adopter. More specifically, only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of users with extensive Linux experience and an interest in Linux-on-phone.
• Brave browser comes out of beta — The Brave open source browser fundamentally shifts how users, publishers, and advertisers interact online by giving users a private, safer, and 3-6x faster browsing experience, while funding the Web through a new attention-based platform of privacy-preserving advertisements and rewards.
• Installing Brave on Linux
• Google Stadia will be missing many features for Monday’s launch — Among the missing: 4K on PC, Achievement UI, Google Assistant, Family Sharing
• The world is waiting for Google Stadia to flop
• Microsoft’s xCloud preview now has 50 new games
• Choose Linux 22: Finding Your Community — We talk about the best ways to get involved in open source communities, finding like-minded people, conference strategies, community hubs, and what happened to all the LUGs.