China's open source AI, a GitHub tool for licensing, and more news

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In this edition of our open source news roundup, we take a look China's open source AI technology, GitHub making open source licensing easier, the Eclipse Foundation taking over Java EE, and more.

Open source news roundup for March 3-17, 2018

China open sources AI technology

China wants to be the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. In a big step toward achieving that goal, the Chinese government has made its AI platform open source.

"Open source platforms are needed because AI can play a bigger role in development and make it easier for entrepreneurs to have access to resources," said Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology. The Hindustan Times reports that China plans to "apply the technology to industry, urban planning, agriculture and defense" and to invest $147 billion in AI technology by 2030.

GitHub makes open source licensing easier

Do you find open source licensing to be confusing? You're not alone. GitHub is making choosing the right license easier by open sourcing a tool called Licensed.

GitHub's engineers built licensed to "automate various open source projects licensing processes that GitHub runs." The Licensed application works by "finding, catching and checking license data for dependencies" in your project. This, in turn, decreases the time project members spend looking for licensing information and let's them focus their efforts on the project.

Eclipse Foundation takes over Java EE

It's been less than a year since Oracle decided to pass Java Enterprise Edition (EE for short) to the Eclipse Foundation. The deed has finally been done, and the technology is now in the hands of the Java community.

But you can't call it Java EE anymore. The Eclipse Foundation has been forced to change the name of the technology to Jakarta EE. Why? Oracle "refused to give the trademarked Java name to Eclipse." That's in spite of many influential people in the Java world, including Java's creator James Gosling, asking Oracle to let the Foundation use the name Java EE naming and packaging.

Ghostery goes open source

There are dozens of web browser extensions that claim to help protect your online privacy. Many of the are proprietary, which means you don't know what's really going on behind the curtain. Until recently, the popular Ghostery extension was one of them. Now, Ghostery is open source.

Jeremy Tillman, Ghostery's director of product, said that by going open "it's now possible for interested outsiders to get involved in its development." And, according to CNET, it should "help clear the air lingering around Ghostery because of how its owner until last year, Evidon, did business" (there were allegations that Evidon was selling user data).

In other news

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That idiot Scott Nesbitt ...
I'm a long-time user of free/open source software, and write various things for both fun and profit. I don't take myself all that seriously and I do all of my own stunts.

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