open source

Open source projects draw equity-free funding from corporates, startups, and even VCs

Fundraising /

A dearth of funding for vital open source technologies is leading to a swath of support from startups, unicorns, corporations, and even venture capital firms. Last year, Bloomberg launched its FOSS (free and open source software) fund, committing up to $90,000 per year to various projects. And in October, Indian financial services company Zerodha launched […]

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Chinese military researchers reportedly used Meta AI to develop defense chatbot

AI /

Chinese research scientists linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the military wing of China’s ruling party, reportedly used “open” AI from Meta to develop a tool for defense applications. According to Reuters, Chinese researchers, including two affiliated with a PLA R&D group, used Meta’s Llama 2 AI model to create a military-focused chatbot. The

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Stacklok donates its Minder supply chain security project to the OpenSSF

Enterprise /

Stacklok, the open source software supply chain company founded by Kubernetes co-creator Craig McLuckie and Sigstore creator Luke Hinds, is donating Minder, one of its key projects, to the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). Minder helps development teams set up a system of proactive checks and policies to minimize supply chain risks by enforcing best

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We finally have an ‘official’ definition for open source AI

Government & Policy /

There’s finally an “official” definition of open source AI. The Open Source Initiative (OSI), a long-running institution aiming to define and “steward” all things open source, today released version 1.0 of its Open Source AI Definition (OSAID). The product of several years of collaboration with academia and industry, the OSAID is intended to offer a

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Filigran secures $35M for its cybersecurity threat management suite

Startups /

Paris-based startup Filigran is fast becoming the next cybersecurity rocketship to track: The company just raised a $35 million Series B round, only a few months after it raised $16 million in a Series A round. Filigran’s main product is OpenCTI, an open-source threat intelligence platform that lets companies or public sector organizations import threat

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Meta releases an ‘open’ version of Google’s podcast generator

Apps /

Meta has released an “open” implementation of the viral generate-a-podcast feature in Google’s NotebookLM. Called NotebookLlama, the project uses Meta’s own Llama models for much of the processing, unsurprisingly. Like NotebookLM, it can generate back-and-forth, podcast-style digests of text files uploaded to it. NotebookLlama first creates a transcript from a file — e.g. a PDF

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Google releases tech to watermark AI-generated text

AI /

Google is making SynthID Text, its technology that lets developers watermark and detect text written by generative AI models, generally available. SynthID Text can be downloaded from the AI platform Hugging Face and Google’s updated Responsible GenAI Toolkit. “We’re open-sourcing our SynthID Text watermarking tool,” the company wrote in a post on X. “Available freely to developers

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Socket lands a fresh $40M to scan software for security flaws

Enterprise /

The software supply chain, which comprises the components and processes used to develop software, has become precarious. According to one recent survey, 88% of companies believe poor software supply chain security presents an “enterprise-wide risk” to their organizations. Open source supply chain components are especially fraught, thanks to the logistical hurdles in keeping each component well-maintained.

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Joseph Jacks bets on open source startups, a ‘paradox of philanthropy and capitalism’

Venture /

Open source might be many things, but one thing it’s not is a business model — by most estimations, at least. However, that hasn’t stopped Joseph Jacks and OSS Capital from seeking some of the earliest-stage, open source startups and funding them through their formative years. These include the likes of open source Qualtrics-alternative Formbricks,

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