Linux Foundation Research Articles

Straightforward Stereoscopic Techniques for Archaeometric Interpretation of Archeological Artifacts

Stereoscopic visualization plays a significant role in the detailed and accurate interpretation of various geometric features on the surface of archaeological artifacts, which can be challenging to perceive using conventional two-dimensional visualizations. Moreover, virtual 3D models can be shared with other archaeologists for interpretation and the exchange of opinions. The hardware requirements for rendering stereoscopic 3D models are often readily available on desktop computers, or require only a minimal investment for implementation. This article focuses on creating stereoscopic visualizations of a stylized dove-shaped cult vessel for a virtual museum project. The term “visualization” is defined, emphasizing its significance and everyday applications. The camerawork techniques and processes involved in stereoscopic image production, including anaglyph imaging and polarization, are described. Blender (community-driven project under the GNU General Public License (GPL), Blender Foundation is a member of Open Invention Network, Khronos, Linux Foundation and the Academy Software Foundation) and StereoPhoto Maker (Muttyan, Japan) are reviewed as they relate to the production process of stereoscopic visualizations using open-source software. A series of static stereoscopic visualizations, along with two dynamic stereoscopic examples, are created, one using the anaglyph process, and the other using polarization. Lastly, the article discusses the contribution of stereoscopic visualizations to the interpretation of archaeological artifacts and suggests the optimal parameters for creating stereoscopic visualizations.

Presto: A Decade of SQL Analytics at Meta

Presto is an open-source distributed SQL query engine that supports analytics workloads involving multiple exabyte-scale data sources. Presto is used for low-latency interactive use cases as well as long-running ETL jobs at Meta. It was originally launched at Meta in 2013 and donated to the Linux Foundation in 2019. Over the last ten years, upholding query latency and scalability with the hyper growth of data volume at Meta as well as new SQL analytics requirements have raised impressive challenges for Presto. A top priority has been ensuring query reliability does not regress with the shift towards smaller, more elastic container allocation, which requires queries to run with substantially smaller memory headroom and can be preempted at any time. Additionally, new demands from machine learning, privacy, and graph analytics have driven Presto maintainers to think beyond traditional data analytics. In this paper, we discuss several successful evolutions in recent years that have improved Presto latency as well as scalability by several orders of magnitude in production at Meta. Some of the notable ones are hierarchical caching, native vectorized execution engines, materialized views, and Presto on Spark. With these new capabilities, we have deprecated or are in the process of deprecating various legacy query engines so that Presto becomes the single piece to serve interactive, ad-hoc, ETL, and graph processing workloads for the entire data warehouse.

Adding Semantics to Measurements

The design and operation of modern software systems exhibit a shift towards virtualization, containerization and service-based orchestration. Performance capacity engineering and resource utilization tuning become priority requirements in such environments.
 Measurement-based performance evaluation is the cornerstone of capacity engineering and designing for performance. Moreover, the increasing complexity of systems necessitates rigorous performance analysis approaches. However, empirical performance analysis lacks sophisticated model-based support similar to the functional design of the system.
 The paper proposes an ontology-based approach for facilitating and guiding the empirical evaluation throughout its various steps. Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), an open-source blockchain platform by the Linux Foundation, is modelled and evaluated as a pilot example of the approach, using the standard TPC-C performance benchmark workload.

Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) Progress Report

The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup> is a nonprofit organization developing media-related specifications to support media distribution in various scenarios, including but not limited to streaming over the internet and realtime communication. The alliance strives to produce royalty-free specifications to nurture the freedom to innovate in the media ecosystem, similar to how innovation was supported in the development of internet technologies. AOMedia is part of the Linux Foundation <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> and its descendant project Joint Development Foundation. <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>

Building Better High School Clubs with Blockchains

School clubs continue to be a popular extracurricular activity, especially in high schools. The number of new clubs and their membership has exploded in recent years. Many students participate in clubs over their four years of high school to explore interests, develop skills, engage with peers, and serve their community. The wide spectrum of member talent in a club, however, presents a challenge for the club leadership. In keeping with their mission statement, club leadership must continually train their teams to drive progress season after season. Leadership must collect, analyze and share vast amounts of member data. In this paper, we will examine a new data-sharing model a school club can use to manage its most important asset, its members. Our inspiration comes from commercial enterprises that deploy blockchain networks to manage assets through their supply chains. We will first explore the importance of member management for a club’s success, before delving into the structure of a blockchain network and how its properties are well-suited for a club’s data management. We will then create our own blockchain network, using open-source software from the Linux Foundation, before finally creating a prototype model that can be used by a school club.

Experimental Performance Analysis of a Scalable Distributed Hyperledger Fabric for a Large-Scale IoT Testbed.

Blockchain technology, with its decentralization characteristics, immutability, and traceability, is well-suited for facilitating secure storage, sharing, and management of data in decentralized Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Despite the increasing development of blockchain platforms, there is still no comprehensive approach for adopting blockchain technology in IoT systems. This is due to the blockchain’s limited capability to process substantial transaction requests from a massive number of IoT devices. Hyperledger Fabric (HLF) is a popular open-source permissioned blockchain platform hosted by the Linux Foundation. This article reports a comprehensive empirical study that measures HLF’s performance and identifies potential performance bottlenecks to better meet the requirements of blockchain-based IoT applications. The study considers the implementation of HLF on distributed large-scale IoT systems. First, a model for monitoring the performance of the HLF platform is presented. It addresses the overhead challenges while delivering more details on system performance and better scalability. Then, the proposed framework is implemented to evaluate the impact of varying network workloads on the performance of the blockchain platform in a large-scale distributed environment. In particular, the performance of the HLF is evaluated in terms of throughput, latency, network size, scalability, and the number of peers serviceable by the platform. The obtained experimental results indicate that the proposed framework can provide detailed real-time performance evaluation of blockchain systems for large-scale IoT applications.

Blockchain in Supermarkets: Mitigating the Problem of Organic Waste Generation

This work presents a proposal for a solution to the specific problem of organic waste generated by supermarkets and understood as t merchandise of organic and perishable composition that could not be marketed during its validity period. The goal of this research is to propose a solution based on Blockchain technology in Chile, which would allow an immutable, decentralized, and validated transaction record to be kept. Such a record would enable supermarkets to trace the life cycle of those products that make up organic and perishable merchandise in a transparent, reliable, and scalable way. To this end, the problem is modeled using the Blockchain Hyperledger Fabric platform (an open-source platform started by the Linux Foundation), which is fed with relevant information and data on the status of a representative set of organic merchandise products. At the same time, a qualitative approach is proposed to gather the opinions of executives and logistics operators through semi-structured interviews, and considering a convenience sample. With a sample of 6 executives, it is understood how the proposal is perceived and its applicability in supermarkets and distributors. The data show that both obtaining information and making decisions about it are achieved in a distributed and collaborative way, allowing for reliable and agile traceability, thereby mitigating the low quality of the information provided by the actors that make up the supply chain. This service is perceived as desirable by both customers and operators. The model enables not only horizontal communications between suppliers, distributors, and consumers, but also vertical ones, and thus, ultimately, makes the company's income statement more efficient.

Model Pengembangan PLUG-IN SLiMS Pada Komunitas SLiMS Kudus

This study aims to determine the role of Kudus SLiMS Community in development of the SLiMS plug-in. Researcher uses open-source development model by Ibrahim Haddad and Brian Warner from The Linux Foundation to help researcher describing SLiMS Plug-ins development in Kudus SLiMS Community. This research uses qualitative research method. Method of data collection is using direct observation, non-structured interviews, and documentation technique. The data analysis method is using Miles and Huberman method. The result of this study is that the role of Kudus SLiMS Community in development of the SLiMS plug-in is as a source of inspiration/idea for developing a plug-in, a place for the member of the Kudus SLiMS Community to share their developed plug-ins. Based on the findings of researcher related to the following study, in the future it is necessary to do further research about the development of the SLiMS plug-ins by other local SLiMS Community as a comparison with the development of the SLiMS plug-in by the Kudus SLiMS Community. The researcher hopes that more and more similar study is carried out so that the SLiMS application developer, local SLiMS Communities, and general public get the comprehensive picture about how SLiMS as one of the open-source based applications is developed.

Companies’ Participation in OSS Development–An Empirical Study of OpenStack

Commercial participation continues to grow in open source software (OSS) projects and novel arrangements appear to emerge in company-dominated projects and ecosystems. What is the nature of these novel arrangements? Does volunteers’ participation remain critical for these ecosystems? Despite extensive research on commercial participation in OSS, the exact nature and extent of company contributions to OSS development, and the impact of this engagement may have on the volunteer community have not been clarified. To bridge the gap, we perform an exploratory study of OpenStack: a large OSS ecosystem with intense commercial participation. We quantify companies’ contributions via the developers that they provide and the commits made by those developers. We find that companies made far more contributions than volunteers and the distribution of the contributions made by different companies is also highly unbalanced. We observe eight unique contribution models based on companies’ commercial objectives and characterize each model according to three dimensions: contribution intensity, extent, and focus. Companies providing full cloud solutions tend to make both intensive (more than other companies) and extensive (involving a wider variety of projects) contributions. Usage-oriented companies make extensive but less intense contributions. Companies driven by particular business needs focus their contributions on the specific projects addressing these needs. Minor contributors include community players (e.g., the Linux Foundation) and research groups. A model relating the number of volunteers to the diversity of contribution shows a strong positive association between them.

The Digital Network of Networks: Regulatory Risk and Policy Challenges of Vaccine Passports

The extensive disruption to and digital transformation of travel administration across borders largely due to COVID-19 mean that digital vaccine passports are being developed to resume international travel and kick-start the global economy. Currently, a wide range of actors are using a variety of different approaches and technologies to develop such a system. This paper considers the techno-ethical issues raised by the digital nature of vaccine passports and the application of leading-edge technologies such as blockchain in developing and deploying them. We briefly analyse four of the most advanced systems – IBM’s Digital Health Passport “Common Pass,” the International Air Transport Association’s Travel Pass, the Linux Foundation Public Health’s COVID-19 Credentials Initiative and the Vaccination Credential Initiative (Microsoft and Oracle) – and then consider the approach being taken for the EU Digital COVID Certificate. Each of these raises a range of issues, particularly relating to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the need for standards and due diligence in the application of innovative technologies (eg blockchain) that will directly challenge policymakers when attempting to regulate within the network of networks.

Designing Architecture Blockchain of Hyperledger Fabric for Purchasing Strategy

Hyperledger Fabric refers to a blockchain technology regulated by the Linux Foundation, which implements a blockchain network, namely the permission blockchain. The network provides a membership service concept, which means that only certain parties can transact and access data. This research will show the blockchain architecture design of the hyperledger fabric, which is designed for the purchasing strategy of recycled waste products. The design will be used to make purchases for managing distributors in buying recycled waste products from waste banks as raw materials to be processed. The traditional purchasing process using the bank as a third party will take longer and will be more expensive. Therefore, this research aims to improve data security and transparency between the authorities and direct the payment process in an instant and dramatically reduce transaction costs. Besides, this design can also be applied to any e-commerce. The method used is blockchain, which focuses on hyperledger fabric design. The position on the hyperledger fabric is only applied to the transaction processing of the hyperledger fabric. This study's results apply a design to a blockchain system using a hyperledger fabric to overcome several technical problems related to blockchains such as throughput, scalability, and interoperability and contribute to purchasing strategies.

Highly Secure Residents Life Event Management System Based on Blockchain by Hyperledger Fabric

This article describes the design and implementation of Residents Life Event Management System (hereinafter called as RLEMS) with high level reliability and security by blockchain technology. The data access environment provided by blockchain is highly secure and trustworthy. In Blockchain system, some data fragments are grouped into one piece called as blocks, and all blocks are connected to create a chain of blocks in database. When blocks are connected, hash value is used to connect blocks properly. Blockchain technology enables highly secure and reliable data management system under relatively poor ICT environment. For example, developing countries such as African countries do not have sufficient ICT environment. Therefore adopting blockchain technology is suitable for such countries. Based on this consideration, we have started to build RLEMS on the blockchain system. In previous work, we used the MultiChain as a blockchain platform. However, as MultiChain platform is mainly for private blockchain system, it is not suitable for government-level data management system. Therefore, we tried to use another blockchain framework. We selected Hyperledger Fabric which was developed by Linux Foundation. It enables to implement all styles of blockchain system. This article describes the design and implementation of RLEMS by using Hyperledger Fabric. Furthermore, to provide the best user experience, we also built the web application interface with Java web application framework named PrimeFace. The implementation of a prototype revealed that the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain technology is more suitable than MultiChain.

Design of Anonymous Endorsers in Hyperledger Fabric with Linkable Threshold Ring Signature

Blockchain technology has gained its attention from its application in bitcoin which circumventedthe problem of double spending that existed in the prior digital currencies, through validation. Particularlypermissioned blockchain framework became popular with organizations forming consortiumthat allowed only authorized entities to participate in the network. Hyperledger Fabric, a popular distributedledger technology hosted by Linux Foundation has remarkable features because of the factthat it is open source. It stands out from other frameworks as it focuses on the privacy-preservingrequirements of the enterprises. Apart from only allowing authenticated organizations to participatein the network it implements channels that allows a subset of organizations to communicate concealingthe existence of such a channel to other members. Optionally fabric also provides anonymity andunlinkability of the participating clients through a cryptographic protocol suite called Idemix thatoperates based on zero-knowledge proofs. Fabric follows the execute-order-validate transaction flowas opposed to order-execute flow that had certain limitations in other platforms. For executing thetransactions submitted by the clients, fabric has designated endorsing peers which holds the smartcontract - programmable business logic. Endorsing peers or endorsers execute the transactions andattach their signatures to the results for validation purpose. But revealing the endorser identities maybe a problem when there is conflict of interest among the enterprises. Hence to have an unbiased flowof work it is important to conceal the endorser identity. According to [1] anonymization of endorsingpeers is still a open problem in fabric community. We propose a solution to this problem which useslinkable threshold ring signatures that conceals the identity of endorsers. Ring signatures are knownfor preserving the privacy of the signer in a group. Threshold ring signature allows t-out-of-n signersto collaborate on the signing procedure. Employing threshold ring signature implicitly addressesone more problem stated in [10] where the verifiers need to manually count the valid ring signaturethat increases the verification time. This process of separately verifying each of the signatures andchecking if the number of signatures is more than the threshold value is replaced by having just onethreshold signature collaboratively signed by the required endorsers.

Blockchain based Service: A Case Study on IBM Blockchain Services &amp; Hyperledger Fabric

IBM is one of the world’s leading American multinational technology company, alwaysinnovative and experimenting for new things with constant new trials and hands on differenttechnologies. The company is recently focused its research and innovation on one of ICCTunderlying technology applications called Hyperledger fabric and blockchain. A businessblockchain presented by Linux foundation is hyper ledger fabric becoming the de factostandard for enterprise it provides blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) and lets the usage ofblockchain components any possible business environment with ease. Blockchain has severaledges, together with decentralization, durability, transparency, and audit ability. The IBM goalis to develop company-ready solutions that address existing technology limitations relating toprivacy, confidentiality, audit ability, performance, and measurability. Proven, scalable, andbuilt for running on any cloud Simplifies complexness quickly, unlocks new price, andexpands competitive edges. Hyperledger cloth system for companies might be thought to be apublic platform. Within which all transactions committed are held on in an exceedingblockchain. The chain grows endlessly as new blocks are added. To figure towards a frictionfree network by facilitating easy functionality this article illustrates Blockchain, IBMblockchain, Hyperledger fabric its framework, tools, and blockchain-as-a service. Thesecondary data was obtained from various scholarly journals and websites. We have analysedthe Hyperledger framework, tools and examined their blockchain services to differentindustries using the ABCD analysis framework as a research case study.

Blockchain based Service: A Case Study on IBM Blockchain Services & Hyperledger Fabric

IBM is one of the world’s leading American multinational technology company, always innovative and experimenting for new things with constant new trials and hands on different technologies. The company is recently focused its research and innovation on one of ICCT underlying technology applications called Hyperledger fabric and blockchain. A business blockchain presented by Linux foundation is hyper ledger fabric becoming the de facto standard for enterprise it provides blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) and lets the usage of blockchain components any possible business environment with ease. Blockchain has several edges, together with decentralization, durability, transparency, and audit ability. The IBM goal is to develop company-ready solutions that address existing technology limitations relating to privacy, confidentiality, audit ability, performance, and measurability. Proven, scalable, and built for running on any cloud Simplifies complexness quickly, unlocks new price, and expands competitive edges. Hyperledger cloth system for companies might be thought to be a public platform. Within which all transactions committed are held on in an exceeding blockchain. The chain grows endlessly as new blocks are added. To figure towards a friction-free network by facilitating easy functionality this article illustrates Blockchain, IBM blockchain, Hyperledger fabric its framework, tools, and blockchain-as-a service. The secondary data was obtained from various scholarly journals and websites. We have analysed the Hyperledger framework, tools and examined their blockchain services to different industries using the ABCD analysis framework as a research case study.

Exploring the Playground: Blockchain Prototype Use Cases with Hyperledger Composer

While the accounting profession determines the possible future impacts of Blockchain, universities will need to prepare students for a career using the disruptive technology. This necessitates hands-on training to teach the basics of modeling a Blockchain network. Hyperledger is an open source Blockchain advancement initiative hosted by The Linux Foundation (IBM n.d). Hyperledger Composer is a specific Hyperledger project that provides a framework and necessary tools to facilitate new Blockchain development. This proposal walks students through three use cases with the outcome of 1) familiarizing them with IBM's Hyperledger Composer (a virtual playground in which they can experiment with numerous Blockchains), 2) orienting them to the underlying code that drives Blockchains, and 3) improving their technological agility by directing them to manipulate the code and observe the functional effects.

Exploring the Playground: Blockchain Prototype Use Cases with Hyperledger Composer

ABSTRACT While the accounting profession determines the possible future impacts of blockchain, universities will need to prepare students for a career using the disruptive technology. This necessitates hands-on training to teach the basics of modeling a blockchain network. Hyperledger is an open source blockchain advancement initiative hosted by The Linux Foundation (IBM n.d.). Hyperledger Composer is a specific Hyperledger project that provides a framework and necessary tools to facilitate new blockchain development. This proposal walks students through three use cases with the outcome of (1) familiarizing them with IBM's Hyperledger Composer (a virtual playground in which they can experiment with numerous blockchains), (2) orienting them to the underlying code that drives blockchains, and (3) improving their technological agility by directing them to manipulate the code and observe the functional effects.

Call for Code: Developers tackle natural disasters with software

Natural disasters are increasing as highlighted in many reports including the Borgen Project. In 2018, David Clark Cause as creator and IBM as founding partner, in partnership with the United Nations Human Rights Office, the American Red Cross International Team, and The Linux Foundation, issued a “Call for Code” to developers to create robust projects that prepare communities for natural disasters and help them respond more quickly in their aftermath. This article covers the steps and tools used to engage with developers, the results from the first of five competitions to be run by the Call for Code Global Initiative over five years, and how the winners were selected. Insights from the mobilization of 100,000 developers toward this cause are described, as well as the lessons learned from running large-scale hackathons.

Guest Editorial: From Blockbuster to Blockchain: How to Manage a Not-Quite-Settled Technology Platform

Guest editorial In this era of Netflix and online media that can be accessed anywhere, it is easy to forget that we used to have to work a little harder to get entertained. In the first few years of the new millennium, a typical home movie experience often began with a trip to the local Blockbuster store. There was a bewildering array of plastic movie cases that you had to pick up and investigate before making your final selection. Upon reaching the cashier, the sales associate would retrieve the appropriate disc for your selected movie and put it in the box before sending you on your way. What made this ritual all the more challenging, however, was the fact that there was more than one type of disc format during the period 2006–2008. On one side of the store were the movies available for the HD DVD format, a technology platform led by Toshiba; on the other, movies for Sony’s Blu-ray machines. For the most part, the companies that produced movies had pledged allegiance to one of the formats or the other, but not to both of them. Blockbuster customers during this period were consequently faced with a dilemma. Everyone who had witnessed the drawn-out battle between VHS video tapes and Sony’s Betamax in the previous generation of Blockbuster products suspected that some kind of shakeout in the disc industry would probably happen eventually, and no one wanted to be left holding the bag with a disc player and movie collection tethered to the losing side. Thankfully, however, this problem was solved when Toshiba threw in the towel in 2008, leaving Sony’s platform as the undisputed winner in the movie disc technology war. This episode in the history of the entertainment industry is an important lesson to remember as we think about how to introduce blockchain into the oil and gas industry. Blockchain is essentially “a mathematical structure for storing data in a way that is nearly impossible to fake” (Orcutt, 2018), which makes it a useful way to reliably share all kinds of valuable information (Tapscott and Tapscott, 2016). In the finance sector, blockchain is most famously the technology underlying cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but new applications are being discovered all the time—including in the upstream oil and gas industry. Companies in the oil and gas sector have already made inroads into the blockchain domain by using the technology to improve trading (Braga, 2018), guarantee the authenticity of wellbore rock and fluid samples (Whitfield, 2018), and create a shared consensus about the progress of drilling campaigns (Rassenfoss, 2018). In fact, there is so much buzz and energy in the blockchain area these days that several consortia and research initiatives have popped up to figure out new and inventive ways to deliver value with it, including the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger project (for both of which Intel was a founding member) or the Oil and Gas Blockchain Consortium.

The Trust over IP Stack

This article defines a four-layer architectural stack called the ToIP stack for establishing trust between peers over the Internet and other digital networks. Patterned after the TCP/IP stack that standardized packet exchange and created the Internet, the ToIP stack is a decentralized architecture that encompasses business, legal, and technological requirements. Layer One establishes decentralized trust roots using decentralized identifiers (DIDs), an emerging W3C standard for decentralized PKI. Layer Two is the DIDComm protocol, a transport-independent protocol that uses DIDs to form and communicate over a cryptographically secure connection. Layer Three is a suite of credential exchange protocols based on the W3C Verifiable Credentials standard for cryptographically verifiable digital credentials. Layer Four adds cryptographically verifiable governance frameworks using a metamodel for describing the business, legal, and technical policies under which a peer is operating as an issuer, holder, or verifier of digital credentials. This governance metamodel can be applied at all four Layers of the stack, producing a parallel ToIP Governance Stack that fully integrates the non-technical dimensions of trust establishment. Further work on defining, testing, and integrating the ToIP stack is planned for a new project at the Linux Foundation.