Heuristic-based Approach for Dynamic Consolidation of Software Licenses in Cloud Data Centers

Since its emergence, cloud computing has continued to evolve thanks to its ability to present computing as consumable services paid by use, and the possibilities of resource scaling that it offers according to client’s needs. Models and appropriate schemes for resource scaling through consolidation service have been considerably investigated,mainly, at the infrastructure level to optimize costs and energy consumption. Consolidation efforts at the SaaS level remain very restrained mostly when proprietary software are in hand. In order to fill this gap and provide software licenses elastically regarding the economic and energy-aware considerations in the context of distributed cloud computing systems, this work deals with dynamic software consolidation in commercial cloud data centers 𝑫𝑺𝟑𝑪. Our solution is based on heuristic algorithms and allows reallocating software licenses at runtime by determining the optimal amount of resources required for their execution and freed unused machines. Simulation results showed the efficiency of our solution in terms of energy by 68.85% savings and costs by 80.01% savings. It allowed to free up to 75% physical machines and 76.5% virtual machines and proved its scalability in terms of average execution time while varying the number of software and the number of licenses alternately.

Vcflib and tools for processing the VCF variant call format

Since its introduction in 2011 the variant call format (VCF) has been widely adopted for processing DNA and RNA variants in practically all population studies --- as well as in somatic and germline mutation studies. VCF can present single nucleotide variants, multi-nucleotide variants, insertions and deletions, and simple structural variants called against a reference genome. Here we present over 125 useful and much used free and open source software tools and libraries, part of vcflib tools and bio-vcf. We also highlight cyvcf2, hts-nim and slivar tools. Application is typically in the comparison, filtering, normalisation, smoothing, annotation, statistics, visualisation and exporting of variants. Our tools run daily and invisibly in pipelines and countless shell scripts. Our tools are part of a wider bioinformatics ecosystem and we consider it very important to make these tools available as free and open source software to all bioinformaticians so they can be deployed through software distributions, such as Debian, GNU Guix and Bioconda. vcflib, for example, was installed over 40,000 times and bio-vcf was installed over 15,000 times through Bioconda by December 2020. We shortly discuss the design of VCF, lessons learnt, and how we can address more complex variation that can not easily be represented by the VCF format. All source code is published under free and open source software licenses and can be downloaded and installed from https://github.com/vcflib.

Open Source Interpretation

This Article offers an alternative to the standard assumptions concerning the interpretation of Free and Open Source Software licenses – that such licenses should be interpreted as boilerplate agreements applied by the licensing parties without having negotiation regarding the language of the license. The Article considers some of the consequences of this approach to license interpretation.

Optimization Study of Blade Profiles of a Low-Pressure Compressor

This article discusses the optimization of blade profiles of a low-pressure compressor. The main research method was the combined use of fluid dynamics software (Ansys CFX) and parallel multiobjective optimization software (IOSO PM). To optimize the geometry of a low-pressure compressor, parametric models of the blades were developed that control the curvature of the centerline, which provided a favorable shape of the profiles for supersonic flow regimes. Based on the conditions of limited resources for computing power and software licenses, an original way of decomposition of the optimization problem is proposed. Improved blade profiles have significantly reduced kinetic energy losses. Optimization of the blades made it possible to increase efficiency while maintaining the performance parameters and dimensions of a low-pressure compressor, which is demonstrated in the comparative characteristic.

From FAIR research data toward FAIR and open research software

The Open Science agenda holds that science advances faster when we can build on existing results. Therefore, research data must be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) in order to advance the findability, reproducibility and reuse of research results. Besides the research data, all the processing steps on these data – as basis of scientific publications – have to be available, too.For good scientific practice, the resulting research software should be both open and adhere to the FAIR principles to allow full repeatability, reproducibility, and reuse. As compared to research data, research software should be both archived for reproducibility and actively maintained for reusability.The FAIR data principles do not require openness, but research software should be open source software. Established open source software licenses provide sufficient licensing options, such that it should be the rare exception to keep research software closed.We review and analyze the current state in this area in order to give recommendations for making research software FAIR and open.

Open-Source Trading Zones and Boundary Objects: Examining GitHub as a Space for Collaborating on “News”

New actors, actants, and activities have entered journalism’s spaces in recent years. While this has raised the potential for the disruption of existing social orders, such heterogeneous assemblages also provide fruitful grounds for substantive innovation within “trading zones.” This article explores one such potential zone, the code-sharing platform GitHub, delineating the primary actors oriented around the boundary object of “news,” the objectives of their projects, the nature of their collaborations, and their use of software licenses. The analysis examines attributes of 88,776 news-oriented project repositories, with a smaller subsample subjected to a manual content analysis. Findings show that this trading zone consisted primarily of journalistic outsiders; repositories focused on technological solutions to distributional challenges and efforts that made journalism more transparent; that there was limited direct trade via the use of collaborative affordances on the platform; and that only a minority of repositories employed a permissive license favored by open-source advocates. This leads to a broader conclusion that while GitHub may be discursively important within journalism and certainly provides an avenue for actors to enter journalism’s periphery, it offers a limited pathway for those peripheral actors to move closer to the center of journalism. That, in turn, impacts the platform’s—and its users’—ability to reconfigure if not spur a reimagining of journalism’s meanings, conventions, and allocations of different forms of capital.

Auditing Deployed Software Licenses on Cloud using a Secure Loopback Protocol

The rapidly growing cloud-centric focuses among organizations and enterprises have thrown into sharp relief the pressing need to progressively upgrade security within a cloud infrastructure. While a significant portion of threat perception emanates from malicious software that can infiltrate a cloud computing infrastructure, the risk of unlicensed software deployments in infrastructure-as-a-service model can expose an affected cloud service provider to a host of legal and statutory issues. The task of managing software licenses and conducting license validation checks can be an intense activity. The onus of tracking and managing licenses of software that have been deployed on an infrastructure-as-a-service cloud model is on both cloud service provider as well as its customers. However, the business of effectively managing software licenses is contingent upon the ease and use of an effective license auditing management tool to which auditors can connect through a secure conduit. In this paper, we propose a model that would allow cloud service providers to securely track software deployments and tally corresponding usage of appropriate licenses within an infrastructure-as-a-service model. Using the proposed model a cloud service provider can match all software licenses that have been deployed by a customer within the IaaS cloud space allotted. Further, a license auditor can securely connect to cloud service provider’s console and generate reports on license usage and software deployments from any modern browser. At the core of our model, lies a secure loopback connection framework that prevents access to any other web site once a secure connection to the primary console for monitoring and tracking software deployments has been established.

Prospects and limits of shared economics principles application at steel industry plants in the context of digitalization

Digitalization of production and economic activity stimulates arising of new organization and economic mechanisms of cooperation interaction of the economy subjects. The plants of steel industry are also involved in the process. In particular, the steel corporations realize projects to implement digital mechanisms of material flows control, creation of production aggregates and processes digital doubles, integration of finance and economic activity control processes. The changes at the goods markets are expressed in the increase of competitive pressure on the goods producers, rationalization the production and economic activity, decreasing material and energy costs, as well as development new forms of cooperation interaction, in particular, economics of shared consumption, which means a collective utilization of various assets. The concept of economics of shared consumption based on application specialized digital platforms. It was successfully proved at the subjects’ interaction (at the level of physical entities) and at present is widely utilized by industrial consumers. The rationalization of consumption, diversification of supply channels, increase of existing assets returns, decrease of things in handling are the positive effects, which can make additional input into financial and economic result of production companies. An adaptation of existing models of shared economics is necessary, which are stipulated by specific goods-exchanging processes in the industry, as well as by peculiarities of consumer behavior of industrial purchasers, including those in the steel industry. For example, application of the shared economics paradigm and correspondent digital infrastructure is not recommended at the raw materials and main technological equipment supply, selling of finished products of steel industry plants, since traditional forms of long-time inter-companies coordination are more acceptable variants, as well as integration and union. At the same time outsourcing of auxiliary processes, horizontal cooperation within the frame of production clusters, as well as collective utilization nonmaterial resources in remote regime, such as joint accumulation and utilization of “big data”, production simulation at “digital plants”, purchase of software licenses, development of virtual prototypes for 3D-printing.