Open source leader in White House, Mapbox gets open source alternative, and more

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In this edition of our open source news roundup, an open source leader heads to the White House, MapLibre launches an open source alternative, and more.

Open source leader David Recordon named White House Technology Director

When President Joe Biden announced appointments to his administration, open source enthusiasts saw a familiar name. David Recordon, who has worked in open source as a developer and manager for nearly 20 years, joins the administration as the White House Director of Technology.

Recordon is a familiar face in the White House: He previously served as the first Director of White House IT in the Obama administration. His agenda under Biden is expected to prioritize next-gen technologies like facial recognition and predictive analytics.

Recordon most recently worked for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as VP of Infrastructure and Security. He previously worked as an engineering director at Facebook, focusing on open standards.

MapLibre launches as open source Mapbox GL JS successor

Mapbox users got a shock in December when they learned Mapbox GL JS 2.0 was being released under a proprietary license. Older versions of the JavaScript library will stay open source, but Mapbox will build features solely for the proprietary version from now on.

In response, the Mapbox community launched MapLibre GL as the open source successor to Mapbox GL JS. MapTiler Founder and CEO Petr Pridal said that MapLibre's founders agreed it should be provider-independent. This will let developers load maps from their preferred providers or self-hosted maps.

If you've integrated Mapbox GL JS Version 1.13 or older, the MapLibre project is a strong open source alternative to the latest proprietary Mapbox 2.0 update. Mapbox is a popular library among WordPress users, especially in WordPress.org plugins.

Lacking 3D acceleration, Nouveau driver gets NVIDIA Ampere support

As of January 14, patches exist that give the open source Linux kernel Nouveau driver support for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series Ampere graphics cards.

Red Hat's Ben Skeggs sent a pull request on January 14 that provides kernel mode-setting support for the RTX 30 Ampere graphics cards with NVIDIA's open source Nouveau driver.

But developers looking for 3D acceleration are out of luck: There's still no 3D acceleration, and signed firmware requirements are blocked. Nouveau developers are still waiting on redistributable signed firmware image binaries, which means there's no hardware acceleration support yet.

Linux Foundation offers open source management classes

The Linux Foundation kicked off 2021 with a new course to help open source leaders boost their management skills. The seven-module Open source management and strategy series teaches best practices to executives, managers, and software developers.

The foundation is especially keen to attract leaders who want to establish the first open source projects at their organizations. Course content ranges from basic open source standards to the legal, business, and development requirements needed to launch new projects.

The course should prepare graduates to build new processes for creating open source projects from scratch or open sourcing proprietary projects. It's self-paced, online, and offers 12 months of access to the content.

In other news:

Thanks, as always, to Opensource.com staff members and Correspondents for their help rounding up these stories.

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Lauren Maffeo has reported on and worked within the global technology sector. She started her career as a freelance journalist covering tech trends for The Guardian and The Next Web from London. Today, she works as a service designer for Steampunk, a human-centered design firm building civic tech solutions for government agencies.

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