12 ms·

CERN migrates to open-source technologies

498 points by tdhttt 7y ago

newaccoutnas 7y ago
I think this was posted at the time. It's worth saying that CERN have been massive open source users for decades
- pletnes 7y ago
  It’s also worth noting that CERN has been running (not just using!) many open source projects since way back. Geant, madx, root and cling come to mind.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I suspect this is specifically targeting Windows. I think this would be a good idea for anyone really. I don't know whose or which decision brought MS into this mess, but this isn't a sustainable OS for the future. Our company still relies on it, but any new piece of software has to be platform independent. Licensing income probably skyrocketed on MS end, but I don't think they made any friends with W10. Maybe MS is correct that W10 will be the last Windows. But maybe not because of rolling releases. Anyway, good news and the correct strategy in my opinion.
- uoylj 7y ago
  I can't imagine it's for windows -- unless maybe they are referring to the admin staff. Scientific users of CERN run Scientific Linux.
- zucker42 7y ago
  As long as schools use Windows, it won't die.
  - madez 7y ago
    Yes, this is why societies must take care about which hardware and software they use in schools. In Germany, some schools opted for Apple hardware and software, which is equally bad.
    - EForEndeavour 7y ago
      What would be better? How would one measure "betterness" anyway? If it's the probability of having to use classroom computers later in life, your choices are Windows or Apple.
      - madez 7y ago
        Schools are not to teach children to operate specific commercial products. The school teaches the basics so the people are able to continue to learn on their own and judge products and technologies. Schools should teach on one side simple hardware architectures, encoding of data, computer representation of perceivable things, and some programming. On the other side, it should put the digital revolution into a historic context and show the dangers that arise from it and how to act as an individual and as a state in it. This way the children can grow into informed citizens.
        davesmith1983 7y ago
        None of that is restricted because you buy a Mac or a Windows machine. Those things subjects you have mentioned are all ideas that are totally independent to the OS. Why does it matter if they learn them on a Mac or a Windows machine? The OS for the most part these days are irrelevant.
        madez 7y ago
        Because it creates a dependence on the OS they use in school, and a OS is not necessary to teach the things I mentioned. The teaching can be done abstractly on a board and paper, or with interactive games. The practice can be done with microprocessors on educational board with plenty of easily accessible I/O. And when there is a need for an operating system, which I don't see in basic and mid-level teaching in school, schools should use libre software, because it relates to public infrastructure.
  - jakear 7y ago
    Many schools are moving to chrome books. But enterprise is the bigger deal anyways.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > As long as schools use Windows, it won't die. Kind of funny in this context, since the specific impetus here is Microsoft narrowing the applicability of academic licensing.
  - cwyers 7y ago
    Businesses aren't using Windows because schools use it (I think Chromebooks and iPads are more popular among schools now than Windows machines because children can trash a PC easily). They use it because of a long tail of software applications that only run on Windows, they use it because of stuff like Group Policy and Active Directory, they use it because of a lot of things that Linux doesn't do as well.
    - nicoburns 7y ago
      Don't forget MS Office. That's microsoft's real crown jewel, and it only runs on windows, or much more expensive macs.
- dukwon 7y ago
  > I suspect this is specifically targeting Windows. It's not: it's things like Active Directory, Skype4B, Office, Exchange etc. Desktop OS's aren't covered by MAlt.
josephagoss 7y ago
Does this mean that no scientist at CERN can use applications like Mathematica? Or is this just focusing on essential foundation software like operating systems (moving away from Windows)
- lokimedes 7y ago
  While some rely on Mathematica most at Cern uses ROOT for data science. The impact on the science program is more likely to come from ditching Oracle databases and LabView... That said, this is an IT department initiative, users also have access to software from their home institutes.
  - dguest 7y ago
    There's a pretty sharp migration away from ROOT to numpy / pandas these days (at least in the younger generation).
  - deven88 7y ago
    Is there any reliable and good opensource alternative of LabView ?
    - cycomanic 7y ago
      I would argue any dynamic programming language is a good alternative to labview. I'm a proponent on using python for labautomation (we run workshops at some major optics conferences, see http://python4photonics.org http://python4photonics.org for an unfortunately somewhat out of date summary about some of what we do). In my experience labview is a mess, it's only momentum (in particular drivers provided by vendors, but that is changing) that keeps it going. I find labview code developed by amateurs is an unmaintainable mess. Grad students pass along code from on generation to the next without anyone daring to fix some of the glaring bugs. Really use anything but labview, even if it's the buggy matlab instrument toolbox.
      - nikofeyn 7y ago
linker3000 7y ago
Is there a public-facing list of project activities?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Apofis 7y ago
E-mail and ip telephone migration to start... doesn't seem like a big deal but they have been with Microsoft for 20 years.
- lokimedes 7y ago
  When I worked there, they had 10k+ active user accounts and a wealth of systems integrated into Microsoft active directory. The nature of CERN also means that multiple institutes around the world will have to adapt their systems when CERN changes.
lowlevel 7y ago
My gut says this is related to forced updates and unwanted interface changes in current Microsoft products. It's been super annoying where I work, and staff are pretty upset.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  It was because CERN lost their academic discount for MS licensing. https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-mum-cerns-planned-microsoft-alternatives-transition-open-source-software-price-hike/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-mum-cerns-planned-mi...
  - addicted 7y ago
    This should be an HBS use case. In a quest for money they didn't need and likely were not gonna get much of anyways, by removing perks MS currently offered academic institutions, they've risked teh creation of a much greater threat that can undermine their entire business. CERN is an organization which could truly help create a set of alternative tools to MS products. Talk about killing the golden goose.
- cwyers 7y ago
  I mean, they list a pretty compelling reason from their point of view: Microsoft changed their licensing terms from academic to business licenses, which are more expensive. I suspect they will discover over time that the fully loaded costs of switching are higher than the costs of the licenses, unless this is just a way of trying to leverage MS into giving them academic licenses again.
  - perlgeek 7y ago
    > I suspect they will discover over time that the fully loaded costs of switching are higher than the costs of the licenses I suspect the switching costs will be higher in the short term for sure, but this also seems to be a strategic move.
  - nullspace 7y ago
Beltiras 7y ago
I'm waiting for some of these documents being made public. I am working for a government institution that is making much of the same moves. Would be nice to see what an immense IT undertaking like this comes up with.
- Boulth 7y ago
  Are your org's documents public? I'd be excited to read about the practical effects of such deployment (from CERN too).
  - Beltiras 7y ago
    Ours is a more ad-hoc process than that. I work for Statistics Iceland. We are not changing OS or productivity suite (yet at least). Those that want Linux on their laptops get Ubuntu. We deploy Libreoffice alongside Office. Users using other statistical suites are encouraged to use R. On the infrastructure side we are making more use of Samba (one new DC, next up is migrating fileservers from old WServers over to Samba on Linux), just replaced Exchange with Kopano. We are an org of about 120-150 people/workstations.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      How's the LibreOffice / MsOffice compatibility in practice? Was thinking about this yesterday, and was curious how much functional coverage or issues there are with what people actually use it for.
      - Beltiras 7y ago
        We mostly use Office. Out of the ~120 workstations we only have ~10 Linux users. 6 of those are sysadmins/developers. Only 2 statisticians have Linux and they mostly use softwares besides productivity suits. We at least have no complaints yet to speak of. We should do a survey.
      - psalminen 7y ago
        Not the OP, but I tried to do a lot of work in Libreoffice Calc on XLSX files. I had a constant issue of Libreoffice not being able to handle >10000 rows, and actually crashing when trying to do something intense like vlookup.
williamxd3 7y ago
That moment when left-pad creates a black hole on earth
MayeulC 7y ago
Matrix would be a good fit for most research institutions, allowing cooperation trough federation. Heck, even Mastodon could be interesting, and ActivityPub as a transport layer for publications. However, one issue is that small institutions cannot afford to self-host everything, or make the necessary adjustments themselves. I wonder if CERN and other big institutions could perform some heavy lifting (and maybe provide some shared services, hosting servers, etc.) without necessarily centralizing everything like it is done nowadays.
- secfirstmd 7y ago
  I'm a big Matrix fan but am curious about what options they have for integrating and managing it in a typical enterprise environment. For example: -what happens for stuff like user management with Active Directory etc? -what happens for things like FOIA requirements considering it is e2e encrypted?
  - somepig 7y ago
    e2ee can be turned off client side (and is off by default until ux improves), and while I don't think it's possible with the stock home server, it seems entirely possible to patch the home server to reject encrypt requests, and only federate unencrypted rooms for directory service, LDAP and web SSO are both supported
  - roblabla 7y ago
    Matrix doesn't E2E encrypt everything, only certain rooms. It's not currently possible, but I suppose there's no technical roadblock to making a server prevent access to E2E encrypted rooms to meet FOIA requirements. As for user management, synapse has identity servers and password providers to form a complete authentication solution. mxisd[0] is a service that uses both to offer LDAP authentication, although it seems dead with no real replacement. [0] https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxisd https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxisd
    - Arathorn 7y ago
      So Matrix has a bunch of enterprise integration support either in existence or in the making. In terms of audit compliance for E2EE, there are three main options: a) Turn it off (as per the parent post); there isn't a button for this in synapse but would be possible to add, albeit technically an abuse vector given it is effectively a downgrade attack. b) Add an audit user to rooms which need to be 'on the record'. This is our preferred solution, as it makes it crystal clear to users as to which conversations are on the record (and whose record!) and which aren't. One could run such a user via a client like https://github.com/matrix-org/pantalaimon https://github.com/matrix-org/pantalaimon, and have the server autoinvite them into rooms which need to be recorded. c) Add an audit (aka ghost) device to users who need to be 'on the record'. For instance, you could use pantalaimon to log in as a given user and record their messages. The audit device will appear in the E2E devices for the user, and once cross-signing lands, could be signed by the user (or their sysadmin) to be trusted. However, we're not keen on ghost devices in general - we've built all of Matrix's E2EE trust model to protect users against unexpected devices being present in their rooms, so we'd recommend audit users instead. In terms of LDAP integration - there are more and more enterprise integration options appearing; for instance, ma1sd is a maintained fork of mxisd, and we're working on better LDAP bridging for Matrix in general. We want Matrix to work in an enterprise environment, so if people see stuff missing, please yell.
kazinator 7y ago
That's kind of ironic. I was doing paid contract work in 1994 (on Linux!) that involved customizing the open source CERN httpd server (before Apache existed, or loadable modules in a web server).
sytse 7y ago
It is awesome to see how CERN is supporting open source. They have been long time users of our open core GitLab with 12,000 users https://about.gitlab.com/customers/cern/ https://about.gitlab.com/customers/cern/
- jobvandervoort 7y ago
  I visited CERN once in my role at GitLab. The scale of CERN and the level of people there is really impressive. Many teams had implemented very complicated pipelines doing all sorts of things. Including using GitLab to design, validate and eventually produce hardware that was used in ATLAS.
panpanna 7y ago
CERN had a major role in making kicad what it is today. they implemented tons of complex stuff that you normally only find in really expensive CAD tools. Hope they can repeat that with a few more FOSS projects!
- sigstoat 7y ago
  and you can donate to KiCad development via CERN: https://cernandsocietyfoundation.cern/projects/kicad-development https://cernandsocietyfoundation.cern/projects/kicad-develop...
  - turbinerneiter 7y ago
    Aisler.net, a German boardhouse, makes a donation to kicad for every kicad designed pcb you order there and it's my favourite way to pay for open source. They literally get paid the moment value is created from using their software. It's beautiful.
    - lnsru 7y ago
      You aren’t right! Aisler doesn’t donate. The user can choose to donate. From http://www.kicad-pcb.org/about/kicad/ http://www.kicad-pcb.org/about/kicad/ “That is why AISLER allows its users to easily donate to the KiCad project during the ordering process.”
      - turbinerneiter 7y ago
        True. The donation is an item on the bill, they automatically set it and the user can change the amount.
    - panpanna 7y ago
      Aisler is also one of very few (only one?) shops that accepts librecad files.
- xvilka 7y ago
  Would be nice to push up also the other parts of the physical design - LibreCAD[1] and FreeCAD[2], Yosys[3] and Symbiflow[4], Chisel/FIRRTL[5], and many others. [1] https://librecad.org/ https://librecad.org/ [2] https://www.freecadweb.org/ https://www.freecadweb.org/ [3] http://www.clifford.at/yosys/ http://www.clifford.at/yosys/ [4] https://symbiflow.github.io/ https://symbiflow.github.io/ [5] https://chisel.eecs.berkeley.edu/ https://chisel.eecs.berkeley.edu/
Polyisoprene 7y ago
Since people don't read the article: "The Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt) started a year ago to mitigate anticipated software license fee increases. MAlt’s objective is to put us back in control using open software." "A prime example is that CERN has enjoyed special conditions for the use of Microsoft products for the last 20 years, by virtue of its status as an “academic institution”. However, recently, the company has decided to revoke CERN’s academic status, a measure that took effect at the end of the previous contract in March 2019, replaced by a new contract based on user numbers, increasing the license costs by more than a factor of ten. Although CERN has negotiated a ramp-up profile over ten years to give the necessary time to adapt, such costs are not sustainable."
- timbit42 7y ago
  Microsoft operates like drug dealers.
- ethbro 7y ago
  Ouch. Foot meet gun. Nice to see some of the old guard is still alive and well within the Microsoft walls.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Really CERN does not qualify !
    - amerine 7y ago
      Why & how?
      - dukwon 7y ago
        I believe Microsoft's main argument is that CERN doesn't teach or award degrees. Last time this was posted I saw someone say it's also due to them making a little bit of money licensing stuff to industry [1], but universities do the same thing [2] so I don't think that's a strong argument. [1] https://kt.cern/ https://kt.cern/ [2] e.g. https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/innovation-and-partnership https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/innovation-and-partnership
gen3 7y ago
Also see the comments last time this was posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166070 and what I said last time: I'm honestly pretty happy about this. I'm hoping that by aiming to replace the commercial products they use with opensource alternatives, the alternatives leave with a better polish and user experience. I also see CERN as an institution that is willing to hire the devs needed to maintain / support a project.
shmerl 7y ago
Are they using Linux instead of Windows already?
- dukwon 7y ago
  There's a mix of linux, windows and mac OS machines, depending on the use-case and/or user-preference. This won't change.
whatshisface 7y ago
Public funding of open source software is one of the most direct ways that government spending can grow the supply side of the economy. Taxpayers will directly benefit from the public domain technologies developed to replace the contracts CERN is moving away from. Software and science share an important economic trait, that once you produce them you can maximize their total impact by spreading them around as much as possible. That's an advantageous situation for public funding without IP restrictions, which is the model of academia.
- remir 7y ago
  Migrating away from Microsoft won't be easy. Despite high licensing costs, Windows, AD and Exchange are still great solutions with millions of people familiar with them, good documentation and support. I agree that only public funding and massive donations would allow the development of true alternative to these products. The building blocks are already there: desktop Linux, openLDAP, FreeRADIUS, LibreOffice, etc. What is needed is lots of refinements, improvements and UI/UX polish to have a package that small shops to Fortune 500 companies could deploy.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    You dont need to get rid of Windows to support Open Source software though. My favorite Open Source tools work no matter what OS I am using be it Mac, Windows or Linux.
  - lowdose 7y ago
    I think everybody should move away from Windows & other software assets. In 2019 it is crazy to make end users responsible for the security of the OS. I have for example never questioned the security of my iPhone. A child that has a chromebook will never understand why you need a virus checker, firewall, that the data really is gone if a ssd breaks or have to install a special program to make a fysical print. The average training time to make this migration from MS Office to Google Docs for employees at Forbes 500 companies is 1 hour. Chrome OS is such an undervalued solution for the end user in a traditional business. In tech we all use GSuite. On stackshare.io a whopping 17.200 companies use G-suite in their tech stack. Microsoft Office 173. You can't get hired if you answer MS Office as your main document driver in an interview. This discussion is not even a thing that gets discussed at a sane technology company. G Suite is awesome and it just works. Kids use Google Docs as a chat app. A traditional document program is a typewriter and a google doc is a laptop with internet connection. G Suite API's create so much automation option plug&play out of the box that 95% of your automation can be arranged with SAAS. Both Zapier & IFTT supply a polished UI, where anybody can connect G Suite with 600 other SAAS API providers. Nobody outside technology has ever started a conversation about these two. https://stackshare.io/stackups/g-suite-vs-microsoft-office-365 https://stackshare.io/stackups/g-suite-vs-microsoft-office-3...
crb 7y ago
While this post is referring to desktop/server software, CERN are also using open source platforms in some of their experiments: they recently re-performed some of the 2012 analysis that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson, on top of Kubernetes. Adam and I spoke to a computer scientist and two physicists from CERN for our podcast, and you might like to listen if you like physics or software. https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/062-cern/ https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/062-cern/
ridaj 7y ago
Good idea but > Needless to say, isolated initiatives will waste effort and resources. If the centralized procurement approach is what put everyone in the current mess, what indication is there that a centralized approach to open source won't produce the same issues? I personally wonder why commit to open source in a centralized manner vs commit to interoperable standards (but not the specific tools used to speak to the standard).
- cat199 7y ago
  jury probably still out, and no direct insight, but the overall incentives/philosphy driving acquisition for each could theoretically be drastically different (e.g. optimizing for openness, community, xyz instead of vendor size, ability to negotiate discounts, etc)
lone_haxx0r 7y ago
Wait. Why the fuck is there a cern TLD? Are ICANN naming TLDs after specific organizations now?
- dukwon 7y ago
  Basically yes: https://icannwiki.org/Brand_TLD https://icannwiki.org/Brand_TLD I agree with the move away from .ch, since it's an international organisation, but .int would have been the correct choice IMO
  - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
    I expect nothing, and I'm still let down.
nullify88 7y ago
I came across a white paper years ago (2012/2013 ish) on how they used Icinga (An early but rapidly growing Nagios fork) and mod-gearman to monitor their ATLAS computing farm. At the time, as a newly appointed sysadmin, I was looking in to possible solutions that could scale well myself and their usage was very inspiring. Eventually deploying something similar where I'm still working now. https://cds.cern.ch/record/1455464/files/ATL-DAQ-PROC-2012-014.pdf https://cds.cern.ch/record/1455464/files/ATL-DAQ-PROC-2012-0...
user5994461 7y ago
CERN is not a university and has no student, it's entirely justifiable for Microsoft to not give them a university discount. Universities have thousands of students that do not generate any revenue. The standard licensing model per person or per computer totally breaks down in that case, asking for a huge bill based only on the sheer amount of users. Education discounts are adjusting for that, large user bases with no money to pay. That being said. The CERN is a government entity. They should argue to be given government discount.
- dukwon 7y ago
  > Universities have thousands of students that do not generate any revenue. The standard licensing model per person or per computer totally breaks down in that case, asking for a huge bill based only on the sheer amount of users. There are thousands of students, postdocs and academics with CERN computing accounts (way outnumbering employees). It's not like they're generating revenue either. > They should argue to be given government discount. They did, IIRC, but their status as an IGO didn't cut it with Microsoft.
  - user5994461 7y ago
    IGO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_organization Honestly, it looks like the terms and licensing are being dictated by some dude(s) from Microsoft in the US, based on US norms. The way academy/university/research is organized and operated in Europe is fairly different. Bet Microsoft doesn't mind the added money either. If the CERN were playing by US rules, they would be suing Microsoft to be recognized as a government or academic entity.
sh-run 7y ago
I'd like to see more done in the open networking space. Cumulus Linux was talked about a ton just a few years ago, but it seems like I haven't heard about it as much lately. Probably because Juniper and Cisco have (mostly) managed to catch up on the automation front. I couldn't find anything concrete on the CERN website, but in their virtual DC tour I noticed HP Procurves as top-of-rack switches. I was really hoping to see whitebox switches.
duxup 7y ago
I worked support some hardware CERN used once. Fun guys to talk with / work with. They call me up one day to note that one of their devices I supported had an accident and they were concerned they didn't know why. So they sent me photos. This device had rows of modular cards installed in it. In the center of the device with two cards pulled out you could see that something had burred and even melted some of the surrounding cards. But it didn't look like any given card had failed as much as there was some sort of really hot fire ... that had been in the air between the cards or something. Now keep in mind this was just what a handful of photos looked like, so who really knows. Makes no sense that there was something floating in the air between the cards hot enough to do that thing ... but that is what it looked like. Anyway it was like a good 100k+ in hardware burned up, possibly MUCH more as the full chassis held a lot more than that. So I promise them a new chassis and such and tell them to pack it up nicely and we will have a courier come and get it and send it to our QA team. The CERN guys promised not to expose the equipment to anymore micro black holes ;) The process to send stuff to the QA team in strange situations like this was a painful series of steps. The QA team was BRUTAL about process (even if they never followed it themselves...). They also were a real pain to even email, but that was part of the process. Amusingly enough when I sent them the photos and explained it was CERN even the QA ultra dry guys cracked some good X-files references ;) Still wonder what the hell happened to that equipment.
dgudkov 7y ago
>...increasing the license costs by more than a factor of ten When I hear stories like that I always wonder what was the thought process of the sales people that managed that account. Probably something like that: - Hey, do you remember our old customer CERN, a world-famous scientific non-profit organization that pushes the boundaries of human knowledge about the universe? - Yeah, what about them? - Let's charge them 10 times more for our software licenses - Can't see anything wrong about it, go ahead
cernguy 7y ago
Disclaimer: I worked at CERN in IT for 5 years as staff. CERN has never been a Microsoft organisation excepted in the head of management that was pushing for Microsoft solutions everywhere without success. - Scientific computation are done at CERN under Linux with the Root framework. - Most (all?) scientists uses OSx or Linux. - All computing clusters runs SC Linux or centos. - Most internal softwares: indico, EDH, landb, and other are running under Linux and are web based. - All DBs are OSS or oracle - All storages system are home made (EOS, Castor) or ceph based and run under Linux. - Data distribution is home made and based on a framework named xrootd under Linux. - Software distribution is also Linux based and run as a fuse module (cernVMFS) - Most systems services are UNIX C++ and Java for the control part. - CERN uses Openstack for virtualisation After the management pushed for Hyper-V and failed miserably. - Management pushed for SharePoint for years before the entire website switched to PHP and Drupal. There si not real "Microsoft" at CERN excepted AD and phones. It is however a study case of bad management decisions in IT.
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  Why was management pushing for it so hard? Better (existent) salespeople for microsoft vs OSS? Or were there actual reasons they thought microsoft would be better
  - cernguy 7y ago
    > Why was management pushing for it so hard? Better (existent) salespeople for microsoft vs OSS? It's not clear to me. But it seems to have been part of a vision to "servicify" everything. Where everything should be a service "maintained" / "paid" but never "developed" to reduce costs. Something that backfired beautifully
    - kfk 7y ago
      It amuses me IT management is ok to pay millions in terrible software license fees (i.e. most of Oracle products), but not ok to budget a couple of millions to have a team develop some of that internally. Also another amusing fact is that most IT managers never wrote a line of code in their lives. IT should not just be about expensive vendors and outsourcing for labor cost arbitrage.

498 points by tdhttt 7y ago

newaccoutnas 7y ago

I think this was posted at the time. It's worth saying that CERN have been massive open source users for decades

pletnes 7y ago
It’s also worth noting that CERN has been running (not just using!) many open source projects since way back. Geant, madx, root and cling come to mind.

raxxorrax 7y ago

I suspect this is specifically targeting Windows. I think this would be a good idea for anyone really. I don't know whose or which decision brought MS into this mess, but this isn't a sustainable OS for the future. Our company still relies on it, but any new piece of software has to be platform independent. Licensing income probably skyrocketed on MS end, but I don't think they made any friends with W10. Maybe MS is correct that W10 will be the last Windows. But maybe not because of rolling releases. Anyway, good news and the correct strategy in my opinion.

uoylj 7y ago
I can't imagine it's for windows -- unless maybe they are referring to the admin staff. Scientific users of CERN run Scientific Linux.
zucker42 7y ago
As long as schools use Windows, it won't die.
- madez 7y ago
  Yes, this is why societies must take care about which hardware and software they use in schools. In Germany, some schools opted for Apple hardware and software, which is equally bad.
  - EForEndeavour 7y ago
    What would be better? How would one measure "betterness" anyway? If it's the probability of having to use classroom computers later in life, your choices are Windows or Apple.
    - madez 7y ago
      Schools are not to teach children to operate specific commercial products. The school teaches the basics so the people are able to continue to learn on their own and judge products and technologies. Schools should teach on one side simple hardware architectures, encoding of data, computer representation of perceivable things, and some programming. On the other side, it should put the digital revolution into a historic context and show the dangers that arise from it and how to act as an individual and as a state in it. This way the children can grow into informed citizens.
      - davesmith1983 7y ago
        None of that is restricted because you buy a Mac or a Windows machine. Those things subjects you have mentioned are all ideas that are totally independent to the OS. Why does it matter if they learn them on a Mac or a Windows machine? The OS for the most part these days are irrelevant.
        madez 7y ago
        Because it creates a dependence on the OS they use in school, and a OS is not necessary to teach the things I mentioned. The teaching can be done abstractly on a board and paper, or with interactive games. The practice can be done with microprocessors on educational board with plenty of easily accessible I/O. And when there is a need for an operating system, which I don't see in basic and mid-level teaching in school, schools should use libre software, because it relates to public infrastructure.
- jakear 7y ago
  Many schools are moving to chrome books. But enterprise is the bigger deal anyways.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > As long as schools use Windows, it won't die. Kind of funny in this context, since the specific impetus here is Microsoft narrowing the applicability of academic licensing.
- cwyers 7y ago
  Businesses aren't using Windows because schools use it (I think Chromebooks and iPads are more popular among schools now than Windows machines because children can trash a PC easily). They use it because of a long tail of software applications that only run on Windows, they use it because of stuff like Group Policy and Active Directory, they use it because of a lot of things that Linux doesn't do as well.
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    Don't forget MS Office. That's microsoft's real crown jewel, and it only runs on windows, or much more expensive macs.
dukwon 7y ago
> I suspect this is specifically targeting Windows. It's not: it's things like Active Directory, Skype4B, Office, Exchange etc. Desktop OS's aren't covered by MAlt.

josephagoss 7y ago

Does this mean that no scientist at CERN can use applications like Mathematica? Or is this just focusing on essential foundation software like operating systems (moving away from Windows)

lokimedes 7y ago
While some rely on Mathematica most at Cern uses ROOT for data science. The impact on the science program is more likely to come from ditching Oracle databases and LabView... That said, this is an IT department initiative, users also have access to software from their home institutes.
- dguest 7y ago
  There's a pretty sharp migration away from ROOT to numpy / pandas these days (at least in the younger generation).
- deven88 7y ago
  Is there any reliable and good opensource alternative of LabView ?
  - cycomanic 7y ago
    I would argue any dynamic programming language is a good alternative to labview. I'm a proponent on using python for labautomation (we run workshops at some major optics conferences, see http://python4photonics.org http://python4photonics.org for an unfortunately somewhat out of date summary about some of what we do). In my experience labview is a mess, it's only momentum (in particular drivers provided by vendors, but that is changing) that keeps it going. I find labview code developed by amateurs is an unmaintainable mess. Grad students pass along code from on generation to the next without anyone daring to fix some of the glaring bugs. Really use anything but labview, even if it's the buggy matlab instrument toolbox.
    - nikofeyn 7y ago

linker3000 7y ago

Is there a public-facing list of project activities?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Apofis 7y ago

E-mail and ip telephone migration to start... doesn't seem like a big deal but they have been with Microsoft for 20 years.

lokimedes 7y ago
When I worked there, they had 10k+ active user accounts and a wealth of systems integrated into Microsoft active directory. The nature of CERN also means that multiple institutes around the world will have to adapt their systems when CERN changes.

lowlevel 7y ago

My gut says this is related to forced updates and unwanted interface changes in current Microsoft products. It's been super annoying where I work, and staff are pretty upset.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
It was because CERN lost their academic discount for MS licensing. https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-mum-cerns-planned-microsoft-alternatives-transition-open-source-software-price-hike/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-mum-cerns-planned-mi...
- addicted 7y ago
  This should be an HBS use case. In a quest for money they didn't need and likely were not gonna get much of anyways, by removing perks MS currently offered academic institutions, they've risked teh creation of a much greater threat that can undermine their entire business. CERN is an organization which could truly help create a set of alternative tools to MS products. Talk about killing the golden goose.
cwyers 7y ago
I mean, they list a pretty compelling reason from their point of view: Microsoft changed their licensing terms from academic to business licenses, which are more expensive. I suspect they will discover over time that the fully loaded costs of switching are higher than the costs of the licenses, unless this is just a way of trying to leverage MS into giving them academic licenses again.
- perlgeek 7y ago
  > I suspect they will discover over time that the fully loaded costs of switching are higher than the costs of the licenses I suspect the switching costs will be higher in the short term for sure, but this also seems to be a strategic move.
- nullspace 7y ago

Beltiras 7y ago

I'm waiting for some of these documents being made public. I am working for a government institution that is making much of the same moves. Would be nice to see what an immense IT undertaking like this comes up with.

Boulth 7y ago
Are your org's documents public? I'd be excited to read about the practical effects of such deployment (from CERN too).
- Beltiras 7y ago
  Ours is a more ad-hoc process than that. I work for Statistics Iceland. We are not changing OS or productivity suite (yet at least). Those that want Linux on their laptops get Ubuntu. We deploy Libreoffice alongside Office. Users using other statistical suites are encouraged to use R. On the infrastructure side we are making more use of Samba (one new DC, next up is migrating fileservers from old WServers over to Samba on Linux), just replaced Exchange with Kopano. We are an org of about 120-150 people/workstations.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    How's the LibreOffice / MsOffice compatibility in practice? Was thinking about this yesterday, and was curious how much functional coverage or issues there are with what people actually use it for.
    - Beltiras 7y ago
      We mostly use Office. Out of the ~120 workstations we only have ~10 Linux users. 6 of those are sysadmins/developers. Only 2 statisticians have Linux and they mostly use softwares besides productivity suits. We at least have no complaints yet to speak of. We should do a survey.
    - psalminen 7y ago
      Not the OP, but I tried to do a lot of work in Libreoffice Calc on XLSX files. I had a constant issue of Libreoffice not being able to handle >10000 rows, and actually crashing when trying to do something intense like vlookup.

williamxd3 7y ago

That moment when left-pad creates a black hole on earth

MayeulC 7y ago

Matrix would be a good fit for most research institutions, allowing cooperation trough federation. Heck, even Mastodon could be interesting, and ActivityPub as a transport layer for publications. However, one issue is that small institutions cannot afford to self-host everything, or make the necessary adjustments themselves. I wonder if CERN and other big institutions could perform some heavy lifting (and maybe provide some shared services, hosting servers, etc.) without necessarily centralizing everything like it is done nowadays.

secfirstmd 7y ago
I'm a big Matrix fan but am curious about what options they have for integrating and managing it in a typical enterprise environment. For example: -what happens for stuff like user management with Active Directory etc? -what happens for things like FOIA requirements considering it is e2e encrypted?
- somepig 7y ago
  e2ee can be turned off client side (and is off by default until ux improves), and while I don't think it's possible with the stock home server, it seems entirely possible to patch the home server to reject encrypt requests, and only federate unencrypted rooms for directory service, LDAP and web SSO are both supported
- roblabla 7y ago
  Matrix doesn't E2E encrypt everything, only certain rooms. It's not currently possible, but I suppose there's no technical roadblock to making a server prevent access to E2E encrypted rooms to meet FOIA requirements. As for user management, synapse has identity servers and password providers to form a complete authentication solution. mxisd[0] is a service that uses both to offer LDAP authentication, although it seems dead with no real replacement. [0] https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxisd https://github.com/kamax-matrix/mxisd
  - Arathorn 7y ago
    So Matrix has a bunch of enterprise integration support either in existence or in the making. In terms of audit compliance for E2EE, there are three main options: a) Turn it off (as per the parent post); there isn't a button for this in synapse but would be possible to add, albeit technically an abuse vector given it is effectively a downgrade attack. b) Add an audit user to rooms which need to be 'on the record'. This is our preferred solution, as it makes it crystal clear to users as to which conversations are on the record (and whose record!) and which aren't. One could run such a user via a client like https://github.com/matrix-org/pantalaimon https://github.com/matrix-org/pantalaimon, and have the server autoinvite them into rooms which need to be recorded. c) Add an audit (aka ghost) device to users who need to be 'on the record'. For instance, you could use pantalaimon to log in as a given user and record their messages. The audit device will appear in the E2E devices for the user, and once cross-signing lands, could be signed by the user (or their sysadmin) to be trusted. However, we're not keen on ghost devices in general - we've built all of Matrix's E2EE trust model to protect users against unexpected devices being present in their rooms, so we'd recommend audit users instead. In terms of LDAP integration - there are more and more enterprise integration options appearing; for instance, ma1sd is a maintained fork of mxisd, and we're working on better LDAP bridging for Matrix in general. We want Matrix to work in an enterprise environment, so if people see stuff missing, please yell.

kazinator 7y ago

That's kind of ironic. I was doing paid contract work in 1994 (on Linux!) that involved customizing the open source CERN httpd server (before Apache existed, or loadable modules in a web server).

sytse 7y ago

It is awesome to see how CERN is supporting open source. They have been long time users of our open core GitLab with 12,000 users https://about.gitlab.com/customers/cern/ https://about.gitlab.com/customers/cern/

jobvandervoort 7y ago
I visited CERN once in my role at GitLab. The scale of CERN and the level of people there is really impressive. Many teams had implemented very complicated pipelines doing all sorts of things. Including using GitLab to design, validate and eventually produce hardware that was used in ATLAS.

panpanna 7y ago

CERN had a major role in making kicad what it is today. they implemented tons of complex stuff that you normally only find in really expensive CAD tools. Hope they can repeat that with a few more FOSS projects!

sigstoat 7y ago
and you can donate to KiCad development via CERN: https://cernandsocietyfoundation.cern/projects/kicad-development https://cernandsocietyfoundation.cern/projects/kicad-develop...
- turbinerneiter 7y ago
  Aisler.net, a German boardhouse, makes a donation to kicad for every kicad designed pcb you order there and it's my favourite way to pay for open source. They literally get paid the moment value is created from using their software. It's beautiful.
  - lnsru 7y ago
    You aren’t right! Aisler doesn’t donate. The user can choose to donate. From http://www.kicad-pcb.org/about/kicad/ http://www.kicad-pcb.org/about/kicad/ “That is why AISLER allows its users to easily donate to the KiCad project during the ordering process.”
    - turbinerneiter 7y ago
      True. The donation is an item on the bill, they automatically set it and the user can change the amount.
  - panpanna 7y ago
    Aisler is also one of very few (only one?) shops that accepts librecad files.
xvilka 7y ago
Would be nice to push up also the other parts of the physical design - LibreCAD[1] and FreeCAD[2], Yosys[3] and Symbiflow[4], Chisel/FIRRTL[5], and many others. [1] https://librecad.org/ https://librecad.org/ [2] https://www.freecadweb.org/ https://www.freecadweb.org/ [3] http://www.clifford.at/yosys/ http://www.clifford.at/yosys/ [4] https://symbiflow.github.io/ https://symbiflow.github.io/ [5] https://chisel.eecs.berkeley.edu/ https://chisel.eecs.berkeley.edu/

Polyisoprene 7y ago

Since people don't read the article: "The Microsoft Alternatives project (MAlt) started a year ago to mitigate anticipated software license fee increases. MAlt’s objective is to put us back in control using open software." "A prime example is that CERN has enjoyed special conditions for the use of Microsoft products for the last 20 years, by virtue of its status as an “academic institution”. However, recently, the company has decided to revoke CERN’s academic status, a measure that took effect at the end of the previous contract in March 2019, replaced by a new contract based on user numbers, increasing the license costs by more than a factor of ten. Although CERN has negotiated a ramp-up profile over ten years to give the necessary time to adapt, such costs are not sustainable."

timbit42 7y ago
Microsoft operates like drug dealers.
ethbro 7y ago
Ouch. Foot meet gun. Nice to see some of the old guard is still alive and well within the Microsoft walls.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Really CERN does not qualify !
  - amerine 7y ago
    Why & how?
    - dukwon 7y ago
      I believe Microsoft's main argument is that CERN doesn't teach or award degrees. Last time this was posted I saw someone say it's also due to them making a little bit of money licensing stuff to industry [1], but universities do the same thing [2] so I don't think that's a strong argument. [1] https://kt.cern/ https://kt.cern/ [2] e.g. https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/innovation-and-partnership https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/innovation-and-partnership

gen3 7y ago

Also see the comments last time this was posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166070 and what I said last time: I'm honestly pretty happy about this. I'm hoping that by aiming to replace the commercial products they use with opensource alternatives, the alternatives leave with a better polish and user experience. I also see CERN as an institution that is willing to hire the devs needed to maintain / support a project.

shmerl 7y ago

Are they using Linux instead of Windows already?

dukwon 7y ago
There's a mix of linux, windows and mac OS machines, depending on the use-case and/or user-preference. This won't change.

whatshisface 7y ago

Public funding of open source software is one of the most direct ways that government spending can grow the supply side of the economy. Taxpayers will directly benefit from the public domain technologies developed to replace the contracts CERN is moving away from. Software and science share an important economic trait, that once you produce them you can maximize their total impact by spreading them around as much as possible. That's an advantageous situation for public funding without IP restrictions, which is the model of academia.

remir 7y ago
Migrating away from Microsoft won't be easy. Despite high licensing costs, Windows, AD and Exchange are still great solutions with millions of people familiar with them, good documentation and support. I agree that only public funding and massive donations would allow the development of true alternative to these products. The building blocks are already there: desktop Linux, openLDAP, FreeRADIUS, LibreOffice, etc. What is needed is lots of refinements, improvements and UI/UX polish to have a package that small shops to Fortune 500 companies could deploy.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  You dont need to get rid of Windows to support Open Source software though. My favorite Open Source tools work no matter what OS I am using be it Mac, Windows or Linux.
- lowdose 7y ago
  I think everybody should move away from Windows & other software assets. In 2019 it is crazy to make end users responsible for the security of the OS. I have for example never questioned the security of my iPhone. A child that has a chromebook will never understand why you need a virus checker, firewall, that the data really is gone if a ssd breaks or have to install a special program to make a fysical print. The average training time to make this migration from MS Office to Google Docs for employees at Forbes 500 companies is 1 hour. Chrome OS is such an undervalued solution for the end user in a traditional business. In tech we all use GSuite. On stackshare.io a whopping 17.200 companies use G-suite in their tech stack. Microsoft Office 173. You can't get hired if you answer MS Office as your main document driver in an interview. This discussion is not even a thing that gets discussed at a sane technology company. G Suite is awesome and it just works. Kids use Google Docs as a chat app. A traditional document program is a typewriter and a google doc is a laptop with internet connection. G Suite API's create so much automation option plug&play out of the box that 95% of your automation can be arranged with SAAS. Both Zapier & IFTT supply a polished UI, where anybody can connect G Suite with 600 other SAAS API providers. Nobody outside technology has ever started a conversation about these two. https://stackshare.io/stackups/g-suite-vs-microsoft-office-365 https://stackshare.io/stackups/g-suite-vs-microsoft-office-3...

crb 7y ago

While this post is referring to desktop/server software, CERN are also using open source platforms in some of their experiments: they recently re-performed some of the 2012 analysis that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson, on top of Kubernetes. Adam and I spoke to a computer scientist and two physicists from CERN for our podcast, and you might like to listen if you like physics or software. https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/062-cern/ https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/062-cern/

ridaj 7y ago

Good idea but > Needless to say, isolated initiatives will waste effort and resources. If the centralized procurement approach is what put everyone in the current mess, what indication is there that a centralized approach to open source won't produce the same issues? I personally wonder why commit to open source in a centralized manner vs commit to interoperable standards (but not the specific tools used to speak to the standard).

cat199 7y ago
jury probably still out, and no direct insight, but the overall incentives/philosphy driving acquisition for each could theoretically be drastically different (e.g. optimizing for openness, community, xyz instead of vendor size, ability to negotiate discounts, etc)

lone_haxx0r 7y ago

Wait. Why the fuck is there a cern TLD? Are ICANN naming TLDs after specific organizations now?

dukwon 7y ago
Basically yes: https://icannwiki.org/Brand_TLD https://icannwiki.org/Brand_TLD I agree with the move away from .ch, since it's an international organisation, but .int would have been the correct choice IMO
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  I expect nothing, and I'm still let down.

nullify88 7y ago

I came across a white paper years ago (2012/2013 ish) on how they used Icinga (An early but rapidly growing Nagios fork) and mod-gearman to monitor their ATLAS computing farm. At the time, as a newly appointed sysadmin, I was looking in to possible solutions that could scale well myself and their usage was very inspiring. Eventually deploying something similar where I'm still working now. https://cds.cern.ch/record/1455464/files/ATL-DAQ-PROC-2012-014.pdf https://cds.cern.ch/record/1455464/files/ATL-DAQ-PROC-2012-0...

user5994461 7y ago

CERN is not a university and has no student, it's entirely justifiable for Microsoft to not give them a university discount. Universities have thousands of students that do not generate any revenue. The standard licensing model per person or per computer totally breaks down in that case, asking for a huge bill based only on the sheer amount of users. Education discounts are adjusting for that, large user bases with no money to pay. That being said. The CERN is a government entity. They should argue to be given government discount.

dukwon 7y ago
> Universities have thousands of students that do not generate any revenue. The standard licensing model per person or per computer totally breaks down in that case, asking for a huge bill based only on the sheer amount of users. There are thousands of students, postdocs and academics with CERN computing accounts (way outnumbering employees). It's not like they're generating revenue either. > They should argue to be given government discount. They did, IIRC, but their status as an IGO didn't cut it with Microsoft.
- user5994461 7y ago
  IGO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_organization Honestly, it looks like the terms and licensing are being dictated by some dude(s) from Microsoft in the US, based on US norms. The way academy/university/research is organized and operated in Europe is fairly different. Bet Microsoft doesn't mind the added money either. If the CERN were playing by US rules, they would be suing Microsoft to be recognized as a government or academic entity.

sh-run 7y ago

I'd like to see more done in the open networking space. Cumulus Linux was talked about a ton just a few years ago, but it seems like I haven't heard about it as much lately. Probably because Juniper and Cisco have (mostly) managed to catch up on the automation front. I couldn't find anything concrete on the CERN website, but in their virtual DC tour I noticed HP Procurves as top-of-rack switches. I was really hoping to see whitebox switches.

duxup 7y ago

I worked support some hardware CERN used once. Fun guys to talk with / work with. They call me up one day to note that one of their devices I supported had an accident and they were concerned they didn't know why. So they sent me photos. This device had rows of modular cards installed in it. In the center of the device with two cards pulled out you could see that something had burred and even melted some of the surrounding cards. But it didn't look like any given card had failed as much as there was some sort of really hot fire ... that had been in the air between the cards or something. Now keep in mind this was just what a handful of photos looked like, so who really knows. Makes no sense that there was something floating in the air between the cards hot enough to do that thing ... but that is what it looked like. Anyway it was like a good 100k+ in hardware burned up, possibly MUCH more as the full chassis held a lot more than that. So I promise them a new chassis and such and tell them to pack it up nicely and we will have a courier come and get it and send it to our QA team. The CERN guys promised not to expose the equipment to anymore micro black holes ;) The process to send stuff to the QA team in strange situations like this was a painful series of steps. The QA team was BRUTAL about process (even if they never followed it themselves...). They also were a real pain to even email, but that was part of the process. Amusingly enough when I sent them the photos and explained it was CERN even the QA ultra dry guys cracked some good X-files references ;) Still wonder what the hell happened to that equipment.

dgudkov 7y ago

>...increasing the license costs by more than a factor of ten When I hear stories like that I always wonder what was the thought process of the sales people that managed that account. Probably something like that: - Hey, do you remember our old customer CERN, a world-famous scientific non-profit organization that pushes the boundaries of human knowledge about the universe? - Yeah, what about them? - Let's charge them 10 times more for our software licenses - Can't see anything wrong about it, go ahead

cernguy 7y ago

Disclaimer: I worked at CERN in IT for 5 years as staff. CERN has never been a Microsoft organisation excepted in the head of management that was pushing for Microsoft solutions everywhere without success. - Scientific computation are done at CERN under Linux with the Root framework. - Most (all?) scientists uses OSx or Linux. - All computing clusters runs SC Linux or centos. - Most internal softwares: indico, EDH, landb, and other are running under Linux and are web based. - All DBs are OSS or oracle - All storages system are home made (EOS, Castor) or ceph based and run under Linux. - Data distribution is home made and based on a framework named xrootd under Linux. - Software distribution is also Linux based and run as a fuse module (cernVMFS) - Most systems services are UNIX C++ and Java for the control part. - CERN uses Openstack for virtualisation After the management pushed for Hyper-V and failed miserably. - Management pushed for SharePoint for years before the entire website switched to PHP and Drupal. There si not real "Microsoft" at CERN excepted AD and phones. It is however a study case of bad management decisions in IT.

chipperyman573 7y ago
Why was management pushing for it so hard? Better (existent) salespeople for microsoft vs OSS? Or were there actual reasons they thought microsoft would be better
- cernguy 7y ago
  > Why was management pushing for it so hard? Better (existent) salespeople for microsoft vs OSS? It's not clear to me. But it seems to have been part of a vision to "servicify" everything. Where everything should be a service "maintained" / "paid" but never "developed" to reduce costs. Something that backfired beautifully
  - kfk 7y ago
    It amuses me IT management is ok to pay millions in terrible software license fees (i.e. most of Oracle products), but not ok to budget a couple of millions to have a team develop some of that internally. Also another amusing fact is that most IT managers never wrote a line of code in their lives. IT should not just be about expensive vendors and outsourcing for labor cost arbitrage.