The Linux Foundation Reflects on Open Source's Role in Climate Change Challenges (linuxfoundation.org) 28
At the UN's COP27 climate summit in November, "observer status" was granted to representatives from the Linux Foundation's nonprofit Green Software Foundation, and from its Hyperledger Foundation, a not-for-profit umbrella project for open source blockchains and related tools.
So what happened? From the Linux Foundation's blog: At COP27, one thing that was clear to many is that the complexity of the climate crisis and the pace of change needed will require open source approaches to problem-solving and information sharing — only then will we achieve the required global collaboration to collectively reduce carbon emissions and adapt our communities to survive extreme climate events. We believe that the Linux and Hyperledger Foundations have a role to play in this quickly evolving ecosystem....
The Linux Foundation is committed to exploring how open source data models, standards, and technologies can enable a decarbonized economy. The lessons we learned at COP27 clarified that there is a crucial opportunity for us to contribute to this effort by developing open source solutions that provide accurate, curated, up-to-date, accessible, and interoperable emissions data, as well as open source tools that enable asset owners, asset managers, banks, and real economy companies to accelerate Net Zero-aligned resilient investment and finance in the companies and projects that are climate-sustainable; enable real economy companies to accelerate their transition through Paris-aligned R&D, product development, and CapEx; provide regulators the information needed to manage systemic risk across the economy; empower policymakers and civil society to press for change more effectively.
We are excited to be part of this important movement! By taking a leadership role in this space with our projects, standards, and protocols, we hope to support global climate action in meaningful ways.
The blog post also shared an update from the representative from the Green Software Foundation, a non-profit creating "a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tooling and best practices for green software." [T]the tech sector has a significant carbon footprint comparable to the shipping industry. For digital technologies to be true enablers for emissions reductions, there's a clear need to ensure that when we replace a process with a digitized one, it gets us closer to our climate targets.
To support this end, at COP27, Green Software announced several initiatives to support this goal, from a free, certified Green Software for Practitioners course, as well as the Software Carbon Intensity specification, a standardized protocol to measure the carbon emissions of software to achieve wide industry and academic adoption, a pattern library for engineers to adopt in their own software designs, along with a month-long global hackathon, Carbonhack, demonstrating these techniques and the impact they can have in reducing emissions from information technologies.
So what happened? From the Linux Foundation's blog: At COP27, one thing that was clear to many is that the complexity of the climate crisis and the pace of change needed will require open source approaches to problem-solving and information sharing — only then will we achieve the required global collaboration to collectively reduce carbon emissions and adapt our communities to survive extreme climate events. We believe that the Linux and Hyperledger Foundations have a role to play in this quickly evolving ecosystem....
The Linux Foundation is committed to exploring how open source data models, standards, and technologies can enable a decarbonized economy. The lessons we learned at COP27 clarified that there is a crucial opportunity for us to contribute to this effort by developing open source solutions that provide accurate, curated, up-to-date, accessible, and interoperable emissions data, as well as open source tools that enable asset owners, asset managers, banks, and real economy companies to accelerate Net Zero-aligned resilient investment and finance in the companies and projects that are climate-sustainable; enable real economy companies to accelerate their transition through Paris-aligned R&D, product development, and CapEx; provide regulators the information needed to manage systemic risk across the economy; empower policymakers and civil society to press for change more effectively.
We are excited to be part of this important movement! By taking a leadership role in this space with our projects, standards, and protocols, we hope to support global climate action in meaningful ways.
The blog post also shared an update from the representative from the Green Software Foundation, a non-profit creating "a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tooling and best practices for green software." [T]the tech sector has a significant carbon footprint comparable to the shipping industry. For digital technologies to be true enablers for emissions reductions, there's a clear need to ensure that when we replace a process with a digitized one, it gets us closer to our climate targets.
To support this end, at COP27, Green Software announced several initiatives to support this goal, from a free, certified Green Software for Practitioners course, as well as the Software Carbon Intensity specification, a standardized protocol to measure the carbon emissions of software to achieve wide industry and academic adoption, a pattern library for engineers to adopt in their own software designs, along with a month-long global hackathon, Carbonhack, demonstrating these techniques and the impact they can have in reducing emissions from information technologies.
Re: Green Software (Score:1)
Servers running open source software make 3 percent of carbon emissions, and rising by the year. wahoo go open source!
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the point is, using computers and software isn't "green", horrendously "black" human endeavor
Re:Green Software (Score:4, Interesting)
@Microsoft
@Goldman Sachs
Come on, this is a racket. Who takes this shit seriously?
Microsoft just implemented an energy saving mode in Xbox [imgur.com], and the triggered snowflakes are having a meltdown [imgur.com] about it because Microsoft never had this feature [imgur.com] in any other software before now.
Give Linus Torvalds a Nobel Prize already. (Score:1)
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There is no nobel prize for engineering. Maybe the peace-prize? Of course then he would need to go on and become a mass-murderer, so that may not be a good idea either.
Insignificant. (Score:4, Insightful)
Compared to all the things in the world that contribute to climate change, which, in my opinion, is out of our control mostly, is so low on the totem pole it shouldn't even be a thing.
With new higher core count CPU's and solid state drives, the power consumption should be lower and thus helping the situation.
Re:Insignificant. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's how I feel. I get more out of my computer now but it uses less power then prior generations of hardware. Seems like a net gain to me.
But you can't raise money on a problem that is already being worked out so you need alarmist to shout from the roof top that the world is ending. Quick, send money or else!
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Shark, meet The Fonz (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is a piece of software. Well, OK, a set of pieces of software.
People associated with Linux are, of course, free to engage in politics, and free to embrace any fad or cause or engage in virtue signalling to any degree they wish... BUT to the degree they do so, it's not about Linux at all.
If somebody who believes in fretting about carbon wants to use Linux, fine. If however they choose to associate the cause with Linux they are making a mistake. Linux is also being used by evil people engaged in evil. If we say Linux is "good" not because it's good and useful code but rather because it is associated with a currently popular eco-cause then we must also say it's "bad" because there are people using it in drug labs and identity theft, and it's militaristic because it's used in some military systems, etc.
This might SEEM good to people who both embrace Linux and embrace the particular cause, but it's really just bad for Linux to be associated with any cause other than Linux, and it's potentially polarizing. Just as Linux MIGHT gain some support by such associations, it will also draw opposition from those not supportive of whatever it's been associated with.
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At this point it's more about politics then being a positive contributor to the Linux community.
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People associated with Linux are, of course, free to engage in politics, and free to embrace any fad or cause or engage in virtue signalling to any degree they wish... BUT to the degree they do so, it's not about Linux at all.
Making Linux more efficient, whether by improving performance or power saving, is carbon reduction. Like it or not, there are legitimate technical reasons why tech improvements can contribute to decarbonization.
This might SEEM good to people who both embrace Linux and embrace the particular cause, but it's really just bad for Linux to be associated with any cause other than Linux, and it's potentially polarizing.
Anyone not in favor of carbon emissions reduction is literally, definitely, absolutely part of the problem. If they don't want to contribute to Linux because the Linux Foundation is in favor of carbon reduction, they are probably a net negative to the community anyway.
Re:Shark, meet The Fonz (Score:4)
Making software more efficient is great. You want this simply because it can lower your costs. If that happens to help with CO2, great but let's not think every action we take need be "for the planet". You could disappear the "west" and the world is still going to continue on its path.
Carbon emissions reduction is fine but clearly you keep that in balance with everything else. Otherwise, why are we still driving cars and shipping most our products across the ocean? Wouldn't it make more sense for stuff to be manufactured closer to the consumers?
So yeah, we just talk about these issues but clearly money is much more important. Just look at the actions of the people in charge. Why use zoom when we can all fly across the world to have an in-person circle jerk? Why even allow private jets?
Climate change is just that. A changing climate. It's been doing that and will continue to do so. Not even the people that take this as a religion make the hard sacrifices but they'll be sure to tell you what you should do. Maybe go buy some more carbon credits. That will fix everything.
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Making software more efficient is great. You want this simply because it can lower your costs. If that happens to help with CO2, great but let's not think every action we take need be "for the planet".
Every action we take should consider "the planet" where we live.
You could disappear the "west" and the world is still going to continue on its path.
Maybe. Maybe not. We'll never know, so it's a meaningless suggestion.
Carbon emissions reduction is fine but clearly you keep that in balance with everything else.
Clearly we don't, which is why atmospheric CO2 is still rising.
You've jumped to a conclusion. (Score:4, Insightful)
This might SEEM good to people who both embrace Linux and embrace the particular cause, but it's really just bad for Linux to be associated with any cause other than Linux, and it's potentially polarizing.
Why would anyone be against polluting less when it also means paying less? Is anyone advocating for needlessly inefficient software that ultimately requires more electricity (and therefore money) to run?
I don't see how either part of that is polarizing.
I'll be careful answering here... (Score:2)
I want to keep this away from any particular politics/ special interests... it's the PRINCIPLE of keeping Linux stuff away from any non-Linux stuff that is also potentially controversial, but your reply inevitably drags this into the political, even if you are so committed to you particular views that you are blind to it:
You ask "why would anyone be against polluting less..." thereby presuming this is a proper assessment of the situation and a proper assignment of value and then seem to think it's good to t
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I want to keep this away from any particular politics/ special interests
There are no special interests involved in making more efficient software.
Now, to be clear: I am not asserting that there's anything wrong with the specifics involved in this case...
I call bullshit because you wouldn't have brought the matter up if you had believed that were the case.
Take your FUD elsewhere.
In other words... (Score:1)
The Linux Foundation must have too much money and is having trouble finding real work to do. One needs to look no further than the word salad descriptions of their "leadership" to understand the lack of focused mission.
https://www.linuxfoundation.or... [linuxfoundation.org]
Wake me up when it's over.
The old Cloud Computing methodology. (Score:2)
Back in the days decades ago. The use of what is called cloud computing, could had have a net positive impact on environment usage, as it would utilize a lot of the wasted energy on many of our always on devices.
However they just put the technology onto a server farm which is more inefficient than specialize mainframe systems.
While issues of security, privacy, and legality of having other people code running on your device are something that needed to be addressed, the tech community mostly just gave up on