Firefox OS streaming video, Arduino to sell 3D printers, and more

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Opensource.com

In this week's edition of our open source news roundup, we take a look at the Firefox OS streaming video, Arduino to sell 3D printers, and more!

Open source news for your reading pleasure.

September 27 - October 3, 2014

Firefox OS enters streaming video market with Matchstick

Comcast gets some competition with Mozilla's Matchstick, "a small, WiFi-connected HDMI stick that plugs into your HDTV or HD Monitor that lets you stream and interact with your favorite stuff from the Internet." They're raising funds on Kickstarter (the video's pretty funny). What makes it open, beside being powered by FireFox OS, is that the creators will publish the schematics for the hardware. So it's not only open source but also open hardware! Get more technical details for Matchstick on At The Next Web.

Arduino to sell Materia 101 3D printer

Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin covers Arduino's entrance into the 3D printer business. Arduino is teaming up with Sharebot to sell the 3D printer: Materia 101. The printer will be available as a kit as well as pre-assembled. Prices are estimated to be around €600/$800 with official prices to come. These 3D printers are powered by the Arduino Mega 2560, and like all of Arduino's current product offering, the hardware documentation will be open.

Kano ships its first 18,000 learn-to-code computer kits

Natascha Lomas, writer at TechCrunch, covers the news that Kano has shipped its first 18,000 computer kits to 86 countries around the world. The kit is ideal for teaching kids how to code. Lomas writes, "Each Kano kit consists of a box containing computing hardware—a Raspberry Pi, Bluetooth keyboard, connector cables, speaker, Wi-Fi and so on—in a plug-and-play kit form with kid-friendly paper instructions on how to connect it all together." The full story at TechCrunch gives a hands-on account with the Kano and also explains more about the Kano OS, which is based on Linux.

The man on a quest to open source cancer research

Over at Wired, Robert McMillan writes an interesting story about a researcher who is opening up cancer research. Isaac Yonemoto is leveraging open source software methodologies to revolutionize cancer research by investigating abandoned research on the anti-cancer compound called 9-deoxysibiromycin, or 9-DS. This research was never patented, hence "anyone can work on it, kinda like open source software." Yonemoto will also share its research data: "We’re going to push the data to a decentralized server—possibly GitHub.” You can read all about Yonemoto's project on the site indysci.org.

Open source is starting to make a dent

Matt Asay at TechRepublic writes about open source making a dent in proprietary software fortunes. In his article, Asay refers to a recent report by the Deutsche Bank Security called The Torvalds Legacy - The Rise of Open Source. He looks at this report from a business model perspective and draws some interesting conclusions: "Unlike its deflationary effect on proprietary vendors, the cloud should prove an inflationary influence for open source vendors, as it offers a clear monetization strategy." On the topic of business models, Asay writes that "virtually all open-source companies currently turn to at least a little proprietary differentiation to accelerate sales."