Good Morning! The Boston Unity Group, the first official Unity user group, has dissolved after 13 years due to lost trust in Unity's policies, while in Switzerland, the 40th anniversary of the GNU Project was celebrated with presentations about GNU software and its impact on computing; additionally, MongoDB has announced new AI-powered developer features and edge computing capabilities to improve the developer experience.

— Forrest Knight & Meghanadh Vasireddy

Unity Dev Group Dissolves After 13 Years

The Boston Unity Group (BUG), the first official Unity user group in the world, has announced its dissolution after 13 years due to a loss of trust in the company. Founded in 2010 by Alex Schwartz and Elliott Mitchell, BUG has been a supportive community for Unity developers in the Boston area, hosting events and technical lectures. However, recent policy changes by Unity have led to the group's decision to disband.

Unity's new Runtime Fee policy has been a significant factor in BUG's decision. The group described the initial terms as "unthinkably hostile" and stated that even after Unity rescinded some of the most controversial changes, the revised pricing model still disproportionately affects indie studios in their community. BUG also expressed disappointment with Unity's shift in focus away from the games industry and developer communities, as well as its prioritization of profit over functionality.

Despite the rollback of some of the most controversial parts of Unity's fee structure plans, many developers have expressed their discontent and loss of trust in the company. The dissolution of the Boston Unity Group reflects these concerns and frustrations felt by developers. The group will hold its final meeting over Zoom.

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Celebrating 40 Years of GNU

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the GNU Project, a milestone that celebrates the accomplishments and impact of free software on the computing world. Initiated by Richard Stallman in 1983, the GNU Project aimed to develop an operating system composed entirely of free software.

To commemorate this occasion, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and GNUnet e.V. organized a hacker meeting in Switzerland, featuring presentations about various GNU packages, hacking, and making new releases. Among the speakers were Richard Stallman, the founder of GNU; Free Software Award winner Sébastien Blin of GNU Jami; and the president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, Matthias Kirschner.

The GNU Project has been a massive success, changing the shape of the entire computer industry. It has inspired hackers, both old and new, to join GNU in its goal to create, improve, and share free software around the world. The project's longevity and continuity are a testament to the power of an ideal that computing should belong in the hands of the people.

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MongoDB Enhances Developer Experience with New Database Capabilities

MongoDB, a leading NoSQL database platform, has announced new database capabilities aimed at improving the developer experience. The company has introduced five new capabilities for MongoDB Atlas, its cloud-based database service, and four new AI-powered features to enhance developer productivity.

The AI-powered features integrated into MongoDB products and services are designed to help developers reduce time spent on lower-value tasks, allowing them to focus on building and shipping modern applications that end users love. Developers choose MongoDB for its flexibility, scalability, and resilience, which are essential for building highly engaging applications that can react in real time to shifting demands and ever-changing data.

In addition to these new capabilities, MongoDB has also announced MongoDB Atlas for the Edge, which provides a consistent and frictionless development experience from the edge to the cloud. This allows organizations to significantly reduce the complexity of building edge applications and architectures.

Furthermore, MongoDB has launched its own publishing company, MongoDB Press, to make it easier to publish knowledge about MongoDB. The company has also published a new solutions library that features use cases and best practices for using MongoDB.

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Digma Launches Continuous Feedback Platform

Israeli software start-up Digma has recently launched its "Continuous Feedback" platform and raised $6 million in seed funding. The platform is designed to enable developers to continuously analyze their code at runtime, identifying issues and regressions, and preventing bad code from making it to production, including GenAI-generated code.

Digma's platform addresses gaps in the development lifecycle by emphasizing evidence-based methods and delivering key observability insights. It runs locally on developers' machines, flagging potential regressions, anomalies, and other signs of bad code. Built on the latest observability technologies such as OpenTelemetry, the platform relies on AI machine learning processes to analyze code runtime data and automatically suggest improvements.

The Continuous Feedback platform aims to solve a common problem faced by developers: receiving feedback too late. This issue often leads to bad code being put into production or code that doesn't perform as it should in the real world. By providing real-time insights within developers' integrated development environments (IDEs), Digma eliminates the need to consult a separate dashboard on an observability platform.

As an emerging category in software development, Continuous Feedback complements CI/CD platforms, testing, and validation tools, addressing the challenges posed by growing GenAI usage, legacy libraries, and increasingly distributed systems.

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More Notes

1. Meet with Apple Experts Developer Program

2. Jira updates brings software teams, business side together

3. Unity’s runtime fee controversy: Diving into the why and how

4. Voice and image capabilities added to ChatGPT

5. Jony Ive may design AI hardware that will compete with Apple

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