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Links 20/12/2011: Red Hat Results, Mageia 2.0 Alpha 2, Firefox 9





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Five Last-Minute Gifts for Open Source Fans
    Are you at a loss for what to buy the open source aficionados on your holiday shopping list? It's actually not as difficult as you may think. Peruse this Linux fan's personal picks to find inspiration as quick as a wink.


  • Web Browsers



  • Databases

    • Grails 2.0 with more cloud support and NoSQL connectivity
      After nearly a year of development, the Grails team has released Grails version 2.0, their Groovy language based open source web framework. The new version sees improvements throughout the Grails framework including an improved user and developer experience, additional cloud support via Heroku and Cloud Foundry, integration with the SpringSource Tool Suite (STS) and support for a range of NoSQL databases.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Open Letter to the Open Document Format Ecosystem
      In such a large ecosystem it is impossible to agree upon a single vision for all participants, Apache OpenOffice does not seek to define a single vision, nor does it seek to be the only player. Instead we seek to offer a neutral and powerful collaboration opportunity.

      The permissive Apache License 2.0 reduces restrictions on the use and distribution of our code and thus facilitates a diverse contributor and user base for the benefit of the whole Open Document Format ecosystem. Within an Apache project it is possible to rise above political, social and commercial differences in the pursuit of maximally effective implementations of freely available open standards and related software tools.

      Our license and open development model is widely recognised as one of the best ways to ensure open standards, such as ODF, gain traction and adoption. Apache OpenOffice offers much more potential for OpenOffice.org than "just" an end-user Microsoft Office replacement. We offer a vendor neutral space in which to collaborate whilst enabling third parties to pursue almost any for-profit or not-for-profit business model.




  • Business

    • Exploitation? Entrepreneurship, Capitalism, and Making Money on Free Software
      Recently, I was directed toward an excellent analysis of commons-based peer production as a phenomenon which separates "entrepreneurs" (who want to get things done and create value in the world) from "capitalists" (who want to get a return on an investment of property without contributing any labor). An observer -- clearly outside of the community of free software developers -- expressed dismay at the example of Mozilla Foundation, which makes money from the open source Mozilla project, but does not pay for most voluntarily contributed code improvements to the Mozilla software. Is he right? Is this exploitation of those contributors?




  • Project Releases



  • Public Services/Government

    • Open source exceeds Munich's expectations
      The German city of Munich has been very precise at bumping off Windows PCs to give its Linux operating system Lebensraum .

      Munich's LiMux project has been going great guns and today the city announced that it had migrated 9,000 systems away from the PC and onto Linux. It only wanted to migrate 8,500 of the 12,000-15,000 PC workstations used by city officials in Munich but it turned out a bit easier than expected.




  • Programming

    • Cracks in the Foundation
      PHP has been around for a long time, and it’s starting to show its age. From top to bottom, the language has creaky joints. I’ve decided to take a look at how things got to this point, and what can be (and is being) done about it. I start out pretty gloomy, but bear with me; I promise it gets better.






Leftovers

  • Saudi Prince Pumps $300 Million Into Twitter
    In an unexpected move, a member of the Saudi royal family has invested $300 million in social networking company Twitter. This morning, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, founder and CEO of Kingdom Holding Company and one of the wealthiest people on the planet, announced the investment, which was reported first by Bloomberg.


  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Spinning the Occupation
      As winter sets in and Occupy Wall Street (OWS) encampments contract, the three-month old movement continues to have a big impact on the campaign trail. President Obama as well as some GOP candidates have adopted OWS concerns and language, while big bank lobbyists and GOP spinmeisters work hard to hold the line, defending U.S. economic institutions and the American "free market" system against what they fear could be a broad-based populist uprising.




  • ACTA





Recent Techrights' Posts

"Cloud Computing" Was Always a Joke, But This Week Was the Punchline
Maybe stop following tech trends and fashions
A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe, by Richard Stallman
"The surveillance imposed on us today is worse than in the Soviet Union. We need laws to stop this data being collected in the first place"
 
Who Asked Software in the Public Interest (SPI) for a Refund? ($100,000, Resulting in Losses of $267,201 in 12 Months, Highest-Ever Losses)
The IRS does not reveal who or what's tied to this refund (or the cause/reason)
Trouble in Red Hat/IBM and a Retreat to Ponzi Economics in Search of Wall Street Market Heist
Would you invest your life savings in this kind of crap?
12 Months Ago the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' Officially Went 'Tag-Team'
We're actually sort of flattered or proud that such despicable people are so desperate to censor us
"Cloud Computing" Does Not Mean Safety
Fault tolerance is related to the notion of software freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 21, 2025
The Fall of Windows: From Something to Nothing
Of course Microsoft will pretend everything is fine and "just trust the hey hi" (AI)
Sounds Like Fedora is Ready to Become Less of a Slave of Microsoft (GitHub)
This seems like a belated move in a positive direction
XBox is a Dead Microsoft Product in a Dying Industry
It's probable that another wave of XBox layoffs is just over the horizon (maybe even before month's end)
Progress on Techrights Site Search
Fun times
IBM's Bluewashing of Red Hat Means the Layoffs Are Silent, Barely Reported
Don't wait to hear about "Red Hat layoffs"
Gemini Links 21/10/2025: Happy Disconnection, AWS Falling Apart, Closing of Gemlog Blue
Links for the day
Full Audio of Today's Richard Stallman Talk in the Technical University of Munich
Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society
Microsoft XBox is Just Vapourware (Promises of Hardware That Doesn't Exist), Real Products Perish
just as developers lose interest in developing for XBox Microsoft is increasing the costs imposed upon them
Slopwatch: Fake Articles (Slop) in "Linux" Clothing in Google News (Noise)
all about what Google does
Links 21/10/2025: Even "Inventor of Vibe Coding" Rejects Vibe Coding, USPTO Experiments With Slop in Examination
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Talk Now Available for Viewing (Archived Copy, Not Live-streamed)
This recording is over 2 hours old
Links 21/10/2025: AWS-Induced Chaos and Social Control Media Curbs
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/10/2025: Programming, StarGrid, Brand-New Palm OS Strategy Game in 2025, and Chatbot as Addiction Mechanisms
Links for the day
The African Lion and the American Cowards
Safaris exist for people to watch and enjoy animals
Amazon Web Shenanigans Perfectly Timed for Today's Talk by Richard Stallman
Maybe listen to him instead of looking for excuses to ridicule the messenger
Mission:Libre Has Taken Off (Project by Carmen Maris)
there will be a lot more to report on next month (after the event)
Techrights to Publish More EPO Leaks Next Week
We're meanwhile also doing lots of work on search, whose interface now looks better
Links 21/10/2025: 'The Lost Art' of Neon Signs and Twitter (X) to Enable Identity Theft (or Handle Theft) as a Service
Links for the day
Plagiarism With LLM Slop: Hindustan Times (HT Digital Streams Limited) Has Become a Slop Factory/Hub
What a disgrace
Next Week We Launch Search at Techrights
We're planning to launch it some time next week. Maybe Tuesday, maybe Thursday.
Talk by Richard Stallman Will be Live-streamed in Less Than 10 Hours
Happy hacking
"No Kings" in the Software World (GAFAM Should Not Exist, Either)
"No Kings" is a good slogan. Let's start by ridding ourselves of masters, not only those who reside in DC or visit DC
Every Morning
Bugs/edge cases combined with automation can spell disaster
Insane, Deliberately Dishonest, or Just Another Bigot?
very intellectually-dishonest human being
A Lot of Techrights is Built on Perl
Perl also runs the sister site
The Register MS Selling Slop for Microsoft (Vapourware, Ponzi Scheme, False Claims)
What will be left of The Register MS if it keeps repeating falsehoods and looking to profit from Ponzi schemes?
analytics.usa.gov Says Less Than 14% of Web Requests (to Government Sites) Come From Vista 11
Vista 11 was released more than 4 years ago!
People Who Attempt to Take Down Correct Information Need a Doctor a Day
“Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” ― George Orwell
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 20, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 20, 2025
Vista 11 is Sinking While Microsoft is PIPing (Mass Layoffs But Silent Layoffs)
We're witnessing a shift in platform dominance
Richard Stallman is Having a Good Week Already (Stallman Was Right About 'Clown Computing')
That alone is worth bringing up in his talk
An Update About Soylent News, With Jan Rinok "Back in the Saddle"
Burnout or "near burnout" a possibility when having to curate abuse
When Prominent GNU/Linux Distros Are Run by Spies
What has Microsoft Canonical become?
More Publishers and Companies Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux", Not "Linux"
It's not to see InstallAware saying GNU/Linux this week
Google News is Now Promoting a Parasitic Slopfarm Called "findarticles.com", Where Plagiarism of "Linux" Articles is Rampant
Does Google even care about the slop epidemic? Google itself is a vendor of slop now (and it calls it "Gemini")
Gemini Links 20/10/2025: Pumpkin Carving, "Hey Hi", and Other Buzzwords
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News Promoting Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
What is the value of Google News if so many results in it are fake 'articles?
Rejecting 'Snoop-Phones' and Turning "Old" Phones (or Tablets) Into Freedom-Respecting Appliances
Paul Fernhout (pdfernhout.net) wrote back to Akira Urushibatathis this past weekend
Our Uptime This Year Was Better Than AWS (Also a Lot Cheaper)
We never used "the cloud"
Amazon Web Shenanigans
An ongoing, experimental endeavour
Death of Elias Diem: FSFE mailing list archives hidden
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/10/2025: Louvre Museum Reveals Weakness, About 7 Million Protest US Turning Into Oligarchy/Monarchy
Links for the day
They Should Have Listened to Techrights Over a Month Earlier (Xubuntu Site Compromised)
we reported this issue about 40 days earlier and nobody did anything about it
Richard Stallman to Give Another Talk Today in Bavaria (Bavarian Academy of Science)
Tomorrow at 6 PM he speaks in Munich
Apple is the Company of Dictators and Worse
Apple is just another greedy corporation in search of sweatshops and even pedophiles (especially the high-profile ones)
Counting Unhatched Eggs Is Not Counting Chickens
Everything here will persist as normal
Barry Kauler Explains That Puppy Linux and EasyOS Exclude Systemd to Keep Things Simple
Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux is in the community's hands. He now focuses on EasyOS and more.
The "Infinite Bread"
The biblical story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 has software parallels
Half a Year After Brian Fagioli Got Kicked Out of BetaNews for Slop He's Still Doing LLM Slop and Slop Images Targeting 'Linux' (Plagiarising Original Works)
If the Web gets polluted or flooded by slopfarms such as these, and Slashdot then sends traffic so these slopfarms (Slashdot probably doesn't do this intentionally), then real writers with real knowledge of GNU/Linux will lose the spark for publishing
In Many Cases and in Many Different Ways, Technology Became Less Durable and Less Reliable Over Time
The "modern" things are more complex. And complexity is a foe or reliability and repair-ability.
Microsoft's LinkedIn is Losing Money, Traffic, and Hope; Now It Wants to Sell Its Users' Lifeblood (and Data)
Let this be a reminder of what social control media really is about
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 19, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 19, 2025
Campaign of FUD Against Framework Laptops and GNU/Linux (Using Microsoft's Attack on Linux, 'Secure Boot')
Ritual Defamation Cult has turned its attention over to Framework
Microsoft Lunduke: Freedom of Speech Means Spreading What I Have to Say and Banning People I Disagree With
4Chan is one he aims for and he is siccing 4Chan trolls at people he doesn't like
Liberation From 'The Feed'
They rank things based on the editor's choice/ideology (he or she knows the sponsors, hence the masters)
Microsoft's Killing of Vista 10 Seems to Have Resulted in More Articles About GNU/Linux (But Also FUD)
We not only saw a rise in traffic, we also saw a remarkable rise in the number of articles