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03.16.12

Links 16/3/2012: GNOME 3.4 Beta 2, Cinnamon 1.4

Posted in News Roundup at 4:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 65 Open Source Replacements for Security Software
  • A golden age of open source innovation?

    Open source’s ability to innovate has been challenged many times. But Glyn Moody argues that open source innovation is actually going from strength to strength, creating new opportunities to deliver cheap computing to people corporations would not normally consider.

  • Computer Aided Design the FLOSS way: An Interview with Franz Reiter, lead developer of gCAD3D

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Cranks Firefox to 11
      • Thunderbird 11 has been released! PPA Ubuntu 11.10 & LinuxMint
      • Mozilla struggles with Firefox for Windows 8 Metro development

        Mozilla’s Brian Bondy said the outfit did some preliminary work on getting a basic application working in Metro. However Bondy complained of poor documentation on Microsoft’s part and a general lack of public knowledge, saying, “To get started we read the MSDN whitepaper entitled Developing a Metro style enabled Desktop Browser. This document lacked quite a bit of information though so a lot of registry hacking was needed to get things working. Jim [Mathies] and I documented a lot of this missing information….”

      • Now You Can Chat From Thunderbird

        Thunderbird, the popular email client, has added chat support for future versions. The feature was introduced in the daily builds of Thunderbird. I am running 14.x series on Kubuntu.

      • Silent Updates Are Coming to Firefox in Version 12

        Back in December, we covered a blog post from Ehsan Akhgari, a Firefox engineer, which discussed work on what could eventually become an essential part of delivering silent updates to the Firefox browser. If you’re a Google Chrome user, you may already appreciate the fact that updates to the browser happen in the background, and now, according to a post on the Mozilla Hacks blog, background updates are coming to Firefox. Not every user is going to be happy with the news, though.

  • SaaS

    • Hadoop Training Is Easy to Get, Online or Offline
    • Is the OpenStack Foundation All about Big Money?

      An interesting argument and McKenty knows alot more OpenStack than I do. That said, I think that McKenty is wrong.

      You need to look no farther than the Apache Software Foundation to see how this dual system of money and meritocracy can work. The Apache Software Foundation takes big money from vendors like Microsoft, who yield little influence on development. Development is managed by The Apache Way of meritocracy and it works. The Eclipse Foundation has a similar model that has also worked well.

      So yes, you can have big money and a meritocracy for developers too.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Brand Confusion

      I cannot pinpoint accurately what caused to inflate the whole issue, but it seems that some at Apache OpenOffice (incubating) would like to stress that there are the rightful continuation of the now defunct OpenOffice.org project, to the point of showing outright hostility to LibreOffice. They base their claims upon the following elements:

      * they own the OpenOffice.org domain name
      * they own the trademark of OpenOffice.org
      * they must be the right heirs of OpenOffice.org since the Apache incubating project they’re contributing to was born out of the will of the copyright holder (Oracle) through its donation to the Apache Software Foundation.

    • Update on Apache OpenOffice

      Not too long ago, many, yours truly included, thought that OpenOffice was dead. That opinion was informed by the decision the major Linux distributions made to replace OpenOffice.org, as it was known at that time, with LibreOffice, the new office suite forked from OpenOffice.org by its former contributors.

      If this is all news to you, here is a brief recap of what happened. OpenOffice.org was a Sun Microsystems-sponsored project. It was, then, the most popular office suite, as it was pre-installed on almost all Linux and BSD desktop distributions. Then something happened. And that “something” was the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc. by Oracle Corporation.

    • IBM on Licensing OpenOffice.org

      Clearly Heintzman does not get FLOSS. The GPL, for instance is a licence, not a contract, so one it not “contractually obliged to do anything”. One is permitted to copy by a licence from the creators under the conditions laid out by the GPL. OpenOffice.org ships under a mixture of licences for different parts of the code, reflecting its long history and huge number of contributors.

      He never does get around to explaining why IBM chose Apache/ASL licensing except to state that IBM chose it. He certainly does not explain why IBM went with the code contributed to Apache instead of the code forked to LibreOffice and the greater numbers of contributors if they were interested in “community”. OpenOffice.org has yet to make an ASL release while LibreOffice is chugging away making release after release and doing well while OpenOffice.org is still under code review years later.

    • LibreOffice 3.5.1 Is Now Available for Download

  • CMS

    • Drupal, Joomla and WordPress face challenges in Germany

      Last week, I attended CeBIT, the enormous technology trade fair that takes place every March in Hanover, Germany. This year, as I walked through the building devoted to content management and other enterprise technologies, I spied a booth with Drupal, WordPress, Joomla and TYPO3. All except for the latter are well known in the United States, but I was surprised to find that those three are struggling to find market share in Germany.

      I found it remarkable that the three open-source web content management systems that are so popular in the United States were having trouble getting the same level of recognition in Germany.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • PulseAudio 2.0 Is Set To Be Released Very Soon

      While many Linux desktop enthusiasts still have nightmares concerning the early days of PulseAudio, the developers behind this common open-source audio server are planning to do a major 2.0 release before month’s end.

      PulseAudio has been found in major Linux distributions like Ubuntu going back to 2008, but it was only in September of 2011 that they hit the 1.0 status. Their next major release is now PulseAudio 2.0.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • The Code for America brigade effect

      Have you ever seen results from your community engagement and realized the impact of your efforts? We recently told you about the LocalWiki project and shared some of the results from the Triangle Wiki day event. But then our friends at Code for America took it a step further.

      The co-founders of LocalWiki were in the Code for America offices last week to see how they could build on the success of the Code Across America event. They took the data–633 page edits, 100 maps, and 138 new photos–and amplified it.

    • GCC 4.7 RC2 Released; The State Of C99 Support

      The second release candidate of GCC 4.7 is available today for those wishing to try out this open-source compiler that will be officially released in the coming weeks. Separately, there’s also updated documentation concerning the state of the C99 language support.

    • The Prominent Changes For The GCC 4.7 Compiler

      With GCC 4.7 being released soon, new compiler benchmarks at Phoronix will be published in the coming weeks (beginning next week Monday), but for those wondering what’s different on the feature side, here’s a look.

      Most of the key GCC 4.7 features have already been talked about in a number of different Phoronix articles, but here’s a concise summary of what to expect from this open-source compiler collection.

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • A Response from Goldman Sachs

      The following letter to Goldman Sachs’ worldwide clients was issued today by Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein:

      Dear Goldman Client:

      By now, many of you have probably read the regrettable resignation letter published in today’s New York Times by former Goldman executive Greg Smith, explaining why he is leaving the firm after twelve years.

      In the letter, in which he excoriates Goldman and its practices, Mr. Smith comes across as a man of conscience, ideals, and high moral standards. And as you read his words, you no doubt asked yourself this troubling question: how could Goldman have hired such a person?

      At Goldman, we pride ourselves on our ability to scour the world’s universities and business schools for the finest sociopaths money will buy. Once in our internship program, these youths are subjected to rigorous evaluations to root out even the slightest evidence of a soul. But, as the case of Mr. Smith shows, even the most time-tested system for detecting shreds of humanity can blow a gasket now and then. For that, we can only offer you our deepest apology and the reassurance that one good apple won’t spoil the whole bunch.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

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