05.24.13

Links 24/5/2013: Fedora ‘Pidora’, CIvil Rights Debated in the US

Posted in News Roundup at 10:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • LinkSmart’s Low-Cost, Big Data Plan with Linux and MapR

    LinkSmart’s audience and link management platform for publishers was built with big data at its core. So when management decided to migrate the cloud-based application to their own hardware, there was no question it would be completely powered by Linux.

    Linux-based infrastructure allows the 3-year-old startup to cut costs, both by avoiding the licensing fees of proprietary systems and by tapping the community’s collective knowledge base instead of paying for expensive support contracts, said CTO Manny Puentes.

  • LinkSmart’s Low-Cost, Big Data Plan with Linux and MapR

    LinkSmart’s audience and link management platform for publishers was built with big data at its core. So when management decided to migrate the cloud-based application to their own hardware, there was no question it would be completely powered by Linux.

    Linux-based infrastructure allows the 3-year-old startup to cut costs, both by avoiding the licensing fees of proprietary systems and by tapping the community’s collective knowledge base instead of paying for expensive support contracts, said CTO Manny Puentes.

  • Linux-Based Education OS Gets New Features
  • GNU/Linux Is Important After All

    If I was the type to have heroes, Richard Stallman would be near the top of my list, not far below John Lennon and Abbie Hoffman, and way out ahead of Tom Hayden or the several-times-over reinvented Bob Dylan, though the freewheeling Bob Dylan who took it down Highway 61 will always be near the top of the list.

  • Desktop

    • HP And Operating Systems

      Little by little, OEMs are coming to the realization that if they don’t sell FLOSS, someone else will do it. Being an M$-only OEM is no longer good business.

    • USA Too

      GNU/Linux had a huge double spike, doubling ~April 15 and again on May 18. What’s with that? It’s bigger than possible with most organizations. Could it possibly be Dell’s selling Ubuntu GNU/Linux? How could that shift display itself overnight like that?

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Digia launches Boot to Qt technology preview
      • Introducing Boot to Qt – A Technology Preview
      • Digia Announces “Boot To Qt” Project

        Digia has announced a new commercial endeavour that pairs a lightweight Qt stack atop an Android kernel/base operating system.

        Boot To Qt is Digia’s new solution for developing “slick user interfaces on embedded devices.” This new stack consists of a UI component driven by thr Qt Framework, ready-made developer images, full Qt Creator integration, and a VirtualBox-based simulator. Android is being used as the base layer to the OS.

      • KDE 4.11 Will Be The Last Major KDE4 Workspaces Feature Release

        For those that didn’t hear already, KDE 4.11 will be the last Plasma Workspaces feature release in the KDE4 series and this upcoming version will be maintained for a period of two years.

      • Pre-order Akademy 2013 T-shirt
      • A rich python console and more in Kate editor

        I have done some improvements in the plugins: python_console_ipython, python_autocomplete, python_utils, js_utils, xml_pretty and django_utils. These plugins I added a month and a half ago (except python_console_ipython) to the kate repository. I have done two improvements and a new feature:

      • Plasma Workspaces to go into feature freeze with version 4.11

        KDE developer and Plasma team leader Aaron Seigo has announced that version 4.11 of Plasma Workspaces will be a long term support (LTS) release. Seigo says the developers are close to a feature freeze for the next version of KDE’s desktop shell and that, once Plasma Workspaces 4.11 is released, there will be no more feature developments in this branch. However, as part of their stabilisation releases, the developers will provide bug fixes and translation updates for two years after the 4.11 release.

  • Distributions

    • Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

      A recent poll on Hacker News asking about Linux distributions of choice got me thinking, what can can we learn from a bigger picture of the distro landscape than a single HN poll? I went looking around and dug up a couple of other sources of information — Linux Journal’s annual reader’s choice awards, and data from Google Trends.

      What makes these three particular choices interesting is that they span a broad swathe of user types, from the hacker (Hacker News) to the enthusiast (Linux Journal) to the “average” Linux user (Google). That means we can learn from the trends across these three user types — considering which communities may be more predictive or more technical vs which represent broader adoption today.

    • Zorin OS 7 Release Candidate out now

      Pre-release version of Zorin OS 7 Core available for testing, the RC including Linux Kernel 3.8 and an overhauled graphical interface

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Pidora, Raspberry Pi’s Unfortunately Named Fedora Remix

          Unfortunately, while Pidora looks to be a very interesting distribution for the Raspberry Pi, with many features taking advantage of the board’s unique properties, the Fedora team made one critical error during its development: they forgot to Google their intended name.

          As it turns out, Pidora has a rather embarrassing meaning to some members of the community: in Russian, “pidora” is a derogatory word for a male homosexual. It’s closest translation into English would be “faggot”.

        • Raspberry Pi’s Fedora becomes Pidora

          Fedora and the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology released an optimized Fedora 18 Remix for the Raspberry Pi, and unveiled a new name for the remix. “Pidora 18,” based on a new build of Fedora optimized for ARMv6, features speedier performance and includes packages from the Fedora 18 package set, says the Pidora project team.

        • Pidora: Fedora Linux for the Raspberry Pi ARMs Up (Thanks to Seneca)

          You can now add another Linux distro to the list that will run on the Raspberry Pi. The core distro for the small device is the Debian based Raspian and there is also an Arch based Linux for the Pi too.

        • Meet Pidora: A Custom Version of Fedora for Raspberry Pi

          As the diminutive $25/$35 Linux-based Raspberry Pi devices continue to contribute to imaginative applications, they’re also emerging as shining examples of new ways Linux can be deployed. Tinkerers have already put all flavors of Linux on the devices, and now, Fedora and the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology (CDOT) have announced the release of Pidora 18, a custom version of Fedora specifically for the Raspberry Pi. Here is more on it.

        • Fedora Project Announces Pidora Remix for Raspberry Pi

          The Fedora Project has been supporting Raspberry Pi, the diminutive $35 computer, for some time. Today they’re making the Pidora “remix” of the core Fedora distribution available. Like the Raspbian distribution of Debian, Pidora is compiled specifically to take advantage of the hardware already built into the Raspberry Pi.

        • Fedora ‘Pidora’ now optimised for Raspberry Pi mini-computer

          The Raspberry Pi mini-computer is to be served with new “Pidora” build of Fedora packaged for ARMv6 architecture.

          NOTE: Fedora is a free and open source Linux-based operating system sponsored by Red Hat — it is typically classed as the second-most commonly used Linux distribution, after Ubuntu.

        • Pidora is Fedora Linux for the Raspberry Pi
        • Fedora Raspberry Pi remix reborn as Pidora
        • New Fedora Package Manager Still on Track
        • Review: Korora 18 “Flo” KDE

          That is where my time with Korora 18 “Flo” KDE ended. The odd error message in the installation of Skype may cause other people to reconsider entirely, which is why I can almost but not quite recommend Korora for newbies. Given the popularity of Skype and given that the helper package in the repositories conflicts with a core system package (making it useless now), it might be good if developers in that community could come together to write a more current tutorial on how to deal with Skype. Also, the stunted nature of Mupen64Plus means I wouldn’t use this for myself. But really, it only needs a tiny bit more work before I can comfortably recommend this.
          You can get it here.

        • Pidora 18 (Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix) Release
        • New Security Feature in Fedora 19 Part 3: Hard Link/Soft Link Protection

          It is surprising to most people who understand Linux and Unix that you are allowed to Hard Link to any file on the OS as long as it is on the same file system.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Build your own supercomputer out of Raspberry Pi boards

      Who says you need a few million bucks to build a supercomputer? Joshua Kiepert put together a Linux-powered Beowulf cluster with Raspberry Pi computers for less than $2,000.

    • Arduino Yun SBC adds Wifi, Linux to Leonardo features

      Arduino announced the first open source Arduino hacker board with built-in WiFi, and also the first to run Linux. The $69 Arduino Yún integrates the functions of an Arduino Leonardo, featuring an ATmega32u4 microcontroller and 14 GPIO pins, with an Atheros AR9331 WiFi SOC running OpenWRT embedded Linux on a 400MHz MIPS processor.

    • Introducing the BeagleBone Black’s Linux 3.8 kernel

      This guest column by BeagleBoard.org co-founder Jason Kridner introduces the BeagleBone Black’s cutting-edge Linux 3.8 kernel, up from the original BeagleBone’s 3.2 kernel. The new kernel incorporates a new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) display driver architecture, as well as full support for the Device Tree data structure introduced in Linux 3.7 in order to streamline ARM Linux development and hardware support.

    • BeagleBone Black ships, climbs Device Tree with Linux 3.8

      BeagleBoard.org has begun shipping its faster, cheaper “BeagleBone Black” SBC with a Linux 3.8 kernel, supporting Device Tree technology for more streamlined ARM development. The $45 BeagleBone Black runs Linux or Android on a 1GHz TI Sitara AM3359 SOC, doubles the RAM to 512MB, and adds a micro-HDMI port.

    • First Linux-Driven Arduino Board Reaches Out with WiFi

    • Phones

      • Ballnux

      • Android

        • Report: Android-related Projects Far Outpace iOS Projects

          The creation of new Android-related open source projects picked up in a big way in 2012, radically outpacing new iOS projects, according to data released by Black Duck Software. Black Duck manages and secures implementations of open source software, and has large samples of real-world data on open source software in use and in development. Its latest study shows that new Android mobile projects outstripped iOS projects by a factor of four in 2012, expanding by at least 96 percent in each year since 2007. New iOS project growth, by comparison, was 32 percent from 2011 to 2012.

        • Google’s Android Strategy For Smartphone Domination

          Many people will be quick to point out that it Google is a technology Company with lot of products. However, Google at heart is Advertising Company.

        • Google Is On A Mission To Make Android Developers Rich

          Google always wants developers to build apps for Android first and not iOS. Google I/O 2013 was developer’s paradise which showed that the company is committed to making tools that make things easy for developers.

          To attract developers into choosing Android as the first option, Google is striving to help them take full advantage of the Android Ecosystem to generate monetary profits for themselves. Android apps have come a long way and are at par with its iOS counterparts, therefore Google can now focus on optimising the ecosystem and innovate.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Intel Demo GNOME-Powered Tizen OS Ultrabook

        Tizen, the open-source Linux software platform aiming to power everything from smartphones to smart TVs, is seemingly coming to laptops.

        Intel demoed a Tizen laptop experience at the Tizen Conference 2013 in San Francisco, USA, earlier this month. And it wasn’t demoed on any old heap of hardware, either: Intel were showing off the OS newcomer on an i7 Ivybridge Ultrabook.

        The Tizen OS experience is powered by ‘Tizen Shell’ – a UI built upon GNOME-Shell.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source, cross-platform office suite Joeffice was created in just 30 days

    Called Joeffice, it works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux as well as in browsers, according to the developer, Anthony Goubard. It includes a very basic word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation program and database software, Goubard said.

  • ProjectLibre edges in on Microsoft Project dominance

    ProjectLibre is an open source project management solution ready to give Microsoft Project a run for their money.

  • Google Abandons Open Standards for Instant Messaging

    In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing “Talk” platform with a new one called “Hangouts” that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users.

  • Getting involved in Free Software
  • Open-source office suite written in Java

    The first open source office suite written in Java has been released by Japplis, a company based in the Netherlands.

  • New Maven plugins for simpler architecture management

    Macker, the second plugin, allows specific dependencies between packages to be defined and those rules to be automatically verified. The plugin is the result of observations by the company that targets for dependencies between packages set at the beginning of a project are often not met. Macker is a fork of software of the same name from Codehaus that hasn’t been updated since 2003. The forked plugin from andrena objects has been adapted to current versions of Java.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 22 Beta Ready To Test

        Keeping track of where Firefox is going is difficult given you have at least two horizons to keep your eyes on. Here we have a brief look at what to expect in Firefox 22, currently in beta and close to being rolled out.

        The big news in Firefox 22 is either WebRTC or asm.js depending on your particular interests.

        WebRTC isn’t new but now it is deemed stable enough to be on by default.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Pattern, Open Source Framework, Aims to Accelerate Analytics on Hadoop
    • Open Source Big Data: DataStax Expands Cassandra, Hadoop Business in Europe

      Big Data is becoming a big deal beyond the United States, and it’s time for the international channel to pay attention. The latest evidence: DataStax, which provides enterprise database management services based on open-source software. The company is making an aggressive push into the European market in what may be the first move toward a greater presence throughout the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region as a whole.

      DataStax, which is based in California and counts 20 Fortune 100 companies among its customers, distributes an integrated Big Data platform based on the open-source technologies Cassandra, Hadoop and Solr, all of which are developed by the Apache Foundation. It focuses on database scalability and reliability, and has been particularly innovative in the NoSQL trend.

  • Databases

    • Salesforce Nabs Open Source Database Guru for War on Oracle

      The grudge match between Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and his former protege Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, has reached legendary proportions in recent years. Ellison and Benioff pepper their speeches and interviews with not so subtle digs at each other’s companies, and Oracle even went so far as to cancel Benioff’s scheduled keynote at the Oracle Open World conference in 2011.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Single-board computers and software freedom

      Single-board computers (SBCs) are computers delivered as one circuit board that are powerful enough to run a real operating system. SBCs are typically inexpensive and versatile, making them an exciting tool for a wide range of applications, from education to scientific research. But there’s a problem; all of the SBCs currently available have major flaws — hardware that doesn’t work without running a nonfree program.

  • Programming

    • Google Code disables direct file downloads

      Google has announced that it will in future not allow direct file downloads from its Google Code hosting service. The company says that “increasing misuse” of the service has forced it to take the step in the interest of keeping the platform’s community “safe and secure”.

Leftovers

Bill Gates Still Getting Richer Through For-Profit Investments, Now Wants to Brainwash Children in Schools in Favour of His Investments

Posted in Bill Gates, Patents at 4:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Nice business model if you can get it, with obligatory taxpayers-funded lobbying to kids as part of it

Market movements

Summary: Some of the latest strategies used by the world’s richest man to protect his investments and amass yet more money, adding to an ever-growing wealth while pretending it’s a charity

The brainwash imposed by the Gates Foundation is not a new subject here. We have published a lot on this subject for over half a decade and we gave hundreds of examples. As a sort of corporation, with a market cap of nearly 100 billion dollars (or more), the Gates Foundation sure proves profitable. It is lobbying for Monsanto (Gates invests in this abusive monopolist [1, 2, 3, 4]) and other monopolistic enterprises that privatise what’s public, e.g. nature’s yields. Right now this monstrous body is trying to privatise US education (probably over half a trillion of taxpayers' money per year) and it is not alone although it is a clear leader in this vicious, greedy campaign of wealth passage from the poor to plutocrats. A good teachers’ blog known as Seattle Education has been slamming Gates for years, and this is coming from Seattle, i.e. near to Gates’ home (by some indications, Gates also eyes privatisation of British education when he finally around to it).

“As a sort of corporation, with a market cap is nearly 100 billion dollars or more, the Gates Foundation sure proves profitable.”“Propaganda fed to our children? Gates and his foundation are starting to feel the heat of controversy over his ideas of how public education should be managed as well as his investments in Monsanto. a company that produces GMO seeds. This pushback is happening in his own backyard and around the world,” says Dora Taylor, a lead writer in the teachers’ blog from Seattle. She is right and we saw this brainwashing/social programming for Monsanto before. Gates is investing (for profit) in this, so no wonder he spares some money to bribe schools in places like Hillsborough (see background in [1, 2]), bribing the education press and local press too (we gave a plethora of examples). It is a takeover, it’s a coup, but we mostly see public relations from the local press, stating nonsense like this lot: “Known in the school system as EET, the project is a massive undertaking, affecting some 15,000 employees. Long paid and promoted largely by seniority, teachers and administrators are making a transition to a system that rewards performance.”

No, it rewards Gates. This is not a charity, it is corporate takeover and we know whose stocks are affected. Gates’ lobbying front is acting like an investment corporations for oil, tobacco, etc. while masquerading bribes as ‘charity’ and paying no tax owing to posturing as a charity. It is a scam which feeds on media that opens its pockets/wallet in exchange for grooming/PR.

“It is a scam which feeds on media that opens its pockets/wallet in exchange for grooming/PR.”Here is the Irish paper which recently accused Gates of receiving bailout money from the Irish talking about Gates’ other investments. The Independent, says: “Filings for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which was set up for philanthropic purposes by Gates, show that it owned 49,000 shares in Paddy Power at the end of 2008. Those shares were worth just over €632,000 at the time. They would have risen more than fourfold in value to €3.1m by last week.”

Gates is an investor and lobbyist (for his investments), he is not a philanthropist and he does not give his money away. He is still getting a lot richer through his investments which he lobbies for (he got seven billion dollars richer last year alone) and he has just become the world’s richest man again [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], reminding us all that we are being bamboozled if we ever believe that this man is distributing his wealth among the world’s population. He is a propagandist, an investor in companies that harm society (see his portfolio), and an arrogant lobbyist who pushes hard for policies that devalue the working class. Do not admire those who are looting you, writing your legislation and then buying the press you read in order to seed self-serving coverage. █

Microsoft Entryism and Its Effects on Corporate and Public Policy

Posted in Bill Gates, Microsoft at 3:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Entryism (also referred to as entrism, occasionally as enterism) is a political strategy in which an organisation or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger organisation in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. In situations where the organization being “entered” is hostile to entrism, the entrists may engage in a degree of subterfuge to hide the fact that they are an organisation in their own right. In some cases the alleged entryists perceive themselves as supporters of a newspaper and not members of an organization.” –Wikipedia

The Hill

Summary: An aspect of Microsoft culture that ought not be overlooked because of its profound effect on society (private and public)

THE other day, a site owned by a former employer of mine said that “Bob Muglia, executive vice president of software solutions at Juniper Networks, is no stranger to the world of software. Muglia spent over two decades at Microsoft, where he helped define its software vision. Before joining Juniper in 2012, Muglia had been the president of Microsoft’s server and tools business.”

This is true, but there is a wider picture here. I am not chastising the author, who is actually one of the best FOSS-centric authors around. It just takes more guts to take journalism further. Prior to him joining Juniper the CEO of the company came from Microsoft and appointed many people around him (CxO level) from Microsoft. It was the same when it comes to VMware and Nokia (to a lesser degree in the latter). It didn’t take long for Juniper to spread Linux/Android FUD and for Nokia to attack Linux/Android with patents. The important thing here is this: it can be framed as a matter of entryism, where one earns a position of power (sometimes in exchange for money, or bribe) and then surrounds him/herself with former colleagues.

“The ‘justice’ Motorola gets in Seattle is like the Justice Samsung can get in the US when the plaintiff, Apple, is US-based.”This observation is particularly worth making in the context of the public sector. We often see the profound effects of putting a former Microsoft or Gates executive in charge of nonprofit institutions, including government institutions. It leads to legalisation of gross tax evasion by Microsoft and Gates and it influences competition or regulation policies. We gave dozens of examples over the years and it is hard to choose and highlight any particular one.

Not too long ago a discriminatory (Microsoft-only) government procurement policy was challenged by ESOP [1, 2], resulting in this press release. It is likely, although not trivial to prove, that here too some kind of bribe was involved, or at least a case of entryism.

It should be noted that not only Microsoft benefits from tax evasion loopholes Apple too does it and there are many reports about it, e.g. this one (there have been dozens more this week). Apple is at least as bad as Microsoft in many areas and Apple fans are reportedly not as happy about their “iPhones” as they were before. On the FRAND front, Apple and Microsoft work together against Android, with Microsoft relying on bias in Seattle [1, 2] courts (many in positions of power in Seattle came from Microsoft and reporters in the area try trial by media, in Microsoft’s favour of course). This summer it will be Seattle residents involved in this trial too. As Pamela Jones put it: “The next phase of the Microsoft v. Motorola litigation in Seattle will begin on August 26th. It will be a jury trial, as Motorola requested. I hope some of you are nearby and can attend. This will be the part about Microsoft’s claims of breach of contract based on its assertion that Motorola violated a RAND contract by its opening bid being allegedly too high.” The ‘justice’ Motorola gets in Seattle is like the Justice Samsung can get in the US when the plaintiff, Apple, is US-based [1, 2]. █

Red Hat Should Follow Google’s and Twitter’s Footsteps on Patents to Avoid Becoming the Next Novell

Posted in Patents, Red Hat at 3:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A message to Rob Tiller and his team

Rob Tiller
Official Rob Tiller photo from Red Hat’s Web site

Summary: Red Hat continues to ignore my plea to defang the software patents it is applying for, potentially making them weaponised like Novell’s and Sun’s patents (e.g. Java at Oracle) upon buyout or another major event

THE previous post talked about how The Guardian deceives readers when it comes to patents. It deceives readers in many other areas, pretending to be a “guardian”. Anyway, since The Guardian considers Twitter to be news, let’s recall Twitter‘s promise to make patents defensive (we already urged Red Hat to follow suit too) — a fact which The Guardian would prefer you did not know as that would weaken the smear against Kim Dotcom. It would ruin the narrative of Dotcom as a ruthless outlaw.

“Everyone should appeal, petition, and politely approach Red Hat on this subject until the danger is addressed.”The news from The Guardian and other Dotcom-hostile entities, e.g. CBS, followed this timely reminder/news (covered by ZDNet, part of CBS also), which says “Twitter has applied its new innovator’s agreement for the first time to a patent on a ‘pull down to refresh trigger’.”

Twitter has devised a licence of some kind and Google did this too (we had called for it), perhaps with Twitter’s inspiration. If Red Hat pursues software patents — and it does — then it should do what Twitter did. Otherwise, if Red Hat gets sold for instance, its patents will become chaos. I already told this to several people like Tiller, even years ago*. They did nothing, so their patents are as safe as Novell’s (first in OIN, then CPTN). Everyone should appeal, petition, and politely approach Red Hat on this subject until the danger is addressed. It’s not as though Red Hat is ignorant about it, this strategic choice is very conscious (it is beneficial only to Red Hat, but bad for FOSS) and Red Hat does not get enough PR damage for it, so nothing is changing. █
____
* It should be noted that when Red Hat’s PR was contacting me and even getting me in touch with their truly cool CEO I came to discover how unresponsive and even arrogant Red Hat’s legal team can be; they were the only ones never to respond to my polite queries, which I relayed through their PR department persistently, leaving even the PR reps rather embarrassed by lack of transparency from the lawyers in the company.

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