Programming News Picks: Focus on Free Software
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-16 23:26:19 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-16 23:26:19 UTC
Summary: 2014 news picks that focus on programming and development, especially of Free software or using Free software tools
Demise of Proprietary
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HTML5 developers queried recently by tools vendor Sencha remain dedicated to building apps via Web technologies, even as doubts have been cast on how effective HTML5 is vis à vis native development. Many of those same developers, however, have dropped support for the classic Microsoft Windows platform.
Surveying 2,128 business application developers from the HTML5 development community, including users of its own tools, Sencha found that 70-plus percent of developers planned to do more with HTML5 in the 2013 timeframe than they had done the previous year. And 75 percent will work further with HTML5 in 2014. More than 60 percent of developers have migrated to HTML5 and hybrid development for primary applications. For the coming year, just 4 percent of HTML5 developers plan to cut back on HTML5.
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I still remember IBM's provocative announcement in 2001 that it was putting $1 billion toward the development and promotion of Linux. While such billion-dollar commitments from IBM are now so routine as to be unremarkable, back then a billion dollars meant a lot. I was working for an embedded Linux vendor at the time, and most of our sales cycle was spent explaining why GPL-licensed Linux wasn't the technology equivalent of terminal cancer. (Thanks in part to Microsoft's contribution.)
Google
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The second video features Jason Hibbets's full interview with Chris DiBona Open Source Director at Google. Find out how DiBona measures his performance, why he once called open source "brutal," and more on working for Google and the future of open source.
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Over 280 attendees representing 177 mentoring organizations gathered for a two-day, code-munity extravaganza celebrating the conclusion of Google Summer of Code with the annual Mentor Summit held at Google in Mountain View, California.
GitHub
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GitHub's position as the repository of choice for open source community projects is today one of dominance, most would argue.
Officially often referred to as a "web-based revision control service" (rather than simply a software code repository), this classification is an obvious nod to the site's inherent level of active community involvement as open projects are continuously developed, refined and augmented.
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So, what’s the problem? Well, that’s simple. It seems that Fox News’ technology department –run by a motley crew of half-witted quick-study-types– failed to explain GitHub, and also disregarded both spelling and punctuation in favor of adopting what I would describe as a rogue journalistic style; a style that exists far beyond the confines of traditional English language rules. It is now with great pleasure that I flog the holy-hell out of the following screen capture in an attempt to make them cry.
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I have an open source script for a specific site (I'm trying not to call anything by name here) that a few other developers and I recently moved to GitHub. We've been joined by several new developers since we moved to the new system, including one very active one in particular. However, this active one has started changing a lot of the project.
First of all, he deleted our versioning system (not like Git, but like that—we called it versions v4.1.16) and said it would be better to simply push the code to the site when we think it's ready. Now there's no centralized place to put release notes, which has become annoying.
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GitHub has become the de facto repository for open source projects. So, we were excited for the opportunity to sit down with GitHub's co-founder and CIO Scott Chacon during the All Things Open Conference in Raleigh, NC.
Python
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One year ago the Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (prPIG) was founded on one purpose; to create a sustainable user community based on software development in Puerto Rico. On February 20, 2014 we will celebrate our first anniversary with an open format meeting with lightning talks from the community.
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Programming languages are crucial to a programmer as they boosts their productivity. Keeping in mind the fact that programmers may not be comfortable with all the coding languages around, we thought of compiling a list of programming languages set to make it big in 2014.
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Python community, friends, fellow developers, we need to talk. On December 3rd, 2008 Python 3.0 was first released. At the time it was widely said that Python 3 adoption was going to be a long process, it was referred to as a five year process. We've just passed the five year mark.
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In an article entitled “Python Displacing R As The Programming Language For Data Science,” MongoDB’s Matt Asay made an argument that has been circulating for some time now. As Python has steadily improved its data science credentials, from Numpy to Pandas, with even R’s dominant ggplot2 charting library having been ported, its viability as a real data science platform improves daily. More than any other language in fact, save perhaps Java, Python is rapidly becoming a lingua franca, with footholds in every technology arena from the desktop to the server.
Git
LLVM
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It looks like there's finally going to be stable point releases of the LLVM compiler infrastructure for pushing out bug-fixes quicker, whether you're using the Clang C/C++ compiler or depending upon LLVM for your GPU driver compiler back-end.
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It's nearly one month late but the LLVM 3.4 compiler infrastructure is now available with the updated Clang C/C++ compiler front-end, the usual LLVM sub-projects, and also some new compiler tools.
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The release of LLVM 3.4 is imminent and with the major compiler infrastructure upgrade comes update to the Clang C/C++ compiler front-end, LLDB debugger, and other LLVM sub-projects. LLVM 3.4 is a very righteous release and in celebration of its forthcoming release, it's back into compiler benchmarking season at Phoronix.
Ruby
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Ruby 2.1 has many improvements including speedup without severe incompatibilities.
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The Ruby project has done a new major release on Christmas for their popular programming language. Ruby offers performance speed-ups but without severe incompatibilities, according to the release announcement.
Misc.
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Regular readers of this column won't be surprised to hear that I love both Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL. Rails has been my primary server-side Web development framework for about eight years, and it has managed to provide solutions for a large number of consulting and personal projects. As for PostgreSQL, I've been using it for about 15 years, and I continue to be amazed by the functionality it has gained in that time. PostgreSQL is no longer just a relational database. It's also a platform supporting the storage and retrieval of many types of data, built on a rock-solid, ACID-compliant, transactional core.
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In the sometimes dark and mysterious world of computers, I see open source programming and community around it as a force of good. Open source sparks and kindles a connection between people that I think is hard to find elsewhere in programming. Working with open source, a programmer builds important and powerful collaboration skills. This is significant because many of us (programmers and self-proclaimed nerds) are rather antisocial. Open source programming helps us cultivate social behaviors like sharing, improved communication, and collaborating towards a common goal.
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So by the mid-1980s, programming in schools was surging...
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The Checkpoint-Restore Tool has reached version 1.0 as part of the CRIU project. Checkpoint/Restore In Userspace allows for users to freeze running applications and checkpoint it to the hard drive as a file and that checkpoint can then be restored to a running process later on. CRIU is different from suspend-and-resume with the Linux kernel in that this is a tool for handling individual programs and it is implemented in user-space.
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The development team behind the Clutter software, a library for creating compelling, portable, dynamic and fast graphical user interfaces (GUI), has announced a few days ago that the second maintenance release of the stable Clutter 1.16 branch is available for download.
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Jim Kukunas of Intel OTC published the set of 13 patches on Monday that include medium and quick deflate strategies, a faster hash function with SSE 4.2 support, PCLMULQDQ-optimized CRC folding, SSE2 hash shifting, and other changes/tuning.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Reddit as a Hive of Trolls, Social Control Media Curated (Many Voices Censored and Banned) by Marketing Firm of GAFAM
- Typical Reddit
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part III - Women Failing Women to Help Violent Americans From Microsoft
- Summed up, SRA will gladly prioritise the "legal industry" over women strangled, raped etc
- The World Gets Smaller, as Does Its Real Economy ('Human Resources') and So-called 'Natural Resources' (What Humans Call the Planet)
- Don't talk about "AI"
- Converting FOSDEM Talk on Software Patents in Europe Into Formats That Work for "FOS" and Don't Have Software Patent Traps
- transcoded version of the video
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- Mozilla Firefox Sinks to Just 1.5% in the United States
- According to analytics.usa.gov
- We're Still Fast
- The site is even faster than the BBC's despite being on shoestring budget with only a small technical team
- Gemini Protocol is Not a Waste of Time of Effort
- We see more and more GNU/Linux- or BSD-focused bloggers turning to Gemini
- Our Gemini Protocol Support Turns 5 Today
- today is a rare anniversary for us
- In Today's World, One Must be Tough and Principled to Get Ahead Morally
- But not financially (sellouts)
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 07, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, February 07, 2026
- The Right Wing in the United States Does Not Support Free Speech, It Supports Its Own Speech
- Free speech is often opposed by those who also oppose Free software
- IRC is a Lot Better Than Social Control Media (They're Not the Same at All)
- A good social analogy for IRC is, there are many buildings with a party in each building
- Microsoft 'Open' 'AI' is 'Dead Meat'
- Or 0xDEADBEEF as some geeks might call it
- When Identifying "Low Performers" and "PIPs" Aren't About Improving Performance But Reinforcing a Clique in Your Company/Organisation
- It's very troubling to see once-respectable brands like IBM and institutions like the EPO resorting to this
- Slop and Flop (IBM), Slopfarms and Hybrids (Linuxiac)
- Did Bobby Borisov assume he would never get caught?
- Crowdfunding vs Bitcoins: donations are better investment than digital tulip mania
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 07/02/2026: Misinformation by Slop, Overrated Slop Causes Stock Market Panic
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/02/2026: Diode Function Generators and Panic Over Buzzwords and Slop
- Links for the day
- A Can of WORMS - Part III - Envying the Influence and Accomplishments of RMS, Socially Deleterious Attacks on Popular Movements
- the actions are deliberate and coordinated, not some 'organic' or grassroots behaviour
- Crisis teams assembled as financial regulators anticipate Bitcoin implosion
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 07/02/2026: More White House Racism, "Europe Accuses TikTok of Addictive Design"
- Links for the day
- Silent Mass Layoffs: It's Not the Revolution, It's the Loophole and the Hack ("Low Performers" or "Underperformers")
- Layoffs by another approach
- Mark Shuttleworth (MS) Pays Salaries to Microsoft (MS) Employees
- Canonical selling Microsoft
- Links 07/02/2026: Windows TCO Rising, Lousy Patents Invalided
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Leadership: Stop Taxing Us, Tax Only Poor People
- Does Microsoft create jobs?
- Biggest "AI Companies" (Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft) Borrowed (Additional Debt) About $100,000,000,000 in a Year
- Who will be held accountable for all this?
- In Case You've Missed It (ICYMI), Google's Debt More Than Doubled in a Year
- Wait till it "monetises" billions of GMail users with slop
- In 2009 Microsoft Was Valued at ~150 Billion Dollars, Now They Tell Us Microsoft Lost ~1,000 Billion Dollars in Value. Does That Make Sense?
- Or Microsoft lost 700 billion dollars in "value" in less than two weeks
- PIPs and Silent Layoffs at IBM (and Red Hat) Still Going on, It's "Forever Layoffs" (to Skirt the WARN Act)
- American workers out
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 06, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, February 06, 2026
- Stressful Times for Team Campinos ("Alicante Mafia") at Europe's Second-Largest Institution
- Keep pushing
- Growing Discrimination in the European Patent Office (EPO)
- it's a race to the bottom, basically
- Google News Drowning in (or Actively Promoting) Slopfarms Again
- LLM slop is a nuisance
- Microsoft Stock Crashed When Alleged Vista 11 Numbers Disclosed
- And last summer Microsoft indicated that it had lost 400 million Windows users
- Gemini Links 07/02/2026: "Choosing a License for Literary Work" and "Social Media Is Not Social Networking (Anymore)"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 06/02/2026: Git and Email Patches; MNT Pocket Reform
- Links for the day
- Geminispace Net Growth in 2026 About a Capsule a Day
- A pace like this means net gain of ~300 per year, i.e. about the same as last year
- It's Not About Speed, It's About the Message (or Its Depth)
- Better to write news than to just link to news if there's commentary that the news may merit
- Benjamin Henrion Warned About the Illegal and Unconstitutional Unified Patent Court (UPC) in FOSDEM 2026
- Listen to Benjamin Henrion
- Economies Crashing Not Because of Slop Improving 'Efficiency' (That's a False Excuse) and 'Expensive' (Read: Qualified) Workers Discarded in Race to the Bottom
- Actual cocaine addicts are pushing out moral people
- IBM's CEO Speaks of Layoffs, Resorts to Mythical (False) Excuses
- This has nothing to do with slop
- Links 06/02/2026: Voter Intimidation and Press Shutdowns in US, Web Traffic Warped by LLM Sludge
- Links for the day
- Does Linux Torvalds Regret Having Dinners With Bill 'Russian Girls' Gates?
- See, the rules that govern the Linux Foundation and its big sponsors aren't the same rules that apply to all of us
- IBM: Cheapening Code, Cheapening Staff, Cheapening Everything
- IBM's management runs IBM like it's a local branch of McDonald's. IBM is a junk company with morbid innards.
- GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in One of the World's Largest Nations
- Democratic Republic Of The Congo
- Linux Foundation Operative Says We and Our Software All "Owe an Enormous Debt of Gratitude" to a Software Patents Reinforcer
- The only true solution is to entirely get rid of all software patents
- Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part IV - EPO Can Get Away With Murders, Suicide Clusters, and Systematic and Prolonged Bullying by 'Team Campinos' ("Alicante Mafia" as Insiders Call It)
- Nobody in the Council or the EU/EC/EP gives a damn as long as laws are broken to fabricate 'growth'
- Jeff Bezos Isn't Just Killing the Washington Post, He's Killing Thousands of News Sites/Newsrooms (in Dozens of Languages) That Rely on It for Many Decades Already
- Not just slopfarms; even the Ukraine-based reporters are culled by Bezos, who's looking to please the dictators of the world
- Central Staff Committee Confronted António Campinos for Giving His Cocaine-Addicted Friend Over 100,000 Euros to Do Nothing, Just Pretend to be Ill, While Cutting the Salaries of Everybody Else
- "On the agenda: Amicale framework & Financial assistance for courses"
- How to Win Lawsuits in 5 Simple Steps
- Keep issuing threats every week and send 60 kilograms of legal papers to the target
- More Than 99% of "AI" Companies Aren't AI, They're Pure BS
- We need to discard those stupid debates about "AI" and reject media that gets paid to participate in such overt narrative control (manipulation like The Register MS)
- AI Used to Save Lives, Now "AI" is a Grifting Scheme That Burns the Planet and Will Crash the Economy
- What the media calls "AI" (it gets paid to call it that) is the same stuff that could instead be dubbed "algorithms"
- Living in Freedom When 'False Flag Operations' Like EFF Get Captured by Billionaires to Take Freedom Away
- There are many ways to think of Software Freedom
- Amutable is a Microsoft Siege Against Freedom in GNU/Linux, Just Like the People Who Brought You 'Secure Boot' Controlled by Microsoft
- Do whatever is possible to avoid Amutable and its "products"
- Growing Focus on Publication
- Over the past ~10 days we always served more than a million Web hits per day
- "Going to be a large number of Microsoft layoffs announced soon"
- Everybody knows a giant wave of layoffs is coming Microsoft's way
- End of the 'GPU Bubble' and NVIDIA Finally Admits It Won't Bail Out Microsoft OpenAI Anymore
- circular financing (financial/accounting fraud)
- Corrupt Media Won't Hold Accountable Rich People for Role in Pedophilia
- Journalistic misconduct or malpractice is a real thing
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 05, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, February 05, 2026
- EPO Management ("Alicante Mafia") Not Properly Sharing Information on Scale of Strikes by EPO Staff
- disproportionate (double) deductions in salaries against people who participate in strikes, which are protected by law
- Gemini Links 06/02/2026: Slop/Microslop, Home Assistant, and Valid Ex Commands
- Links for the day
- Blackmail evidence: Debian social engineering exposed in ClueCon 2024 talk on politics
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Bitcoin crash: opportunity or the end game?
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Changes at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
- SRA is basically a waste of money
- Claims That IBM Will Lay Off 20% (or 15%) of Its Workforce This Year Unless It Finds a Way to Push Them All Out by Threats, Shame, Guilt
- Where are the articles about IBM layoffs?
- IBM Isn't a Serious Company Anymore, It's a Ponzi Scheme Operated by a Clique and It Misuses Companies It Acquires to Prop Up or Legitimise the Scheme
- IBM seems like it's nothing but a "Scheme"
- Google News Drowning in Slop About "Linux" (Slopfarms Galore)
- Google should know better than to link to any of these slopfarms, but today's Google is itself a pusher of slop