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
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 2 Out of 200: Detailed Timeline From 2012 (Attack on Reporters That Question Restricted Boot) to 2024 (Lawsuit Against Reporter and His Wife in Another Continent)
- we reproduce a document produced 2 years ago to give people more context and more facts
- GNU/Linux in Laptops/Desktops Still Matters, It's Likely the Only Way to Achieve Software Freedom
- Software Freedom requires all sorts of things at the "OS level"
- Madame Streisand Wanted to Censor The Web, Instead She 'Created' a New Term, "Streisand Effect"
- It is basically an own goal
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- Why Slop Will Flop - Part IV - We've Seen the End of It
- Some years ago they insisted blockchains would revolutionise everything
- Android is Proprietary 'Linux' and It Becomes More Malicious Over Time, Google Only Delayed What It Planned All Along
- Google is a proprietary software giant, GSoC is only a distraction and confusion
- Links 04/03/2026: Scam Altman Causes Chatbot Sub Numbers to Plunge, "Stocks Drop as Inflation Risk Emerges"
- Links for the day
- Why Slop Will Flop - Part III - Our Relationship With Slop (and Yours)
- I never - except inadvertently - "used" an LLM-based chatbot
- Why Slop Will Flop - Part II - Devil in the Details
- News sites or social control media sites which tolerate slop are digging their own grave
- Simpler Means Faster
- Do you know your bottlenecks?
- Gemini Links 04/03/2026: About a Missing Symbol and "Good Manners"
- Links for the day
- The Register MS Takes Money From Chinese Surveillance Threat to Promote a Ponzi Scheme
- "Sponsored by Huawei."
- Nicaragua's GNU/Linux Usage Measured at Over 8% by statCounter
- Nicaragua is a poor country, but it also has rich culture
- Why Slop Will Flop - Part I - Slop Fatigue Prevalent
- See, sooner or later people (audiences of colleagues) find out and as soon as they find out you are slopping, they will lose interest
- Links 04/03/2026: "The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling" and a call to "Nationalize Amazon"
- Links for the day
- Coming Soon: Evidence of Abuse in Our IRC Network
- IRC's freedom can sometimes be its 'weakness' if not properly guarded
- High GNU/Linux Adoption in Brunei Darussalam
- It's worth noting (or at least noticing) that Microsoft loses ground in some of the countries where the government contracts paid the most
- Media Blackout Reducing or Preventing Press Coverage of Microsoft Layoffs in 2026
- Worse yet, there will be gaslighting and deceit
- Gemini Links 04/03/2026: The Garnet Star, The Hunt, The SYN Attacks
- Links for the day
- The EPO's General Consultative Committee (GCC) Discussion Illuminates How Much Worse Things Have Gotten ("on Strike and Participated in the 'Meeting'")
- a videoconference - not a physical meeting - discussed EPO policies
- Free Software Foundation Supports Its Founder, Advertises His Talks in Switzerland
- When you suppress voices, assuming the reasons for suppression are bunk, it is always bound to backfire very badly
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 03, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, March 03, 2026
- Over 1,500 EPO Workers Went on Strike Last Week
- a new publication which celebrates some accomplishments of industrial actions and calls for further actions
- Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Failed to Detect Fraud in Law Firms... Until It Was Too Late
- Earlier today we contacted some more politicians about this and received mail from them as well
- Our EPO and IBM Coverage Bears Fruit
- In case insiders want to get in touch with us, please ensure or at least try doing so securely
- Defending Women Isn't a Crime, Everybody Can Agree on That
- Their culture is unlike ours
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part VI - Influx of Spaniards and Portuguese Workers (+77%) at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, Led by the 'Alicante Mafia'
- There is now data supporting this assertion, new and complete data in fact
- Links 03/03/2026: "Scam Altman in Damage Control" and Oil Traffic Disrupted
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/03/2026: Phones, LLMs, and Changes on the Web
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman Confirms Talk in Bern Next Week
- Dr. Stallman has just formally confirmed his third talk this month in Switzerland
- Nobody is Safe at IBM (or Red Hat)
- There is no job security at IBM
- GNU/Linux at All-Time High in Guam
- there are many computers in that island
- Bad faith: Hugo Roy knew FSFE impersonating FSF before French tribunal, colleagues deceived
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 1 Out of 200: Claim No. KB-2024-001270 in a Nutshell
- abuse of process by a law firm working for an American who was arrested for strangling women and another American whose own spouse calls a "rapist"
- When EPO Team Managers (TMs) Are Harassing People Who Strictly Apply the European Patent Convention (EPC) in Patent Examination
- There are two strikes planned for this month
- Confirmed: Using Slop Gets You Fired
- Let the story of Benj Edwards be a cautionary tale
- Links 03/03/2026: "No one wants to read your AI slop" and "chatbots in the kill chain"
- Links for the day
- EPO and "Equivalent to More Than 100 Days of Strike"
- The industrial actions continue and already have a positive effect
- Streisand Effect, the Microsoft Way
- Microsoft has once again proven the Streisand Effect
- Keeping Track of IBM Layoffs in March 2026
- IBM depends on bribery
- GNU/Linux Measured at 7% in Yemen
- Windows is too hostile and dangerous
- Links 03/03/2026: Security Breaches, Iceland Wants EU Membership, and "Wall Street–Backed Lawmakers Want to Help Banks Gouge You"
- Links for the day
- Queensland Health Payroll System: IBM billion-dollar-blowout inquiry
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 02, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, March 02, 2026
- Gemini Links 03/03/2026: GrapheneOS and Keyboard Shortcuts
- Links for the day
- Tomorrow should be sunny (at long last!) and a generally productive dayProductive Week Ahead
- Tomorrow should be sunny (at long last!) and a generally productive day
- Only One Slopfarm Seems to Have Targeted "Linux" Today
- It certainly does feel like the slop hype is reaching the "late life crisis" and companies that benefited from this bubble are overdue for a day of reckoning
- Microsoft Mass Layoffs: Being Sacked at 1AM in the Morning
- Watch what happens to Microsoft employees who get pregnant
- Links 02/03/2026: More Social Control Media Bans, Climate Change Woes, and "Journalist With Germany's Deutsche Welle Arrested in Turkey"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 02/03/2026: Small Phones, "I 3D Printed My Brain", and "Managing 5 Servers at Once with tmux"
- Links for the day
- IBM is Trying to Hide Mass Layoffs, Not Only With NDAs and 'Scripted' LinkedIn Posts
- From what we can gather (screenshot above), today many people leave IBM and Red Hat
- Richard Stallman is Giving a Public Talk This Week (Friday in Lucerne School of Computer Science and Information Technology)
- His birthday is just around the corner.
- Windows Falls to New Low in World's Largest Population (India)
- Windows is now down to 7%
- Never Miss a Good Opportunity to Shut Up and Drink Coffee
- Threats come at a cost; each time you issue a threat you stigmatise yourself as a bully
- Last Month Matthew Garrett Said Ridiculous Things After His Spouse Had Called Him a "Rapist", Now He's Trying to Take the Site Offline and Put My Family in Prison
- The real issue of concern to him (and his alleged reputation) is the spouse and the matter is to be dealt with in America, not the UK
- Machine-Generated Legal Documents, Over 2,000 Pages Sent to Us Today Alone
- We now know that the papers we receive are produced using bots (algorithms)
- Reporting to Our Politicians/MPs the Failure of the SRA to Stop Hired Guns Who Help Americans (Men Who Attack Women and Nowadays Also Attack British Reporters)
- About a month ago my wife wrote to politicians to get the ball rolling
- The Topic Many People Don't Want to Talk or Write About
- "DEI" is inherently about making racial and gender patterns better reflect society's
- XBox is Virtually Dead Already, What Next Will Die at Microsoft?
- Now that there are mass layoffs at Microsoft datacentres it is not premature to speculate about what dies after XBox
- For the First Time, statCounter Measures Internet Explorer at 0.01% "Market Share"
- What Microsoft replaced it with is just a Chrome clone with extra spyware
- Was a Lot of "Windows" and "Unknown" in Iran Just GNU/Linux in Disguise?
- more than 1 in 10 desktop/laptop requests is estimated to be GNU/Linux
- "Here in the UK, GNU/Linux rose to all-time high at Windows' expense"
- Will this entail Software Freedom as well? This depends on all of us
- Links 02/03/2026: Claude Code Causes a Mexican Government Cyberattack, "London Repair Week" Noted
- Links for the day
- 2026 Microsoft Mass Layoffs in So-called 'AI' Datacentres, Why Doesn't the Mainstream Media Cover The News?
- What does this tell us about the state of the media?
- Don't Fall for "Top X Law Firms" in "Discipline Y", They Pay $Z to Get False Endorsement/s
- It's a scheme, a scam, an elaborate fraud
- More Publishers Have Turned From Slop Boosters Into Slop Sceptics and Critics
- There's a "hidden cost" when one participates (for profit) in "pump and dump" schemes
- TeX Live Has New Release, But Planet Debian Won't Tell You That
- It 'unpersoned' the developer
- LLM Slop Does Not Know People (It Knows Nothing) and Cannot Distinguish Between People. It's a Recipe for Disaster.
- no way of knowing who's who
- "Over 1,100 Law Firms Gone in Five Years" in the United Kingdom (UK) Alone
- There are basically way too many lawyers (looking for "business", e.g. threats and lawfare) and not enough positions to fill
- Microsoft FUD From Microsoft Site Helps Distract From Actual Microsoft Back Doors
- Published on a Sunday
- Free Software Foundation Needs to Become More Active in Europe to Avoid Impersonation by Microsoft-Sponsored Groups
- So far we've hardly seen the FSF saying anything at all about the US president
- Links 02/03/2026: "Not Envious of Billionaires" and Palantir SLAPPs "Swiss Magazine For Accurately Reporting That The Swiss Government Didn't Want Palantir"
- Links for the day
- There Has Never Been a Better Time to Quit Social Control Media
- Those networks are selling something. And that something is not peace because peace does not sell "attention".
- Microsoft Users Drowning in Slop, If They Complain Microsoft Censors Them
- Like an authoritarian regime
- IBM is Killing Red Hat's Portfolio - Including Linux - to Prop Up Ponzi Scheme ("AI")
- IBM is killing Red Hat
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 01, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, March 01, 2026
- Speed of Sites Matters
- Being easily accessible all the time matters to us
- Gemini Links 02/03/2026: Weird Phone Calls, Small Phones, and Exploring Racket
- Links for the day
- Dr. Andy Farnell on "Good Tech"
- in the age of "rent everything" and "own nothing"