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
- Andrew Lee Has Turned Freenode Into a Slopfarm (Because Who Needs IRC Anyway?)
- The site is churning out slop all day long
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 168 Out of 200: When Choosing Clients Recklessly and Poorly Self-Harm is Inevitable
- "If you're doing something hard and nobody hates it, you probably aren't doing it. If the right people hate it and those people happen to be some of the worst people alive, so much the better."
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- Not Only Microsoft and IBM Hide Layoffs (Secret Layoffs) and Fail to Follow the Law (or Bypass It)
- Microsoft's tactics are not so unique
- People Who Participate in the Slop Plagiarism Pyramid Scheme and the Moral Dilemma (What's Acceptable for a Salary?)
- giant pyramid scheme
- State of the Slop, Linux Edition
- Whether slop about "linux" becomes rarer by the end of this year, well... time will tell
- Links 02/09/2026: 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop Plagiarism) Destroying Evidence, "Data Center Backlash Has Officially Rattled Scam Altman"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 01, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, September 01, 2026
- FSF Staff Uses 'CoC' to Stop Conversation About Autistici/Inventati in Relation to Free Software
- The list is already heavily moderated
- IBM Allegedly Stopped Hiring (This Tends to Coincide With Mass Layoffs)
- Is a hiring freeze an echo of layoffs? Yes, definitely.
- Something Big is Happening at IBM This Week/Month
- Some people at IBM (and Red Hat) are panicking
- Gemini Links 01/09/2026: Biscuits, Epstein Files, Power Users, and Alhena 5.6.8
- Links for the day
- Links 01/09/2026: Almost 5,000 Missing/Dead in Nepal-China Flood and Marijuana Factory Explodes
- Links for the day
- September at IBM: Silent Layoffs on Day 1
- PIPocalypse at IBM
- Last Month IRC Entered Its 39th Year and It's Still Growing (New IRC Networks)
- There are 511+ known IRC networks
- Links 01/09/2026: Climate, Disinformation, Microsoft Overworking People
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman's Site Still Offline (Third Day), But Richard Stallman is Active Online
- he is busy online despite his site not being accessible so far this week
- PIP Layoffs at Microsoft, Even in India
- Microsoft is trying to hide the true scale of the layoffs
- Layoff Trackers Are a Sham, They're Like US 'Unemployment Data'
- Layoff trackers are similarly misleading as they only measure what companies openly admit and register with WARN notices
- The Peculiar Case of OSNews, Which Experiments With Slopfarming
- It wasn't published in error. It has been there for two months.
- Russian Federation is Removing Windows From Computers
- Windows is going "out of fashion"
- XBox CEO Has No Clue What She is Selling
- Some people believe Microsoft will parcel and offload the whole "gaming" unit to some other companies
- analognowhere.com and xkcd.com Selling Physical Copies of Webcomics
- That's one way to support their work
- PIP/GVSA at Microsoft: Mass Layoffs Disguised as Something Else
- Microsoft is trying to cheapen the workforce because the numbers don't add up
- Microsoft Lunduke Uses Twitter ("X") Because It's Algorithmically Designed to Boost His Worldview/s, He Ignores What "X" Is
- Maybe all those people really deserve one another
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 31, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, August 31, 2026
- Censorship by Threats
- It should be noted that the Web site of Richard Stallman will soon enter its third day of downtime
- In Romania, GNU/Linux Reaches 6%, According to Clownflare
- Tomorrow we'll see the latest data from statCounter (for September)
- Gemini Links 01/09/2026: Denali Park Train Trip, Crafts, and Community-Building in smol.pub
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Workers Doing 80 Hours a Week After Microsoft Culled Their Colleagues
- there are days when they work 17 hours a day (barely any time left to sleep and eat) and work starts at 5AM
- IBM Defrauds Shareholders With Fake News (Bribed Press) About "Quantum"
- That says a lot about the state of "Tech Giants" and also the utterly shameless state of the media
- Record Highs for GNU/Linux, Especially in the United States of America
- the "market share" of GNU/Linux is about 9%, still about a third of what Vista 11 stands at
- PIPocalypse at IBM
- Silent layoffs
- Spending Over a Million Bucks on Lawsuits Abroad When There's a Big Mortgage to Pay in America
- Priorities, priorities...
- Gemini Links 31/08/2026: Announcing ROOPHLOCH 2026, smol.pub Discussion, and LLM Plagiarism Engines Target Geminispace
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman's GNU Turns 43 in 4 Weeks, FSF Growing
- In a few weeks GNU turns 43
- IBM's Cuts Are Worsening Security in GNU/Linux
- IBM is still run by the same idiot who proposed taking over Red Hat
- Microsoft: Work Weekends Too
- Microsoft literally working its workers to death
- Links 31/08/2026: Anthropic Sued Again for Copyright Infringement of Massive Scale, 'Tokenmaxxing' Shows Slop is a Worthless Liability
- Links for the day
- Links 31/08/2026: "Teslas Are Still Driving Into Oncoming Freight Trains" and "LLM Moats Quickly Evaporating"
- Links for the day
- Stallman Has Explained Slop is "Marketing Hype Campaign" and Torvalds Agreed. The Difference is the Bribes.
- So be like Stallman
- Debian Project Discards About 25% of the Votes on LLM Slop, Microsoft Votes in the General Resolution (GR)
- "[t]he rules of the vote saw community members asked to rank each of the eight proposals. Just under 600 people voted, but Debian’s election team rejected many for unspecified reasons, leaving almost 450 valid votes to count."
- Essentiality of Rest and Killing Oneself for Vicious Companies
- Working for Microsoft is foolish
- In the UK, Bing (Microsoft) Down to Lowest Level Since January
- our tax money being passed to Microsoft via MoUs (back door deals with kickbacks)
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 167 Out of 200: The Court of Appeal Might be the Next Step
- Today is our last vacation day
- German Government Sponsors IBM Because of GNU/Linux
- Flatpak is sponsored by, run, and controlled by IBM
- Richard Stallman Speaks to Christine Hall of FOSS Force, stallman.org is Down for Over a Day
- interview does a good job addressing the hype about LLMs too
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 30, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, August 30, 2026
- Gemini Links 31/08/2026: Holidays, Stream of Consciousness, and Posting Online
- Links for the day