Free Software News Roundup: Careers, Liberations, and Lots More
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-20 16:32:26 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-20 16:32:26 UTC
Summary: Recent news stories about Free/Open Source software (FOSS)
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For most students, an internship presents a major opportunity to learn and grow in a real-world environment. Interns who join an open source company or project also seem to learn a lot about themselves along the way. Recently, I asked some former Red Hat interns—both newly hired and long-time Red Hat associates—what lessons they learned by working in an open source culture and what advice they have for our next group of interns.
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Wikipedia defines “open-source” software as computer software with its source code made available and licensed with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Translated into English this just means it’s free to anyone who wants to download it. Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and Google’s Android are open source operating systems and are available and easy to download even for computer illiterates like myself.
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The University of California, Berkeley, has been authorised by Alcatel-Lucent to open sauce all Plan 9 software under the GNU General Public License, Version 2.
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The takeaway from this presentation should be that , not necessarily because of the usual claims of superior quality (Many eyes make fewer bugs etc.) but because FLOSS emphasizes Freedom and flexibility. I agree with FLOSS being the right way to do IT but I still believe the FLOSS that users will use from solid distros like Debian will be featureful and of high quality as well as being Free. The Debian developers filter out most of the crud included in the depressing statistics of median number of developers and such. It’s a part of their social contract: “We will give back to the free software community
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For the last decade we’ve watched an epic contest unfold between open source and proprietary technology, and 2014 is the year that this dynamic will radically transform. The lines between open source and proprietary are becoming irrevocably blurred as proprietary firms pour resources into open source development and open source companies dial in their revenue models. Above all else, the open source community is producing the technologies businesses need to be competitive in the data-rich 21st century.
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VCs are realizing the next billion-dollar software company won't make money from software, but from what open source enables it to deliver
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These were some of the questions asked by Amandeep, a New Delhi based owner of a small scale clothing company, when I pitched to him a few open source solutions that could make his day-to-day operations more efficient. For someone without any IT background (but a sharp business sense), these were brilliant and relevant questions. The answers to these questions won't just help Amandeep, but if shared broadly may help reduce the apprehension of a significant number of small scale business owners, especially in India. My interactions have shown that a lot of these businesses are looking to grow, enhance their productivity, and most importantly, save costs.
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Marcus Hanwell is a physicist by training, but his background in science led him down a different path than most reseachers. Today he is a contributer to a number of open source projects aimed at helping the scientific community better analyze and visualize their data. If you've got a question about finding the right open source tool for a scientific application, Marcus can point you in the right direction.
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Red Hat is perhaps the most recognized player in the entire open source field. As addition to promoting its operating systems, the company has been involved in storage for quite some time. Red Hat Storage is an open platform that is available for on-premise, public clouds such as Amazon, and hybrid cloud deployment. Pricing is by annual subscription based on the number of storage nodes.
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He went on to tell me how he had looked up “Linux” on the Internet and became interested in the “free” part of software. It took him a bit to get his head around the fact that people from around the globe are contributing to FOSS for not much more than the spirit of kinship and giving. From that moment, in Eddie Baker’s eyes software became more than things you click on to make other things happen.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- 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)
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- 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
- 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"
- Gemini Links 01/03/2026: Simpler Software and Announcing OFFLFIRSOCH (OFFLine-FIRst SOftware CHallenge) 2026
- Links for the day
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part V - Jobs at the EPO for Those Connected to Cocaine Addicts (Skills Not Required)
- EPO management is trying to shoot the messenger
- Booz Allen Hamilton, the Former Employer of Edward Snowden (NSA Contractor), is Drowning in Debt
- Can Supreme Leader Cheeto bail it out like he does slop companies?
- On the Concept of "Protected Class" (or Race) at IBM
- It's self-harming as in practice it imperils the company and harms the reputation/brand
- The Mass Layoffs at Microsoft That Nobody in the "News Industry" Wants to Talk About (and TheLayoff.com Censored, Then It Censored the Evidence of the Censorship)
- They basically cover up how they censored the news about Microsoft layoffs
- Richard Stallman to Give at Least Three Talks in Switzerland, Starting This Week
- No mention (yet) of the Bern talk
- On Who 'Speaks for' Techrights
- typically a case of misrepresenting the site
- 'FSFE' an Imposter in Europe, Paid by GAFAM to Represent GAFAM Interests
- The Microsoft-sponsored 'FSFE', which violates the terms of use of its name, is causing confusion [...] formally-recognised institutions got tricked into thinking that the Microsoft-sponsored 'FSFE' is the FSF
- Lots of Lies From the Slop Industry
- The slop industry relies on fake news to give a notion or fake demand
- Links 01/03/2026: American Plutocrats Buy American Media While American Constitution Shredded
- Links for the day
- Teaser: The Next Series About the SRA, Which Would be Just as Effective as It Is Right Now If It Had Zero Employees
- the lapdog (of the "litigation industry") that is meant to be perceived as a watchdog
- Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Inaction and Incompetence - Part I - Introduction
- The SRA is a sham. Many people know this already, but we want to document our own experiences with it.
- Live Simply, Live Better
- Life isn't about "collecting" possessions; it's about doing things that matter and accumulating knowledge so as to make better choices
- Now That XBox is Pretty Much Dead and There Are Mass Layoffs at Microsoft
- This means our predictions about Microsoft (and XBox) are "falling into place"
- Gemini Links 01/03/2026: "In the Spirit of OFFLFIRSOCH" and "Delete Patreon"
- Links for the day
- ACM Lowers Its Standards for Age of Autocracy
- IBM is more than happy to work with autocracies
- The term FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) was created to describe IBM's tactics and IBM is doing it again
- Rob Thomas or "RT"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 28, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, February 28, 2026