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
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- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- Links for the day
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- needs help with narrating
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- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
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- We still wonder if we should make and actively maintain a shame list (developer/employer) for the people who contaminate Linux the most with slop plagiarism
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- mobilising perhaps thousands of workers at a critical time in the history of the Office
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- Fresh wounds, before the bodies are even recovered (thousands still missing)
- "Wail" by Alexandre Oliva
- This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License BY-SA (Attribution ShareAlike) 4.0 International
- This Morning The Register MS Published a Page With "AI" 83 Times in it. The Register MS Got Paid to Do This.
- The Register MS is not a serious publisher and a lot of the stuff about "AI" on the Web isn't journalism but paid-for SPAM
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- They've managed to trick some mainstream media into thinking they're "Tech" experts or "Social [Control] Media" gurus; nothing could be further from the truth
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- Links for the day
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- Over at Tux Machines...
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- Links for the day
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- This is what a lot of "modern" technology is like
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- Oracle debt continues to grow
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- Expect the silent layoffs at Microsoft to continue at a rapid pace
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- The main difference between Microsoft and Oracle is that the latter is honest about what's going on
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- Links for the day
- Links 14/09/2026: "Scam Altman Now Trying to Gain Control of Electric Grid" and Sweden Moving to the Right
- Links for the day
- Vista 11 Flunked
- Microsoft cannot start a "Vista 12" campaign as it would only make matters worse
- Microsoft Urgently Needs Distraction: There's No "Next XBox", But There's a New Boot Screen (Like 'Dark Mode', a Feature That Can be Implemented in Mere Minutes/Hours)
- Anything to distract from XBox fiasco
- The PIPs or 'Voluntary Termination Offers' Help IBM Fake Its Situation
- "IBM is not a tech company"
- IBM Flying Away to Sweatshops (So Will Red Hat)
- Even on Sunday people post about 'leaving' IBM
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- It's dangerous to assert what happened in a hearing you did not attend (there was no video stream or recording, either)
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- Every old article in channelfutures is gone!
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- Let this be a timely reminder of why people should avoid proprietary software
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- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 14/09/2026: Trip, Hiding, and OCR
- Links for the day
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- Notice how "the media" almost never mentions silent layoffs, as if just because they're silent, there's nothing to investigate, nothing to see there
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- Remember that the lawfare against us is funded by slop salaries!
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- IRC logs for Sunday, September 13, 2026