Free/Open Source Software News: More Advocacy, Liberation, and Free Software on the Web
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-06 13:37:30 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-06 13:37:30 UTC
Advocacy
The APC Chris Nicol FLOSS Prize recognises initiatives that are making it easy for people to start using free/libre and open source software (FLOSS). The prize will be awarded to a person or group doing extraordinary work to make FLOSS accessible to ordinary computer users.
Imagine a world with fewer queues in banking and retail, and more self-service options. Imagine no longer relying on one cubical or terminal for service. Sounds unreal? This world is now a possibility in South Africa thanks to the partnership between LSD and Cashware.
Essentially, an open-source software or OSS is a kind of computer software which has its source code made available and licensed by virtue of such a license agreement which authorizes the copyright holder to study, modify and distribute the software to anyone, without any further charges and for any purpose whatsoever.
Open-sourcing
As part of the ROS team the engineers at Willow Garage wanted a low price point entry available for new programmers. The TurtleBot's SDK contains a collection of programs that range from basic to advanced. Instructions show how to set up the bot, operate with a keyboard, operate with a joystick, and fully utilize the Kinect camera data. There's also a cleverly titled section about maintenance called TurtleBot Care and Feeding.
Cisco may be a multi-billion entity that was built around a proprietary operating system, but if recent moves are any indication, a wave of open interoperability has been steadily reshaping how Cisco is bringing next-generation IT infrastructure to market.
A few months ago we wrote about Linksys Reviving The WRT54G Router In 802.11AC Form. Belkin, which owns Linksys, has begun releasing code for this new router -- the WRT1900AC -- but with this early code is still some glaring problems.
Misc.
XBMC, an open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media that is available for multiple platforms, has just reached version 13.0 Beta 3 and is now available for testing.
Events
Apache and Nginx
Two of the world's most widely deployed web servers have both recently been updated to fix security vulnerabilities.
With so many Apache Hadoop distributions on the market, what sets them apart? MapR is hoping that bringing feature-rich open source searching to its Big Data platform via integration with Elasticsearch will help draw users by making Big Data analytics and business intelligence faster and more comprehensive.
Mozilla
Mozilla and the Rust community are pleased to announce version 0.10 of the Rust compiler and tools. Rust is a systems programming language with a focus on safety, performance and concurrency.
If you've ever done any web development work, you are probably intimately familiar with the fact that what you build on the web may show up fine in one browser, yet be completely broken in another. It used to be that this problem simply meant testing sites and pages across popular desktop browsers, but in the age of mobile technology, you now have to test your creations across mobile devices, too.
While Mozilla has mostly been in the headlines this week for news related to contributions made by its new CEO Brendan Eich, another piece of meaningful news regarding the company is largely being ignored: Google Chrome has moved past Firefox to take second place in desktop browser market share, according to web traffic stats from Net Applications. In March, Chrome grabbed 17.5 percent of desktop brower traffic, while Firefox sat in third place with 17.2 percent. This is a first for Chrome, according to Net Applications' data, and is possibly driven by Google's extensive advertising for Chrome and Mozilla's new focus on Firefox OS and mobile technology.
The latest Mozilla Firefox nightly builds have begun enabling the generational garbage collector to better compete with Google's Chrome on performance grounds.
In an exciting collaboration with Mozilla and Google, Intel is bringing SIMD to JavaScript. This makes it possible to develop new classes of compute-intensive applications such as games and media processing—all in JavaScript—without the need to rely on any native plugins or non-portable native code. SIMD.JS can run anywhere JavaScript runs. It will, however, run a lot faster and more power efficiently on the platforms that support SIMD. This includes both the client platforms (browsers and hybrid mobile HTML5 apps) as well as servers that run JavaScript, for example through the Node.js V8 engine.
Thimble is actually a subset of Mozilla’s Webmaker project, which is aimed at teaching all kinds of web literacy and development skills.
Many, many people have noticed that if we had a way to reliably record program execution and replay it later, with the ability to debug the replay, we could largely tame the nondeterminism problem. This would also allow us to deliberately introduce nondeterminism so tests can explore more of the possible execution space, without impacting debuggability. Many record and replay systems have been built in pursuit of this vision. (I built one myself.) For various reasons these systems have not seen wide adoption. So, a few years ago we at Mozilla started a project to create a new record-and-replay tool that would overcome the obstacles blocking adoption. We call this tool rr.
We support the Mozilla community and the vital work they've done—and must keep doing—for the open Internet. EFF has been following the discussions around the choice of Brendan Eich as Mozilla’s CEO, including the announcement that he is stepping down.
As partners to Mozilla in campaigns that have included the fight against SOPA/PIPA, the StopWatching.US Coalition against mass surveillance, the effort to Encrypt the Web, the battle to prevent non-consensual online tracking, and ongoing work to make Firefox a more secure browser, we appreciate the frank and honest discussion that the community has undergone over this issue and respect the openness of the process. In that respect, as in many others, the difference between a closed and an open community is profound.
McAvoy clearly appreciates his ability to speak his mind without fear of retribution. But he also demands the termination of employment of a person that he disagrees with.
That sounds like hypocrisy, and intolerance, to me.
The worst of what I’m seeing is this – people who have steadfastly supported gay rights (and minority rights in general) but don’t like seeing how Eich is being treated are being called bigots and worse by their colleagues.
Chrome(ium)
Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop app beta is released for invite-only. Chrome Remote Desktop allows you to set up your computer for secure remote access. This includes setting up your computer so that you can access it later from another machine; or you can also use the app to let a friend remotely access your computer temporarily, perfect for times when you need help solving a computer problem.
Last April we introduced Blink as the new rendering engine for Chromium. Since then, the project has grown to include over 200 active contributors, and code complexity has been reduced significantly. We’ve also made encouraging progress on our top priority for 2014: mobile web performance.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Like Microsoft and IBM, the 'Alicante Mafia'-Governed EPO Does PIPs Nowadays (at the EPO, It's "Professional Incompetence Procedure")
- So "PIPs" are definitely in the EPO and we saw letters sent to staff
- Time for Change, More New Articles, Less Curation
- The oligarchy wants to gut the real press and replace media with slop and social control media (or social control media with slop in it, i.e. their own voices, mechanised)
- Almost 1,600 EPO Employees Went on Strike Last Week
- There is another strike coming 2.5 weeks from now
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- You Know Microsoft's "Value" is 100% Fictional When in One Single "Trading" Day in Wall Street It Loses THREE TIMES More in "Value" Than It Was 'Worth' in 2009
- Microsoft does not behave like a company riding trillions but like a company that struggles with payroll
- Better Outcomes When Facing the Discomfort of Conflict
- Don't take the easy way out when the "hard way" is the right way and it can result in positive revelations
- Leaving the United States 3 Years Ago Was the Best Decision We Made
- A lot of stuff is being consolidated
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- Links 05/02/2026: Canadian Government Uses US LLMs to Override Expert Opinions, NVIDIA Troubles Due to Enablement of Mass Plagiarism ('Piracy') Misleadingly Obscured as "Hey Hi"
- Links for the day
- Explaining the Letter From JUDGE SYKES FRIXOU, Threatening Me Around the Time GNOME's Nat Friedman Lost His CEO Job at Microsoft GitHub and His Best Friend Got Arrested for Strangulation
- this letter (with annotation) is critical
- Linuxiac Not Rehabilitated, It's Still Full of LLM Slop (Part of a Trend)
- The Web as a resource/source of information is perishing
- "Sponsored by Azul" to Write Fake 'Article' About Azul, Quoting Azul Itself
- The "journalism" industry [sic] became so utterly corrupt
- JuristGate is for sale: three billion Swiss francs for a domain name
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 05/02/2026: Coercion, Antibiotics, and LVDT Project
- Links for the day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 04, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, February 04, 2026
- Links 04/02/2026: Extreme Malice in Microsoft's Visual Studio Code on GNU/Linux, More Hey Hi (AI) Chaos
- Links for the day
- Sexism & GNOME: shaming men, hiding women, Sonny Piers update
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 04/02/2026: Humanity and Animality, systemd (Controlled by Amutable, a Proxy of Microsoft) Moves on to "Extinguish" Phase
- Links for the day
- Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Used to be Widely Used in Geminispace, Now It's Down to Just 0.2% of the Whole
- Let's Encrypt is not your friend
- What IBM Does Is Clearly Illegal in the US: Tying Severance Packages to NDAs (Non-Disparagement Agreement/Clause)
- The NDAs make things worse; they keep people isolated and silent
- Microsoft's Giant Snowball of Layoffs and PIPs (in 2026)
- They would delay until March or April if they wanted to, but then we can expect numbers exceeding 10,000 layoffs (Microsoft always low-balls the real figure/s)
- Mozilla Turned Firefox Into Shovelware, Adding 'Kill Switch' for Slop Still Means Mozilla is Participating in a Pyramid Scheme, Plagiarism, Grifting
- Mozilla is still a slop pusher
- Links 04/02/2026: "Laws of Succession" and Microsoft's VS Code as Code-Stealing Malware
- Links for the day
- BillBC (BBC) Covered Up Pedophilia, Now It's Covering Up for Its Sponsor Bill Gates by Reprinting His Lies, Which His Own Wife Disputes
- Is Bill Gates having orgies (group sex)?
- Phoronix Swims With the Real Trolls, People Who Fancy Proprietary Software and Back Doors
- If Larabel begins to actively participate in provocation with the "Microsoft GitHub fans club", what does this tell us about Phoronix?
- They Know Microsoft Layoffs Are About to Hit Them Hard
- The gaming division at Microsoft is a complete catastrophe, lots of money (debt) down the drain [...] Buying Activision was all about misleading shareholders or hiding the deep trouble/problems XBox was having
- Red Hat is Not a Linux Company, It's IBM's Ponzi Scheme Enabler
- Had we still been stuck in 2021, perhaps IBM would plaster "NFT" or "metaverse" all over RedHat.com
- Keep Grinding
- "Don't let the bastards grind you down"
- Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part III - Who's Going to Pay for the EPO's Corruption? (Aside From European Citizens)
- Some people inside the EPO reached out to us
- "Investors Are Concerned About an AI Bubble" (That GAFAM and IBM Ride)
- A few decades from now IBM will only be remembered in the same sense many so-called 'AI' companies will be remembered
- EPO Staff Union: "Very High Strike Participation on Friday 30 January", Another Strike Starts 19 Days From Now
- EPO management in a bit of a panic
- Censorship/Free Speech and Social Control Media
- It's important to have a grasp of how contemporary censorship works and how to tackle it
- Google News as Slop Booster
- this is what Google links to
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 03, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, February 03, 2026
- Gemini Links 04/02/2026: "Raspberry Pi Relaxes the Rules for Its RP2040 Hacking Challenge" and "Long Web Society"
- Links for the day
- IBM Falls by Over 10%
- a recipe for disasters like accounting fraud
- Links 03/02/2026: Windows Copies GNU/Linux, Windows TCO Shown Again
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/02/2026: Alhena Turns One, Slop Rejected, and Max Roy Carrouges Recalled
- Links for the day
- How to Identify Demonisation or Dehumanisation Tactics Against Interesting Figures or Luminaries in Free Software
- Rather than in general or generally in technology
- We Should Learn From Bulgaria
- Why can't European companies and government recognise and react to a threat (when they see one)?
- Dr. Andy Farnell on Why and How European Authorities Can Adopt Free Software, Parenting in the Age of Digital Abundance
- Will Europe use technology that Europe controls (not the hegemon), for a change?
- Canonical: Ubuntu is GAFAM (US), We're Resellers of American Proprietary Software
- They want people to pay for a licence
- Seems Like IBM Trolls Use Chatbots to Vandalise Platform That Discusses IBM's Secret Layoffs, Forever Layoffs
- Not for the first time either
- You Know Your Company is Dead or Basically a Pyramid Scheme When Jim Cramer Keeps Promoting Its Stock
- How much does IBM pay for "puff pieces" or "fluff" about QC?
- Red Hat (Under IBM) Works for Microsoft (Proprietary Software) and Slop
- Yesterday Red Hat's official site, redhat.com, published exactly 5 new blog posts
- IBM is Dying (More Layoffs), Red Hat Will Continue to Suffer From the Acquisition
- Financial engineering
- Colombia Adopting GNU/Linux Even Faster (at Microsoft's and Apple's Expense)
- Do politics play any role in this?
- An Effort to Tackle Slavery in 'Open Source' Clothing
- "a civil rights lawsuit to examine the concerns of censored developers in the free, open source software ecosystem"
- $15 billion lawsuit: Ubuntu, Google & Debian crowdfunding campaign launch
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part II - Why We Need to Expose the SRA to More Daylight, Public Scrutiny
- SRA is neither effective nor regulated
- Links 03/02/2026: "Distraction is a Sin" and Fake "Encryption" (Surveillance With Good Marketing)
- Links for the day
- 400-Page US Federal Court Against Abuses by Google, Microsoft and Front Groups That Abuse Volunteers for American Corporations
- There are 386 pages in total (in the US claim)
- Corporate Influence Never Impacted Us
- There's no reason to assume we'll ever "sell out"
- Growth of GNU/Linux in Cuba
- Right now a lot of the world drafts or already implements a GAFAM exit plan
- A Day After EPO Strikes an Escalation to Heads of Delegations to the Administrative Council
- They rely on the European media playing along, helping them to hide major blunders, even crimes
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 02, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, February 02, 2026
- Gemini Links 03/02/2026: Stargazing, Development Boards, and Tcl/Tk Slop
- Links for the day