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
- Microsoft May Already Be Shutting Down More Gaming Studios
- the writings are on the wall: XBox is in disarray.
-
- You Probably Don't Want to "Go Viral" in Toxic Social Control Media
- Good news sites do not strive to go "viral" but to be consistently good, irrespective of "traffic"
- New 'Article' in The Register MS Has Mentioned "AI" 44 Times. The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.
- Bear this in mind when seeing "hey hi" all over the news
- 18-Year Anniversary of Our IRC Community
- As noted some months ago, trolling and abuse in our IRC network is very rare these days
- Microsoft - Like IBM - is Leaving a Legacy is Emptied/Abandoned Buildings
- Microsoft's LinkedIn had many layoffs recently
- Richard Stallman's (RMS) Speaking Tour in Europe Coincides With Abandonment of Microsoft Windows
- The message applies to all governments
- Gemini Links 16/06/2026: Nazi Law of Mental Abuse and Lewis Aburrow's 3D-Printed Slider
- Links for the day
- Links 16/06/2026: Windows TCO and Fedora Finding Serious 20-Year-Old Holes in Microsoft Outlook
- Links for the day
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: An Advisor to the President
- he had recently advanced to membership of the "inner circle" of Team Campinos.
- Two Weeks Ahead of July Three Studios Microsoft Plans to Shut Down Already Named
- This is what happens when companies try to establish themselves on a mountain of promises and false assumptions, kicking the can down the road until payroll becomes hard to complete
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 15, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, June 15, 2026
- IBM Works for Microsoft
- Hours ago in IBM.com
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: The EPO's Brussels Liaison Officer
- It would appear that in January 2020, Pellegrino was induced by Campinos to jump ship from the EUIPO and take up his current position as Brussels Liaison Officer for the EPO
- European Patent Office (EPO) Receiving Section (RS) and Elimination of Many Roles
- Open letter to Mr Rowan (VP1) and Mr Aledo Lopez (COO) [...] Does the EU leadership intend to tolerate this?
- Microsoft's XBox is Disintegrating, Executives Are Quitting
- We're basically witnessing the slow-motion "end of XBox"
- Gemini Links 15/06/2026: Slop Code Benchmarked, Wireguard on NixOS and Guix
- Links for the day
- Links 15/06/2026: More Own Goals for the Slop Industry, Palantir Trouble in UK
- Links for the day
- Apple Wants Everybody to Forget About "Vision Pro" Because It Was a Giant Flop
- worthless gadgets with no obvious use case/s
- The Cyber Show is Adopting 'Book Form' (or Long Form Publications)
- Andy and Helen nowadays invest more time in making their site faster
- Richard Stallman's Software Freedom/Digital Sovereignty Tour in Europe
- As things stand at present, the vast majority of people have their interactions controlled/policed by GAFAM
- Estimates of Scale of Microsoft Layoffs, Will Likely Happen "in Batches"
- "Heard 10 to 15 percent eventually but idk date."
- IBM Has Put Red Hat on a Poor Diet of Slop, Now Fedora and Red Hat Suffocate or Choke on It
- Over the weekend we saw more people leaving the company
- Estimates of Microsoft Layoffs: 3,000 Staff to be Culled Just in Gaming, How Many in Other Divisions?
- Now the XBox division has its own "fall guy", but it is a woman
- Straw Man Arguments Against Rust
- If anything, it teaches the importance of auditing packages
- Tesla Debt Rose Sharply, Sales Declined, Wall Street's Claim of Tesla "Value" is Merely a Fairytale (and Not Just Tesla)
- We would gladly sell land on Mars to anyone who honestly believes a company that loses money is somehow "worth" trillions in Wall Street
- Stop Calling Losses "Investment"
- XBox is losing money, it is a sinkhole
- For Justice We Need More Speech, Not Less Speech
- When you attack something you are just giving that something a bigger platform
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 107 Out of 200: Keeping Law Accessible to Everybody
- We'll have stories related to this in the future
- Links 15/06/2026: Slop "Beg Bounties", Wall Street Fakes 'Worth', and Arkansans Saved PBS
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 15/06/2026: Dating Oaks, Simulation, and Theremin
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 14, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, June 14, 2026
- Links 14/06/2026: Energy Cost and Reality Strikes at Heart of Slop Bubble, 75 Data Center Build-outs "Successfully Blocked"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft CEO Says XBox is Not a Sustainable Business
- "Now, we have to turn this into a sustainable business," he said about XBox
- MElon (MUSK, Elon) is a Trillionaire Like Penguins Are Mammals
- Have media outlets told the truth?
- Unlikely Heroes
- One personal hero who is not alive (anymore) is Navalny
- Bruce Schneier Was Probably Wrong About Slop
- Right now politicians who openly speak in favour of slop are committing "political suicide"
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 106 Out of 200: 100 Kilograms of Legal Papers
- When one party's communications and filings weigh at about 3 KG of paper and another's... at about 100 KG of paper
- Links 14/06/2026: More Google Layoffs, Wall Street Deems Companies That Lose Money "Worth" Trillions
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 14/06/2026: "The Universe is a Hologram", "Matrix Brain Download", and "Happy 0th Year"
- Links for the day
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Battistelli's "Baltic Crusader"
- Gilles Requena, Battistelli's erstwhile "Baltic Crusader" and the loyal servant of his successor Campinos
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 13, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, June 13, 2026