07.18.14

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Links 18/7/2014: Slackware Turns 21, Spotify Switches to Ubuntu

Posted in News Roundup at 8:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Storage Bolsters Its Boards With Oracle Alumnus

    Open Source Storage has a bit of a struggle on its hands. Despite having existed (kind of) for well over 10 years, the storage company is relatively unknown compared to incumbent players (NetApp and EMC for example) and newer storage industry disruptors (Inktank and StorSimple for example) alike. The company has had something of an on-again, off-again life as the GFC caused its early investors to back out and the company waited until this year to relaunch.

  • Adobe, Google Develop Open-Source Font for Asian Languages

    Adobe and Google have teamed up to develop a new open source font that supports seven different languages.

  • Open-Source Blu-Ray Now Works For BD-J / Menu Rendering

    For users of libbluray for limited open-source Blu-Ray disc support, there’s some updates worth fetching.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • WebKit’s FTL JavaScript Engine Shows Off Potential For LLVM

      Earlier this year we wrote about Apple working on an LLVM-based JIT compiler for WebKit. This new JIT engine, called “Fourth Tier LLVM” (FTL), is enabled within the latest open-source code for this browser rendering engine and is faster than WebKit’s earlier JavaScript implementations.

    • Breach Browser: an open-source and hackable browser for geeks

      While you are reading this, the chances are you are using Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera or Internet Explorer (IE). That is because these tend to be the only choices on offer. Although each of the big browsers will try to convince you that you have a choice. The simple truth is you do not. You are confined to using these five main choices which generally-speaking are increasingly converging and becoming more alike with each update. That is until now!

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • The Rust Language Is Improving, But Not Yet Ready For 1.0

        Rust, the programming language born at Mozilla for developing a “safe, concurrent, practical language” continues to evolve and experience greater adoption. Rust certainly seems to have a good future ahead of it as shared by the latest status update on the project, but a few more release cycles are needed at least before the Rust developers look toward version 1.0.

      • State of Rust 0.11.0

        Over the past 6 months since the last one of these updates was written, Rust has evolved significantly: the standard library was refactored to make Rust more convenient to use in embedded or bare-metal platforms, the language has been greatly simplified (moving most pointer types into libraries) and the package ecosystem has been thriving under a new package manager.

      • Firefox OS Ecosystem Shows Strong Momentum and Expands Across New Devices, Markets and Categories

        Firefox OS has unlocked the mobile ecosystem and is quickly expanding across a broad range of devices and product categories in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. Just one year after the first devices were launched, Firefox OS is now available on seven smartphones offered by five major operators in 15 countries, showing strong signs of ecosystem momentum and widespread industry adoption.

      • Firefox OS lands in Germany – with France, Asia, and more to come

        Mozilla’s Firefox OS continues its slow march across the globe, with carriers set to begin shipping devices running the open source, browser-based smartphone platform in additional developed markets this week.

        Spanish telecoms giant Telefónica has previously sold Firefox OS phones in Spain, but the bulk of its efforts have been focused on its subsidiaries in Spanish-speaking emerging markets, including Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.2 released to the channel

      LibreOffice from Collabora is the enterprise-ready build of the widely used Open Source office suite. The newly announced LibreOffice-from-Collabora 4.2 provides an enterprise-hardened build which can be maintained by patch updates for many years.

  • CMS

  • Funding

    • Open Source Madness

      The Yorba Foundation, a non-profit group that produces open source Linux desktop software, reported last week that it was denied tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status by the IRS. The group had waited nearly five years for a decision. The IRS stated that, because the software Yorba develops can be used commercially, the organization has a substantial non-exempt purpose and is disqualified from tax-exempt status. We think the IRS’ decision rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of open source software.

    • PredictionIO’s $2.5M money bag suggests open-source is right for machine learning

      PredictionIO, a startup that has crafted an open-source program to let developers add machine-learning smarts to their applications, might just be setting the tone for the next wave in data technology.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GCC 4.9.1 Released, Adds OpenMP 4.0 To Fortran

      Jakub Jelinek of Red Hat announced this morning the GCC 4.9.1 release that has many bug-fixes and other minor improvements to GNU Compiler Collection 4.9 that was released in April with many improvements and features. More than 88 regressions and serious bugs were fixed in GCC 4.9.1 while a new feature now supported is OpenMP 4.0 support for Fortran, to complement the GCC 4.9.0 OMP 4.0 support for the C and C++ languages.

    • First steps with Liberty-Eiffel

      The first thing I notice is a different terminology. An executable is called system and a set of classes is refereed as universe. The classes can be grouped in clusters into the universe. And the routines (operations) of a class, and its attributes, are called features. The routines are divided in functions or queries (which return a value) and procedures (which do not return a value). As opposed to C language, where we need a function named main, on Eiffel we can designate any procedure to start the execution.

    • Denemo – Release 1.1.8 is imminent

  • Public Services/Government

    • OFE: ‘Continued discrimination in IT procurement’

      Public administrations across Europe continue to discriminate in their IT calls for tender by asking for specific brands and products, concludes OpenForum Europe, and organisation advocating for an open, competitive ICT market. “Thousands of small IT firms are excluded from competing in the public procurement process by restrictions such as the naming of trademarks in calls for tender”, said Graham Taylor, OFE’s CEO, in a press statement.

    • A juggernaut like the NHS won’t find it easy to drop Windows for open source – but it should

      Microsoft is a commercial venture so it is reasonable for them to sell their products, which they do via licensing per unit. The NHS has about 100,000 computers, so it pays a considerable amount and also has a lot of work to do each time there’s a required update for any of their server technologies or desktop computers. While it needs some technical tweaking, Windows is sold as something that comes out of the box and should work. Designed to work with a wide range of different types of systems, the one size that fits (almost) all computers is a bonus for many technical managers.

      But it hasn’t been problem-free. Most hospitals still have thousands of PCs running Windows XP which stopped being supported earlier this year.

    • Kerala Legislature announces smooth transition to free software

      The Kerala Legislative Assembly has made a significant transition to the free software platform for recording its voluminous business.

      The Speaker’s announcement to this effect a couple of days ago represented a milestone not just for the IT Department of the Niyama Sabha, but also for the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (Icfoss) based here, the larger free software community, and free software enterprises in Kerala.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • AllSeen IoT Group Adds 8 New Members

      The AllSeen Alliance, which is one of several open-source consortiums working to develop standards for the Internet of things, is adding eight new members to a lineup that includes such tech heavyweights as Microsoft, Qualcomm, Cisco Systems and Symantec.

    • Community Blog Series: Red Bend Software

      Red Bend Software is a community member of the AllSeen Alliance and a leader in mobile software management. More than 2 billion Red Bend-enabled devices use the company’s software and services for firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updating, application management, device management, device analytics and mobile virtualization. Customers include more than 100 leading manufacturers, mobile operators, semiconductor vendors and automotive companies worldwide.

    • New wireless mesh standard hatches from Google’s Nest

Leftovers

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DecorWhat Else is New

  1. Links 26/10/2021: Vulkan 1.1 Conformance for Raspberry Pi 4 and Tor Browser 10.5.10

    Links for the day

  2. [Meme] Sounds Legit

    When not cheating on the wife, the EPO‘s “doyen” cheats in the exams and makes it into the epi Council, in effect working “[t]owards a common understanding [sic] of quality” with “patent attorneys nominated as “assessors” by the EPO, epi and BusinessEurope” (notorious lobbyists for dictators, litigation, and monopolies, neither business nor science)

  3. [Meme] Mayoral Patent Office Chief

    As it turns out, political 'double-dipping' isn't just a thing in North Macedonia, Austria, and EPOnia

  4. Romania's Patent Office (OSIM): Nine Different Chiefs in Just Eight Years

    The Romanian State Office for Inventions and Trademarks (OSIM), being the equivalent of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in the sense that it covers both patents and trademarks, is a very flaky institution with no shortage of scandals; for our English-reading audiences we now have a summary of a decade’s worth of blunders and leadership changes

  5. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXIV: The Balkan League - Romania

    Romania’s patent office has been in flux this past decade, occasionally led by people with no relevant experience, but rather political connections (like EPO President António Campinos) and sometimes forged documents and fake degrees

  6. IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 25, 2021

    IRC logs for Monday, October 25, 2021

  7. [Meme] “Social Democracy” at the EPO

    Some comments on the current situation at the European Patent Office from Goran Gerasimovski, the new EPO Administrative Council delegate for North Macedonia and Social Democratic candidate for mayor of Centar (a municipality of Skopje)

  8. [Meme] António Campinos Visits the OSIM

    António Campinos visits OSIM Director-General Ionel Muscalu in February 2014

  9. [Meme] [Teaser] Meet the President

    Later today we shall see what Romania did for Battistelli

  10. Links 26/10/2021: Latte Dock 0.10.3 and Linux 5.15 RC7

    Links for the day

  11. Gemini Protocol's Originator: “I Continue to Care About This Project and I Care About the Community That Has Formed Around It.”

    'Solderpunk' is back from a long hiatus; this bodes well for Geminispace, which grew fast in spite of the conspicuous absence

  12. Bulgarian Like Bavarian Serfdom

    Bulgarian politics seem to have played a big role in selecting chiefs and delegates who backed Benoît Battistelli‘s unlawful proposals, which treat workers almost like slaves and ordinary citizens as disposable ‘collaterals’

  13. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXIII: The Balkan League - Bulgaria

    Today we examine the role of Bulgaria in Benoît Battistelli‘s liberticidal regime at the EPO (as well as under António Campinos, from 2018 to present) with particular focus on political machinations

  14. Links 25/10/2021: New Slackware64-current and a Look at Ubuntu Budgie

    Links for the day

  15. Links 25/10/2021: pg_statement_rollback 1.3 and Lots of Patent Catchup

    Links for the day

  16. Microsoft GitHub Exposé — Part III — A Story of Plagiarism and Likely Securities Fraud

    Today we tread slowly and take another step ahead, revealing the nature of only some among many problems that GitHub and Microsoft are hiding from the general public (to the point of spiking media reports)

  17. [Meme] [Teaser] Oligarchs-Controlled Patent Offices With Media Connections That Cover Up Corruption

    As we shall see later today, the ‘underworld’ in Bulgaria played a role or pulled the strings of politically-appointed administrators who guarded Benoît Battistelli‘s liberticidal regime at the EPO

  18. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 24, 2021

    IRC logs for Sunday, October 24, 2021

  19. Links 25/10/2021: EasyOS 3.1 and Bareflank 3.0

    Links for the day

  20. The Demolition of the EPO Was Made Possible With Assistance From Countries That Barely Have European Patents

    The legal basis of today's EPO has been crushed; a lot of this was made possible by countries with barely any stakes in the outcome

  21. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXII: The Balkan League - North Macedonia and Albania

    We continue to look at Benoît Battistelli‘s enablers at the EPO

  22. Links 24/10/2021: GPS Daemon (GPSD) Bug and Lots of Openwashing

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  23. Links 24/10/2021: XWayland 21.1.3 and Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS Daily Build

    Links for the day

  24. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 23, 2021

    IRC logs for Saturday, October 23, 2021

  25. Links 24/10/2021: Ceph Boss Sage Weil Resigns and Many GPL Enforcement Stories

    Links for the day

  26. GAFAM-Funded NPR Reports That Facebook Let Millions of People Like Trump Flout the So-called Rules. Not Just “a Few”.

    Guest post by Ryan, reprinted with permission

  27. Some Memes About What Croatia Means to the European Patent Office

    Before we proceed to other countries in the region, let’s not forget or let’s immortalise the role played by Croatia in the EPO (memes are memorable)

  28. Gangster Culture in the EPO

    The EPO‘s Administrative Council was gamed by a gangster from Croatia; today we start the segment of the series which deals with the Balkan region

  29. The EPO’s Overseer/Overseen Collusion — Part XXI: The Balkan League – The Doyen and His “Protégée”

    The EPO‘s circle of corruption in the Balkan region will be the focus of today’s (and upcoming) coverage, showing some of the controversial enablers of Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos, two deeply corrupt French officials who rapidly drive the Office into the ground for personal gain (at Europe’s expense!)

  30. Links 23/10/2021: FreeBSD 12.3 Beta, Wine 6.20, and NuTyX 21.10.0

    Links for the day

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