Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 25/3/2015: India Moving to Free Software





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Open source and DevOps aren’t mandatory, but neither is survival
    I can’t recall the exact time I learned about open source software, but I can certainly narrow down the place. I quickly realized how transformative it could be. In 1996, I was sitting in the tech support department of a large ISP that provided hosting and connectivity to the Fortune 1000. Most of our servers ran Solaris, floppy disks arrived via snail mail, and we applied security updates manually adhering to a regime of updates and invoices prescribed by Sun Microsystems. It was a huge change from my university career of dumb terminals and mainframes.


  • How open source can improve your software's security
    Let's be blunt: your code is full of security holes. Just as bad, your employees are careless with passwords and other ways of cracking into your data.

    Hence, while we may wring our hands over security breaches at Target, Morgan Stanley, or dozens of other breaches, the reality is that the only reason your company has yet to be cracked is that hackers haven't bothered to try. Yet.


  • Govt formulates policy on adoption of open source software
    The Government on Wednesday formulated a 'Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India' that would encourage the formal adoption and use of Open Source Software (OSS) in Government organisations.

    Currently most eGovernance solutions are developed using Closed Source Software (CSS), which is licensed under the exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. In that the users' right to make modifications, sharing, studying, redistribution or reverse engineering is limited.


  • What the New York Times CIO asks when evaluating open source software
    In this interview, New York Times CIO Marc Frons explains how his teams evaluate whether to use open source or proprietary software and the simple question that helps guide the conversation.


  • Why Amnesty International uses Booktype 2.0 for report publishing
    Human rights NGO Amnesty International, a movement of more than seven million people, released its Annual Report for 2014-15 at the end of February. This 500+ page print book is published simultaneously in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic, and translated into 12 other languages by local teams. It is composed of 160 detailed chapters written by regional experts on the human rights situation in most of the countries of the world.


  • Action Launcher 3.3 released with new open-source Live Wallpaper API


  • Events



    • Two microconferences accepted for the Linux Plumbers Conference
      The Checkpoint/Restart and Energy-aware scheduling and CPU power management microconferences will be held at LPC.


    • Shevirah Set to Break Into Mobile Penetration Testing Market
      Weidman, no stranger to the world of mobile security, was the recipient of a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Cyber Fast Track grant in 2012 for her open-source Smartphone Pentest Framework project. In 2015, Weidman has been accepted into the Mach37 Cybersecurity accelerator program, which invests in security startups and provides tools and training to launch companies.




  • SaaS/Big Data



    • Scaling
      ownCloud runs on small Raspberry Pi’s for your friends and family at home but also on huge clusters of web servers where it can serve over hundreds of thousands of users and petabytes of data. The current Raspberry Pi doesn’t deliver blazing fast performance but it works and the new raspberry pi 2 announced last month should be great hardware for small ownCloud deployments. Big deployments like the one in Germany or at CERN are usually ‘spread out’ over multiple servers, which brings us to the secret sauce that makes scalable software possible.


    • MapR Notes Big Demand for Free Hadoop Training Offerings
      Recently, MapR Technologies, focused on Hadoop, has been out with some interesting announcements that we covered. We also interviewed the company's Tomer Shiran (shown), who noted that there is a serious lack of job candidates with advanced Hadoop and data analytics skills. He added that MapR is providing free online training for Hadoop. Now, there is some evidence of how popular the free training has been, with the training program enrolling more than 10,000 registrants worldwide in its first 30 days.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • Healthcare



    • Why open source is key to mHealth data standards
      Open source software that allows for sharing and integration of mHealth data poses tremendous benefit for diagnosing, treating and preventing disease as well as the development of a more tailored patient healthcare strategy, according to Ida Sim, Ph.D, professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • GCC 5 Compiler will be released soon
      And the developers expect to have the final version ready probably at the end of April, this year.


    • LibrePlanet 2015 brings free software luminaries to MIT
      The 2015 LibrePlanet free software conference drew nearly 350 activists from around the world to discuss issues of freedom, privacy, and security in computing. Free Software Foundation founder and president Richard Stallman delivered the opening keynote, "Free software, free hardware, and other things" before a packed room at MIT's Stata Center, with hundreds of remote participants tuning in online.


    • GNU Manifesto Published Thirty Years Ago
      It was in March 1985 that Richard Stallman first set out his belief in the ideal of Free Software with the publication of the GNU Manifesto.

      [...]

      If you have always referred to Linux as just "Linux" then you might be surprised to know that the FSF claims that it really should always be called "GNU/Linux". There is also now a modified GNU/Linux system that has all proprietary and non-free code removed - Linux-libre.




  • Project Releases



  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming



    • Intro to Grace: an open source educational programming language
      When it comes to picking a programming language to use when teaching people how to program, there are many, many options. Scratch is a good choice when teaching the basics because of its drag and drop building block method of programming. Python or Ruby are also good choices—both languages have a straight-forward syntax, are used in major real-world projects, and have excellent communities and supplemental projects built around them. Or there is Java, Objective-C, and C#, which are solid programming languages and marketable job skills. Honestly, they are all good choices, but when it comes to teaching programming in an academic setting, are they really the best way to go about doing it?






Leftovers



  • Germanwings to Cancel More Flights as Crew Members Refuse to Fly
    Germanwings will have to cancel more flights today as some crew members refuse to fly, a day after an Airbus A320 operated by the budget arm of Lufthansa crashed in the French Alps.

    "There will be irregularities... There are crew members who do not want to fly in the current situation, which we understand," a spokeswoman for Germanwings said.


  • Germanwings Is An Example Of European Carriers Trying To Compete In The Budget Airline Game
    Germanwings, the airline operating Flight 9525 that crashed in the French Alps Tuesday, may not be well known outside Europe. But the low-cost carrier owned by Lufthansa Group is emblematic of a trend many flag carriers in Europe are embracing: launching their own budget airlines for short-haul flights to compete with wildly successful low-cost carriers that have snatched 26 percent of market share in Europe.


  • Security



    • Google Hit Again by Unauthorized SSL/TLS Certificates
      The purpose of an SSL/TLS digital certificate is to provide a degree of authenticity and integrity to an encrypted connection. The SSL/TLS certificate helps users positively identify sites, but what happens when a certificate is wrongly issued? Just ask Google, which has more experience than most in dealing with this issue.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • New York Times: Nuclear Establishment Tool
      The New York Times' longtime nuclear power reporter, Matthew Wald, has announced that he's been hired as the senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the chief lobbying arm of the nuclear industry. Investigative reporter Karl Grossman wrote a piece a few years ago on the ties between the Times and the nuclear power establishment that go back to the dawn of the Atomic Age.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Jeb Bush Returns to the Washington Fund-Raising Well
      Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, has sounded that theme regularly in his fledgling presidential campaign. But even as he positions himself as a Washington outsider, he seems to have mastered a skill that is crucial in this city: tapping into the money-raising clout of the K Street lobbyists, political operatives, superlawyers and business leaders in Washington’s permanent class.


    • Information Warfare: Automated Propaganda and Social Media Bots
      NATO has announced that it is launching an “information war” against Russia.

      The UK publicly announced a battalion of keyboard warriors to spread disinformation.

      It’s well-documented that the West has long used false propaganda to sway public opinion.

      Western military and intelligence services manipulate social media to counter criticism of Western policies.




  • Privacy



    • Britain’s Surveillance State
      Edward Snowden exposed the extent of mass surveillance conducted not just by the United States but also by allies like Britain. Now, a committee of the British Parliament has proposed legal reforms to Britain’s intelligence agencies that are mostly cosmetic and would do little to protect individual privacy.


    • On CISA the Surveillance Bill
      After the Senate Intelligence Committee passed CISA, its sole opponent, Ron Wyden, said, “If information-sharing legislation does not include adequate privacy protections then that’s not a cybersecurity bill – it’s a surveillance bill by another name.” Robert Graham, an expert on intrusion-prevention, argues, “This is a bad police-state thing. It will do little to prevent attacks, but do a lot to increase mass surveillance.”




  • Civil Rights



    • White House chief of staff: 50 years of Israeli occupation must end
      White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough made it clear Monday that the crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations over the issue of a Palestinian state has not dissipated, despite efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to clarify remarks he made late in the election campaign that no such state would be established on his watch.


    • The $450 an Hour Terror Industry Echo Chamber
      Matthew Levitt, a prominent figure in the Terror Industry, has been testifying in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial. He’s one of a number of noted figures who gets presented as experts at trials who doesn’t speak Arabic, who hasn’t bothered to learn Arabic over the course of years of this work.

      Yesterday, Levitt spent several hours explaining how the explanation Dzhokhar wrote on a boat in Watertown had to have come from Anwar al-Awlaki’s propaganda.

      Just before Levitt testified yesterday, he RTed an article describing him as the expert that would testify at Dzhokhar’s trial. As soon as he got done, he RTed several more articles about his own testimony, describing himself as an “expert” “decoding” the boat. And then, for good measure, he RTed a livetweet from his own testimony.

      Today, on cross, it became clear the Awlaki propaganda on Dzhokhar’s computer was all Levitt got from prosectors. He didn’t know how long it had been on Dzhokhar’s computer. Nor did he know what else Dzhokhar has read. He also doesn’t know much about Chechnya, except in the context of Jihad. And though Levitt testified yesterday that there always must be a “radicalizer,” he did not know, nor was he asked, to identify the “radicalizer” in Dzhokhar’s life.


    • In Defense of Doing Wrong
      I want to say that it’s the wrong answer to the wrong question. It’s the wrong answer because we all have a lot to hide. We all talk and behave scandalously, and if all that [information] were available to everybody, it would cause no end of grief. It’s the wrong question because, as you’ve heard from all three of my fellow panelists tonight, privacy isn’t fundamentally about secrecy. It’s about things like autonomy—we’ve heard dignity, liberty, power, control, and maybe we’ll talk about that later. - See more at: http://thepointmag.com/2015/politics/in-defense-of-doing-wrong#sthash.fQbKXkkE.dpuf


    • The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Jail: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Prison


    • A Prosecutor Seeks Redemption. Can We Allow Prisoners the Same?
      BY NOW MANY have read and been moved by the extraordinary mea culpa published in the Shreveport Times by a man named Marty Stroud III, who more than thirty years ago sent Glenn Ford to die for a crime he did not commit.


    • NYT Reported Japanese Internment as 'Pioneering Chapter in US History'
      Reporter Lawrence E. Davies described the first internees as "weary but gripped with the spirit of adventure over a new pioneering chapter in American history." This rah-rah treatment continued throughout the article: The internees were said to have begun "assembling long before daylight near the Pasadena Rose Bowl, scene of many a great football game." Their destination was "a new reception center rising as if by magic at the foot of snow-capped peaks."

      Only two internees are quoted in the article. One, Arthur Hirano, a former New York City chef, says: “This is a wonderful place. We didn’t expect such fine treatment.” Another, Mike Nishida, who is scheduled to join the US military, says, “I'm going up there to do any job they put me on in the meantime.”




  • Internet/Net Neutrality





Recent Techrights' Posts

Bad faith: Hugo Roy knew FSFE impersonating FSF before French tribunal, colleagues deceived
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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)
 
Nobody is Safe at IBM (or Red Hat)
There is no job security at IBM
GNU/Linux at All-Time High in Guam
there are many computers in that island
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 1 Out of 200: Claim No. KB-2024-001270 in a Nutshell
abuse of process by a law firm working for an American who was arrested for strangling women and another American whose own spouse calls a "rapist"
When EPO Team Managers (TMs) Are Harassing People Who Strictly Apply the European Patent Convention (EPC) in Patent Examination
There are two strikes planned for this month
Confirmed: Using Slop Gets You Fired
Let the story of Benj Edwards be a cautionary tale
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