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Links 10/6/2015: New Krita/Calligra and Clonezilla





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Blockstream to Release First Open Source Code for Sidechains
    Blockstream has announced it will release an open source codebase and testing environment for its signature sidechains project.


  • Huawei Certified to Offer Apache Spark Open Source Big Data Processing Framework
    Huawei, this week announced that it has become the first global ICT vendor to obtain certification by Databricks for distribution of the Apache Spark open source big data processing framework. Databricks, a company founded by the creators of Spark, has developed the “Certified Spark Distribution” program to highlight and recognize third party vendors distributing Spark. Leveraging the high-performance big data computing architecture and the complete ecosystem of Spark, the Huawei-Spark platform is designed to help customers realize the full potential of data assets to drive agile operation and business innovation.


  • Teradata to Advance Big Data Analytics with Support for Presto Open Source SQL Query Engine
    To help users extract insights from data lakes,Teradata has made a multi-year commitment to contribute to Presto’s open source development. Based on a three-part roadmap, Teradata’s says its contributions will be 100% open source under the Apache license and will advance Presto’s code base, scalability, iterative querying, and ability to query multiple data repositories.


  • Why an open web is important for India
    Priyanka Nag is a technical writer for Red Hat and Mozilla Rep from India. Priyanka has been contributing to open source projects for the past four years. She started by editing Wikipedia pages, and then was introduced to Mozilla during an event at her college. She says that Mozilla was love at first sight, and soon after she became a Mozillian, she was hooked on the project. Now Priyanka is also a regular speaker at community events in India. I recently caught up with Priyanka to learn more about her work in the Mozilla Community and her thoughts on the importance of the open web in India.


  • What TODO means for open source community
    Open source software is not just meant for still-struggling start-ups that can't afford to pay the licensing fees for proprietary software, and budget-conscious, modest small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMEs) hoping to cut down on IT costs. This was proven in late September when several major companies – running the gamut from technology, right through to retail and media – came together to form the TODO project.


  • 8 excellent open source data visualization tools
    Data visualization is the mechanism of taking tabular or spatial data and conveying it in a human-friendly and visual way. There are several open source tools that can help you create useful, informative graphs. In this post we will take a look at eight open source, data visualization tools.


  • Wine Will Migrate Away from SourceForge
    If you're reading the news lately, you might know that the SourceForge project hosting website has been accused of hijacking open-source software that have been abandoned by their maintainers or did not have some activity for an extended period of time.


  • The Cloud vs. Open Source
    For years, Linux and free software were perceived as threatened by cloud computing, the online storage of data. However, over the last few years, something ironic happened -- free software became a major player in cloud computing.


  • Events



    • Graphics Microconference Accepted into 2015 Linux Plumbers Conference
      Although the Year of the Linux Desktop has yet to arrive, a surprising number of Linux users nevertheless need graphics support. This is because there have been a number of years of the Linux smartphone, the Linux television, the Linux digital sign/display/billboard, the Linux automobile, and more. This microconference will cover a number of topics including atomic modesetting in KMS, buffer allocation, verified-secure graphics pipelines, fencing and synchronisation, Wayland, and more.




  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Mozilla responds to Firefox user backlash over Pocket integration
        Pocket is a service for managing a reading list of online articles (it allows you to save stories, videos, and websites to check out later). Pocket is already offered as a Firefox add-on, and although Mozilla was developing a homegrown Reading List feature for the browser, the company decided to simply integrate Pocket directly into Firefox.






  • SaaS/Big Data



    • Cisco, IBM Bet Big on OpenStack
      Cisco and IBM are doubling down on OpenStack, hoping "the result lets them develop a solution that will scale. Neither company is yet willing to abandon OpenStack, and both feel there's still a solution in it someplace," said tech analyst Rob Enderle. By acquiring Piston Cloud Computing and Blue Box Cloud, they "may correct some of the problems with OpenStack, which should improve penetration."




  • Business



  • Funding



    • Rancher Labs is the Latest to Cash in on Container Technology
      Container technology remains red hot and VC money is flowing toward it. Rancher Labs, a startup developing Docker infrastructure software, has announced $10 million in Series A funding from Mayfield and Nexus Venture Partners. "With the rapid adoption of container technology, the company’s open source software has grown in popularity by allowing organizations to run containers in production, across any cloud," Rancher Labs' leaders have stated.




  • Public Services/Government



    • Dutch government agency switches core services to open source
      Public administrations that switch to open source regain financial scalability, says Jan-Taeke Schuilenga, IT architect at DUO, the Dutch government agency managing the financing of the country’s educational institutions. “We had reached the limit of proprietary licence possibilities. Switching to open source gave us freedom of choice.”




  • Openness/Sharing



  • Standards/Consortia



    • Licensing Standards that Include Code: Heads or Tails?
      Once upon a time, standards were standards and open source software was open source software (OSS), and the only thing people worried about was whether the copyright and patent rules relating to the standards would prevent them from being implemented in OSS. Actually, that was complicated enough, but it seems simple in comparison now that OSS is being included in the standards themselves. Now what?

      If this sounds unusual and exotic, it isn’t. In fact, code has been creeping into standards for years, often without the keepers of the intellectual property rights (IPR) Policies governing the standards even being aware of it.






Leftovers



  • Security



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife





  • Finance



    • Republicans Trashed Democracy in Michigan. Now They Want To Trash It in Your State, Too.
      One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired flee the scene after determining it couldn't turn a profit. Numerous cities and school districts in the state are now run by single, state-appointed technocrats, as permitted under an emergency financial manager law pushed through by Rick Snyder, Michigan's austerity-promoting governor. This legislation not only strips residents of their local voting rights, but gives Snyder's appointee the power to do just about anything, including dissolving the city itself—all (no matter how disastrous) in the name of "fiscal responsibility."


    • 5 Ways Powerful People Trick You Into Hating Protesters
      Let's say that tomorrow you are elected Secret Ruler of the USA, a position that gives you total power over the government, economy, and the culture at large -- everything that hippies refer to as "the system." Now, your first job is to not get beheaded by rioting peasants, which means your first job is really to maintain "stability" (i.e., "keeping things mostly the way they are").

      Immediately you'll find that you're facing a never-ending stream of protests from disgruntled groups who say they're being treated unfairly or otherwise getting left out -- this group over here is upset that somebody got abused by the police; this other bunch is demanding better wages or something. How do you handle it? Sure, you could crush their movements with an iron fist, using violence to kill, intimidate or arrest their most vocal members. But that can backfire, often turning them into martyrs and proving them right in the process -- you've seen Star Wars; somebody always finds the exhaust port.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



  • Censorship



  • Privacy



    • Why Did It Take the Pentagon a Month to Figure Out Its Files Were Compromised?
      Edward Snowden’s leaks exposed a federal government unable to protect its most sensitive secrets.


    • Feds Must Encrypt Government Websites by Dec. 2016
      The White House now requires all publicly accessible federal websites and services to use a secure HTTPS connection.

      Government agencies have until Dec. 31, 2016 to comply with the new HTTPS-Only Standard directive.

      Unencrypted HTTP connections "create a vulnerability and expose potentially sensitive information about users," U.S. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott said in this week's announcement. That includes data like browser identity, website content, search terms, and other user-submitted details.


    • Obama lawyers asked secret court to ignore public court's decision on spying
      The Obama administration has asked a secret surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans for six months.

      The legal request, filed nearly four hours after Barack Obama vowed to sign a new law banning precisely the bulk collection he asks the secret court to approve, also suggests that the administration may not necessarily comply with any potential court order demanding that the collection stop.


    • French Surveillance Bill: Public Liberties Abandoned as Senators Cast Disastrous Vote
      The Surveillance Bill was adopted today by the French Senate with 251 votes for, 68 against and 26 abstentions. This bill was fast tracked and discussed under the pressure of a government wielding the argument of an extreme terrorist risk to impose massive spying of the French population with expansive purposes. It will put France under a surveillance all at once diffuse, intrusive, indiscriminate and without effective control. La Quadrature du Net bitterly regrets the blindness of the French Parliamentarians and calls on citizens not to give up on their liberties.




  • Civil Rights



    • Six lies they told me about the anti-Israel boycott
      The bulk of recent incidents concerning the anti-Israel boycott, which are mainly symbolic for now, could have served as a warning sign. But a mixture of nationalistic and false statements is blinding the Israeli public and preventing a real discussion of the issue. Here are a few examples.


    • British tourist Eleanor Hawkins arrested for naked photo on top of Malaysian mountain
      A British woman arrested in Malaysia for posing naked on top of a sacred mountain has been named as Eleanor Hawkins.

      The 24-year-old Southampton University graduate from Derby was detained on Tuesday at Tawau airport, as she was flying out from the island of Borneo to the capital, Kuala Lumpur.


    • Theresa May Condemns Majid Ali and Defies Scotland
      Despite numerous representations and an Early Day Motion signed by the large majority of Scotland’s MPs, Theresa May has ordered that Majid Ali, a Glasgow City College student, be deported back to almost certain torture and probable death in Pakistan in just twenty minutes from now. I attended the demonstration on his behalf yesterday at the Scottish Office.

      Majid is a member of the much persecuted Baloch minority. Two of his immediate family have been “disappeared” by the Pakistani military since his asylum application was submitted. There is no doubt that given the numerous MP’s who have raised his case, and the well-supported early day motion, civil servants will have put the decision to May personally. She was however not even prepared to grant a delay for a look at the evidence. May is very likely not merely pandering to the racist UKIP voting electorate – she is on the far right of politics herself. The callous sacrifice of Majid Ali is proof, if any more were needed, that this Conservative administration is nothing to do with Cameron’s purported “compassionate conservatism.” They are the nasty party indeed.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • EU Commission Tries to Rip Citizens Off Net Neutrality
      The European Commission attacks Net Neutrality again, by introducing a “compromise document” that refuses to enshrine a definition of this crucial principle into the law. A strong coalition including the EU Council, the European Commission and a handful of MEPs is working against the general interest by including loopholes that will be used by the telecom lobby to circumvent the proposed protections against discrimination, thereby undermining fundamental rights and innovation.


    • EU digi-chief to meet ministers and sort out the net neutrality thing
      Gaffe-prone Gunther H-dot, Europe’s digital chief, has waded into the net neutrality debate once again, but has vowed to sort everything out in a meeting with national ministers next Friday.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights



      • EU vice-president: Copyright legislation is “pushing people to steal”
        Andrus Ansip, the European Commission's Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, has admitted that EU copyright law is "pushing people to steal," because they seek out illegal copies of works that are not available to them legally because of the widespread use of geoblocking in Europe.


      • Elsevier Cracks Down on Pirated Scientific Articles


        Academic publishing company Elsevier has filed a complaint at a New York District Court, hoping to shut down the Library Genesis project and the SciHub.org search engine. The sites, which are particularly popular in developing nations where access to academic works is relatively expensive, are accused of pirating millions of scientific articles.


      • Kim Dotcom’s MegaNet Preps Jan 2016 Crowdfunding Campaign


        Kim Dotcom's dream of a people-powered, censorship-resistant Internet will rely on the goodwill of supporters to get off the ground. In an announcement this morning, the entrepreneur confirmed that his MegaNet project will seek equity via a crowd-funding campaign set to launch on the January 2016 anniversary of the raid on Megaupload.








Recent Techrights' Posts

GAFAM is Drowning in Debt, GAFAM is Clearly Not Sustainable Anymore (It Runs on Borrowed Money and Bailouts)
The war and surrender in Iran will deepen the debt; we'll see the GAFAM reports in late July
Microsoft at 50 Follows the General Trajectory of Skype
How many years does Microsoft have left before payroll becomes impossible?
Cybersecurity Does Not Mean Asking Microsoft for Permission to Boot
There were very good and timely reasons to speak about the matter, including impending antitrust complaints against Microsoft
 
Chad's Move to GNU/Linux or the Point of Exceeding 5% "Market Share"
experienced centuries of being colonised
Gemini Links 21/06/2026: Dating Oaks, Paying With Cash, and "More on Withered Technology"
Links for the day
GAFAM Was Never an Ally to Europe
Only 1 in 10 Europeans see US as an ally — study [...] military providers in "tech" clothing cannot be trusted
GitHub, LinkedIn, and XBox Will Finish Like Skype (Sustainability Crisis)
Skype should become a verb. When Microsoft 'Skypes' something it means it basically shuts it down with some temporal excuse/s.
Drowning in Garbage: AUR Shows That Too Much Low-Quality Software (Including Slop) is Bad for Everybody
What happened in AUR had happened elsewhere before and will happen again in the future
Links 21/06/2026: EU on Patented (Monopolised) Crops, Microsoft Software "Narcs on You to Your Boss"
Links for the day
A Year After a Microsofter Took Over The Register MS It is Effectively a Content Farm With News as a 'Side Dish'
This is not journalism, this is spam
IBM Pays the Media and Cons Some 'Journalists' Into Participating in "Quantum" Spam
"The Boy Who Cried Wolf"
You Don't Need an 'App' for Your Birdhouse (Slopfondlers Come for Birds)
That they sell those things as "AI" really says a lot about how dishonest slopfondlers really are
SLAPP Censorship - Part 113 Out of 200: The United Kingdom is Not Turkey
Turkey is ranked almost worst in the Western World for press freedom
Links 21/06/2026: Bots from Alibaba Do Harm and Many Xbox Games Are Being Cancelled
Links for the day
5 Years After Release of Vista 11 Not Even One in 5 People Use It (in the US)
It doesn't look like Vista 11 will ever be adopted like prior versions and announcing a Vista 12 will mostly upset companies/organisations that only recently "upgraded" to 11
Gemini Links 21/06/2026: Boca Raton, Perfect Summer Day, and LLM Doing Things Poorly
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 20, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, June 20, 2026
Microsoft Insiders - Not Limited to XBox - Expect a 'Bloodbath' (Their Own Word)
This isn't limited to XBox
Reports of "PIP" as Means of Mass Layoffs at IBM This Year
some insights into the PIPs
SLAPP Censorship - Part 112 Out of 200: Strangles Women, Then Refuses to Even Attend Any of His Own Hearings About It
It is meanwhile very apparent that Brett Wilson LLP is becoming a "mench sphere"
Gemini Links 20/06/2026: "There Was Never Supposed to Be a Camera" and "What Is A Programming Language"?
Links for the day
Geminispace Reaches Its 8th Year, Today It Has Turned 7
Gemini Protocol 'went live' 7 years ago, just before the COVID-19 pandemic
Links 20/06/2026: "Full Page Paralysis" and "Hopes For Xbox’s Future Might Be Over Before It Even Begins"
Links for the day
European Patent Office's (EPO) Strikes "at a Scale not Seen Since Battistelli", European Patent Grants Down by Over 25% in Past 3 Months
The actions are effective
Real Security Elusive, Microsoft Layoffs to Coincide With Certificate Apocalypse
July 1
Links 20/06/2026: Microsoft's "Year of Shame" and "Feed the Writers"
Links for the day
2026 is a Year of Strikes at the European Patent Office (EPO)
As it stands at the moment, to many people the EPO represents crime, not law
Web Browsers Are Technically Bloatware (No Matter What Runs in Them)
Don't make it a society that shames people into using a Web browser where none should be needed
Fedora Has Changed a Lot Since I Last Used It (IBM Dominates Almost Everything, IBM Agenda Displaces Community Goals)
"It is effectively 100% run by Red Hat/IBM employed people... even when they are community-elected representatives."
Andy (Cyber Show) on His Teacher Who "Squeezed Every Last Drop Out of Life, With Gratitude, Humility, Generosity and Mettle"
Some call them "eccentric" and are dismissive about what they have to offer
Only 1.5% Oppose the European Patent Office's (EPO) Strikes and Other Industrial Actions Until 2027
Among those polled/surveyed (in a ballot)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 19, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, June 19, 2026
Gopher/Gemini Links 20/06/2026: Slop With Tcl/Tk and Nokia 770 Perishes
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 111 Out of 200: Garrett and Graveley (the Latter Arrested for Strangling Women) Keep Ousting Their Collaboration in Litigation, Lawfare in a Foreign Continent
it's not law, it's just warfare disguised as "law"
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Lobbying in Lisbon...
reappointment campaign lobbying has not been restricted to the "home front" in Portugal
Slop Making Its Way Into Terms Where It Does Not Belong
Hopefully by year's end Google News can successfully cull (and deprive of traffic) almost all slopfarms
Links 19/06/2026: Microsoft Patent Troll Intellectual Ventures in Europe, "World Cup of Internet Resilience"
Links for the day
Links 19/06/2026: Salesforce Data Thefts and GAFAM's Conspiracy Theories That Data Center Opposition is a Foreign Plot
Links for the day
Links 19/06/2026: The Retweeting Class and Data Centres as National Security Risk
Links for the day
Don't Attack the Wives (or Spouses) of Pundits/Activists/Journalists
We will be writing several series about this in the future
Society Will Only Improve Owing to People Who Push Boundaries
Push boundaries with ideas and facts, not with forbidden language
Internet Relay Chat (Shorthand IRC) is Still Growing
Contrariwise, social control media is waning
The Register MS Published a New Page With "AI" 21 Times in It. It Was Paid SPAM.
The former editor of the The Register MS admitted to me (directly) that he knew all this "AI" stuff was stupid hype
Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Associates Dependence on a Ponzi Scheme With "the Future"
Those ludicrous ads (disguised as rankings) from WSJ deserve scorn and ridicule
The XBox Story is Still Fast-Developing, the Layoffs Are Confirmed to be Happening Already (Mid-June), Just Not "Officially"
Workers have Microsoft have long braced for what is happening this summer and will accelerate further in two weeks' time
Fake News From Rupert Murdoch's WSJ Could Not Keep IBM From Sinking
"2026 Best Companies for the Future"?
To GNU, AV2 Adoption May be a Year If Not Years Away
The leap between versions means that there is fertile ground for incompatibilities
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 18, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, June 18, 2026
Gemini Links 19/06/2026: "Born and Raised by the Internet", Fifteen Years in Gopher
Links for the day