Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 22/12/2015: Linux 4.4 RC6, Solus 1.0 Imminent





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Diversity in open source highlights from 2015
    The pool of people participating in open source communities still lacks diversity, but the good news is that many people, projects, and organizations are working to improve it. I've collected a few highlights from 2015 efforts to increase diversity in open source communities. Which 2015 diversity in open source stories would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments.


  • Inside the Robot Operating System, the robotics industry and the Open Source Robotics Foundation
    Eight years ago, the Robot Operating System (ROS) project began, and since then there have been huge advancements made to the robotics industry. Robots are teaching kids to code, becoming companions, have been given X-ray vision, and even started to fly.

    But adding these features aren’t easy, and that is where the Robot Operating System comes in, according to Brian Gerkey, CEO of the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF).


  • The Year of Crowdfunded Open Source Small Businesses
    2015 was crowded with events for Linux and open source. It was a year in which the runaway success of OpenStack continued, fuelling -- among other things, rumors of a Canonical Software public offering. It was also the year of unsuccessful ventures into smartphones by Mozilla, Sailfish, and Ubuntu, and the first appearance of a Steam Machine for gamers.


  • Adafruit's best open source wearables of 2015
    Wearable electronics have exploded in the past year. Countless small devices are now on the market for not only fitness tracking, but posture improvement, sunscreen reminders, muscle-sensing gesture control, and much more. As technology on the body becomes more pervasive than ever, having open source tools for developing wearable technology is more important than ever, so that we can create the future of fashion tech while maintaining data privacy of biometric sensor data.


  • The Keys to Success When Launching Your Own Open Source Concept
    Have you been thinking of launching an open source project or are you in the process of doing so? Doing it successfully and rallying community support can be more complicated than you think, but a little up-front footwork and howework can help things go smoothly. Beyond that, some planning can also keep you out of legal trouble. Issues pertaining to licensing, distribution, support options and even branding require thinking ahead if you want your project to flourish. In this post, you'll find our newly updated collection of good, free resources to pay attention to if you're doing an open source project.


  • Why Pinterest just open-sourced new tools for the Elixir programming language


    At Pinterest, that company with a popular app for pinning images and other content to boards, much of the source code is written in the longstanding Python programming language. But in the past year, a few of the company’s software engineers have called on a young language called Elixir.

    Pinterest’s notification system now uses Elixir to deliver 14,000 notifications per second. The notification system runs across 15 servers, whereas the old system, written in Java, ran on 30. The new code is about one-tenth of the size of the old code.


  • Puppet Labs Plugs in Kubernetes Orchestration Framework for Containers
    Rather than continuing to use low-level tools such as YAML, says Carl Caum, technical marketing manager for Puppet Labs, IT organizations can now make use of the declarative programming environment that Puppet Labs created to configure containers alongside the operating system and virtual machines that many of them already rely on Puppet to configure.


  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • An open vision: Strategic planning is transparent at Mozilla [Ed: but now they support the evil which is DRM to support a rotten business model (opposite of transparency)]
        This month marks a milestone for me. It's been five years since I started working in—and learning from—an open organization.

        But it also marks another important milestone. My organization, the Mozilla Foundation, just finished drafting a strategic plan for what the next five years may hold.

        And we created that plan through open collaboration between our staff and community.






  • SaaS/Big Data



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • Collabora making modest profits on LibreOffice


      A little more than two years ago, the open source consulting company Collabora took over the job of commercialising LibreOffice, the free office suite that is produced by an army of developers.

      At that time, a number of LibreOffice developers moved from the Germany-based Linux company SUSE and became staff of Collabora.


    • LibreOffice Online is here!
      There are however a few comments I would like to make about this testing release. First, I’m very happy to see LibreOffice Online become a reality. By reality, I mean more than an announcement and more than a demo with chunks of code and configuration notes. Today, LibreOffice runs in the cloud. Which leads me to my second comment: the relevance of LibreOffice in the future is now pretty secure. Running LibreOffice in the browser needs you can access it without having to download the code and just by using the access gateway to everything these days: the browser.




  • Funding



  • BSD



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • GnuCash 2.6.10 released
      The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.6.10, the tenth maintenance release in the 2.6-stable series. Please take the tour of all the new features.


    • The Fight For Freedom
      There’s a problem with the word ‘free’. Specifically, it can refer to something that costs no money, or something that isn’t held down by restrictions – in other words, something that has liberty. This difference is crucial when we talk about software, because free (as in cost) software doesn’t necessarily give you freedom. There are plenty of no-cost applications out there that spy on you, steal your data, and try to lock you in to specific file formats. And you certainly can’t get the source code to them.


    • GNU MediaGoblin 0.8.1 Open-Source Media Server Fixes Critical OAuth Security Flaw
      Jessica Tallon from the MediaGoblin project, open-source media server software designed for GNU/Linux operating systems, announced this past weekend the immediate availability of a patch for GNU MediaGoblin 0.8.


    • GnuCash 2.6.10 Free Accounting Software Squashes over 15 Bugs, Adds Improvements
      The developers behind the GnuCash Project were happy to announce this past weekend the immediate availability for download of the tenth maintenance release in the GnuCash 2.6 series, bringing all sorts of improvements, updated translations, and numerous bugfixes.


    • Stallman on happiness and perseverance
      It’s amazing to think that a broken printer lead to the creation of the Free Software movement which, many years later, would give me a professional career, an education, and incredible friends around the world.


    • Join with me to support the Software Freedom Conservancy


    • GPL enforcement is a social good
      Vendors who don't release their code remove that freedom from their users, and the weapons users have to fight against that are limited. Most users hold no copyright over the software in the device and are unable to take direct action themselves. A vendor's failure to comply dooms them to having to choose between buying a new device in 12 months or no longer receiving security updates. When yet more examples of vendor-supplied malware are discovered, it's more difficult to produce new builds without them. The utility of the devices that the user purchased is curtailed significantly.


    • Donate to Conservancy!
      Conservancy needs 750 Supporters to continue its basic community services & 2,500 to avoid hibernating its enforcement efforts! The next 38 supporters who sign up by December 24th will count twice thanks to an anonymous match donor! 552 have joined so far and match pledges reduced our 2,500 maximum need by 178 !


    • MediaGoblin 0.8.1: Security release
      We have had a security problem in our OAuth implementation reported to us privately and have taken steps to address it. The security problem affects all versions of GNU MediaGoblin since 0.5.0. I have created a patch for this and released a minor version 0.8.1 (see the release notes page). It’s strongly advised that everyone upgrade as soon as they can.




  • Public Services/Government



    • Commission begins overhaul of Joinup
      The European Commission has started working on the next version of Joinup, the collaboration platform for eGovernment professionals. Users are the main focus of the upgrade, which will make the platform easier to use. Access to and sharing of interoperability solutions will be streamlined, and the developers are making it more straightforward to contribute to the platform’s projects and communities. If all goes well, the new version could go live in June.




  • Licensing



    • Open Source Software: Usually Cash-free, but with Strings Attached [Ed: lawyers in a lawyers’ site spread FUD about FOSS and pretend it was all along just about cost]
      While everyone knows of the need to comply with contractual terms in software licenses (and elsewhere), the salient point in this context, is that under several recent cases, failure to do so with respect to a license for copyrighted material (which is usually applicable to software), allows the pursuit in United States District Court of claims for infringement damages under the Copyright Act and related items, such as attorney fees. This is in addition to traditional contract damages, which may be non-existent or difficult to prove. For example, if the evidence establishes (among other things) that the work infringed was a registered work in the U.S. Copyright Office and the infringement was willful, then the court may, in its discretion, award statutory damages of up to $150,000 (regardless of the retail cost of the underlying work).




  • Programming



    • Know Your Language: PHP Lurches On
      Presumably there are people that think the PHP language is awesome. An afternoon spent writing PHP code is like a fine meal and a backrub in one transcendent coding experience while JavaScript and client-side scripting can just go to hell.




  • Standards/Consortia



    • New data porting rules mustn't overburden businesses with costs, says UK minister
      Baroness Neville-Rolfe said that the planned new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is likely to give consumers "more control over how their data is to be used" but she raised concern about the impact data portability rules could have on "new ideas, innovation and competition".

      Various drafts of the GDPR have contained proposed new rules which would, if finalised, require businesses to ensure that they can hand over the personal data they possess on a consumer in a usable transferable format.





Leftovers



Recent Techrights' Posts

Rust People: Drain the Swap, You're Holding It Wrong
Does Rust make sense?
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, linuxconfig.org, and Plagiarised Phoronix
Many articles out there are nowadays fake
European Patent Office Illegally Gutting and Outsourcing Its Functions, Acting Like an Above-the-Law Commercial Business (It Won't Stop at Formalities Officers (FOs) and Classification Slop at the EPO)
breaking/violating laws and conventions
Links 19/09/2025: Lobbyist of American GAFAM Becomes Data Protection Commissioner in Europe
Links for the day
 
Links 20/09/2025: Retrocomputer, Antique Phone Experience, and More
Links for the day
Links 20/09/2025: Internet Shutdowns, Media Censorship, and Climate Worries
Links for the day
About 700 New Gemini Capsules in 13 Months (or 54 Per Month)
4.8K would represent a 20% increase
Techrights the Name Turns 15
About 6 weeks from now we turn 19
Microsoft is Running Out of Time and Floating Fake Figures, Fake Projects, Fake Narratives, Fake Excuses
Also, a lot of Microsoft's "revenue" claims are circular financing (i.e. Microsoft buying from itself, which means Ponzi-like fraud)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 19, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, September 19, 2025
Gemini Links 20/09/2025: Navigating the Pressures of Modern Life and SpellBinding Accidentally Wrote Another Gemini Server
Links for the day
Links 19/09/2025: Press Freedom Dying in US, Anti-Austerity Strikes in France, and Alan Rusbridger to Leave 'Prospect'
Links for the day
Offloading to the Sister Site
In the interest of not overwhelming readers
Links 19/09/2025: Coffee Club and "SpellBinding is Now Absurdly Fast"
Links for the day
Links 19/09/2025: Media Freedom Ceases to Exist in US, "Consider Dropping Twitter/X"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/09/2025: Thinking and Insect Bites
Links for the day
Microsoft E.E.E.: Git Will Now (or Very Soon) Fully Depend on Rust, Which is Controlled by Microsoft
Microsoft now makes Git dependent on Rust, or making Git dependent on GitHub, which is proprietary
The Right to Punch People (Apparently)
At Brett Wilson, Brett's job title is "Head of Crime" and Wilson normalises calls for violence
Slop or Fake Articles Have Turned Linux Journal From a Pioneering/Trailblazing "Linux" Magazine Into a Nuisance
some sites with former reputation - good reputation - turn into cesspools
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 18, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 18, 2025
Brett Wilson LLP Seem to Have Had Only One Litigation Client in 2025, He Was Previously Charged, Just Like the Serial Strangler From Microsoft (Whom They Now Represent)
Karma is superstition, regulators are not
Project 2030 to Cover How "Project 2025"-Styled Anti-Media Zealots From America Targeted Techrights and Tux Machines
The common denominator is also their attacks on women
Brett Wilson LLP Failed to Meet Deadlines Set by Judge 7 Months Earlier, Tried to Ruin Our Holiday, Then Had the Audacity to Ask Us for Over 3,000 Pounds for Its Own Lateness
As a matter of principle we will never respond to assassin while we are on holiday
On Claims That After Bluewashing Red Hat Will Increasingly Become an Indian Company
Discussed this week (long and detailed)
Americans Attacking British Sites Only Months After They Leave America
We find it kind of funny if not ironic that this site, originally an American site, got legal harassment only from Americans and only months after it had moved to the UK
Despite Losing Over a Quarter Million Dollars a Year Software in the Public Interest (SPI) Gives Helping Hand to Libreboot
SPI's financial state depends a lot on its public image or its reputation
Slopwatch: Google Helps Plagiarism and Sends Traffic to Ripoff Artists
That Google as a company helps spamfarms is noteworthy
If You Want to Know the Future, Listen to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Andy Farnell
We're sure the FSF will have plenty of its own output
Links 18/09/2025: A Taliban Ban on Internet Access and Troubled US Job Market
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/09/2025: Computer Literacy and Accessing Alhena's Database
Links for the day
Links 18/09/2025: US War on Media (Truth Banned, Cancel Culture by the Hard Right), NYT Chief Executive Warns Cheeto is Deploying ‘Anti-press Playbook'
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 17, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 17, 2025