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Links 13/2/2016: Debian 6.0 EOL





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Pinterest open-sources its Teletraan tool for deploying code
    As promised last year when the company introduced it, Pinterest today announced that it has released its Teletraan tool for deploying source code on GitHub under an open source Apache license.

    “Teletraan is designed to do one thing, deploy code,” Pinterest software engineer Baogang Song wrote in a blog post. “Not only does it support critical features such as zero downtime deploy, rollback, staging and continuous deploy, but it also has convenient features, such as displaying commit details, comparing different deploys, notifying deploy state changes through either email or chat room, displaying OpenTSDB metrics and more.”


  • Split Emerges in Open Source MANO Efforts
    A broad attempt to create a single open source effort around managing and orchestrating NFV is now bifurcating into two separate groups, based on irreconcilable views of how to best standardize the MANO going forward.


  • Events



    • Share your love for free software
      Yes, we love Free Software and this readily means that we love technology, people, social equanimity, and the various meanings one may take on for the word “freedom”. We care about it and we all want to bear witness of the growth and consolidation of new projects, and the progress of elder ones into full-fledged solutions driven by healthy and thriving communities. Free Software communities are inherently diverse and put together people with different motivations, expectations, and interests. Some are there to make friends and advance their technical and social skills, while others want to pursue the dream of an open world or even have Free Software as their daily paid job. In spite of such a diversity, one thing unite all of us in this Free Software odyssey: we love what we do.


    • Encryption: probably better than a box of chocolates
      This is a fun activity, but it can also make a difference. The right to encrypt is endangered around the world, with governments threatening our security and freedom by demanding legal or technological crippling of encryption. Resist with the power of love -- encrypt with your valentine, and tell the world!

      And as we've discussed at length, free software is necessary for privacy online. Because nonfree software's code can't be audited publicly, we can never trust it to be free of back doors inserted by accident or by design. We're thankful to all the hardworking free software developers who give us a fighting chance at digital privacy. It goes without saying, but we do love FS.



    • Sharing the free software love #ilovefs
      I like to think of every day on Opensource.com as I love Free Software Day, but we couldn't miss celebrating the official I love Free Software Day 2016, too. Granted, the official day to say "thank you" is on February 14th, so we're showing our love a little early to make sure you don't miss it.


    • OpenStack Summit Austin 2016 Presentation Votes (ends Feb. 17th, 2016)
      Open voting is available for all session submissions until Wednesday, Feb 17, 2016 at 11:59PM PST. This is a great way for the community to decide what they want to hear.

      I have submitted a handful of sessions which I hope will be voted for. Below are some short summary's and links to their voting pages.




  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Firefox 44.0.2 Arrives for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X
        Mozilla launched a second update for the Firefox 44.0 branch, but this is a smaller release with just a couple of smaller fixes, albeit the security issue is quite important.


      • Mozilla Thunderbird 45.0 to Finally Bring GTK3 Integration for Linux, Sort Of
        Earlier today, Mozilla has come out with the sixth point release of the stable 38.0 branch of its Thunderbird e-mail, news, and chat client, fixing a few minor issues reported by users since the 38.5.x series.


      • Make your own Firefox OS TV
        Mozilla may not be actively developing Firefox OS for smartphones anymore… but the company is still pushing the operating system as an option for smart TVs and Internet-of Things products.

        Don’t want to spend money on a TV that comes with Firefox OS? You can build your own Firefox-based smart TV device… sort of.


      • Mozilla refocuses Firefox OS on connected devices
        One by one, the promising new smartphone operating systems, which hoped to chip away at the Android/iOS duopoly, are admitting defeat and refocusing on the less entrenched world of wearables and the Internet of Things. Mozilla has joined that sad procession, in the wake of Samsung Tizen, webOS and Baidu Cloud OS, and perhaps just ahead of Windows Phone, to judge by that platform’s increasingly tiny showing in Microsoft’s results.






  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • Education



    • Feedback on teaching open source usability
      I was pleased that ten students signed up for the elective. This may seem small, but it is a significant number for a campus of some 1,900 students and a small computer science department. The same number of students also signed up for other electives that semester, including a course on databases. I organized the class similarly to the usability projects I mentor for Outreachy. Over thirteen weeks, students learned about open source software and usability testing. Most weeks included two assignments: summarizing several assigned articles, and exercising their knowledge of that week's topic. Later in the semester, students moderated two in-person usability tests; the second was their final project.

      At the end of each semester, students responded to a course evaluation, called the Student Rating of Teaching. The evaluation is totally anonymous. I don't know which students made which comments, or indeed which students chose to respond to the survey.






  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)



    • Swift’s Benchmarking Suite is Now Open Source [Ed: to help Apple lock-in]
      Apple has open sourced Swift’s benchmarking suite, a key piece in tracking Swift performance and catching performance regressions when adding new features to the language.

      Swift’s benchmarking suite is a collection of Swift source files that implement test suites and benchmarking helper functions, plus a number of Python scripts that implement a test harness and facilities for metrics comparison.




  • Funding



    • Faking Open, Debian Influence, Da Linux
      Matt Asay today said that there is no money in Open Source software because the "open source companies" that get rich don't do it with Open Source software. The big story today must be the Russian government's plan to dump Windows for Linux. Debian 6.0 will reach its end-of-life at the end of the month and Tecmint.com recently looked at the influence Debian has had on the Linux community. A new website helps you decide what you can do for Fedora and I Love Free Software day approacheth. New openSUSE Board member Bryan Lunduke sees some problems in KDE Neonland and Swapnil Bhartiya shared his picks for best distros of 2016.


    • Face it: There's no money in open source [Ed: says Asay from Adobe]




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Openness/Sharing



    • Open Access/Content



      • Open-Source Textbooks Gain Support to Improve College Affordability
        Universities and state governments are supporting open-source textbooks as a way to make college more affordable.

        The open textbooks are produced with publicly available material. They are issued to students for free or a small fraction of the hundreds of dollars they typically spend annually on books.


      • OUR VIEW: Making college texts — if not college — affordable


        We’re all familiar with the high cost of a college education: estimated expenses for a year at the University of Connecticut, including on-campus housing, is, according to the school’s website, $25,802. So that’s a little over $100,000 for a four-year education. And that’s only the beginning.

        If a student takes four courses each semester and each requires one or more textbooks, the annual cost for books and supplies could be as much as $1,200, according to the College Board. Of course, if more than one book is required or if the student selects one of the high-cost majors, it could be far more. The standard textbook for Fundamentals of General Chemistry I at the University of Connecticut has a list price of $303.


      • Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge
        A researcher in Russia has made more than 48 million journal articles - almost every single peer-reviewed paper every published - freely available online. And she's now refusing to shut the site down, despite a court injunction and a lawsuit from Elsevier, one of the world's biggest publishers.

        For those of you who aren't already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, and it's sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn't afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it's since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court - a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science.


      • WHO Full Speed On Zika R&D, Two Candidate Vaccines Emerging; Funders, Journals Commit To Sharing Of Data




    • Open Hardware



      • $99 CowTech Ciclop Open Source 3D Scanner Hits Kickstarter (video)
        So if you think CowTech Ciclop 3D scanner is something you could benefit from, visit the Kickstarter website now to make a pledge and help this awesome $99 open soruce 3D scanner become a reality.


      • Faircap Project: Open source 3D printed water filter aims to solve global crisis for just $1
        The Faircap Project is a collaborative, clean water initiative, whose aim is to create an affordable open source 3D printed water filtration device that could provide clean, safe, drinkable water to those in need. The startup has already created a working prototype, but is now calling on engineers, designers, microbiologists, or anyone interested in helping to pitch their own open source ideas and make the Faircap filter as low cost and accessible as possible.






  • Standards/Consortia



    • Is the vinyl LP an open music format?
      This is my first article for a new column here on Opensource.com about music from an open point of view. Some things I won't be doing: I won't be concentrating solely on music released under an open license. I won't be writing (much) about making one's own music. I won't be writing (much) about music theory or professional matters, or probably really very much of anything of interest to professional musicians.

      I will write about music I encounter that interests me for one reason or another. I'll tell you about how to enjoy music in an open environment, like on a Linux-based laptop, desktop, or server. I'll share hardware I've purchased or tried out that works well, and some that doesn't, in an open environment. I promise to write about good places to buy music that are Linux-friendly (that is, those that don't require installing downloaders that only run on other operating systems). And I will point out some other websites, and occasionally print media, that increases my enjoyment of music.






Leftovers



Recent Techrights' Posts

Reboots Should Never be Necessary
"BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
There's Still Hope for the World Wide Web
Let's hope that the trajectory of the Web won't be leading us to over-reliance on Google, nor will it reward worthless slopfarms
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Smolweb and Alhena 5.1.7
Links for the day
XBox is Rapidly Turned Into a Slopfarm by Microsoft
Slop isn't about efficiency and saving money
Microsoft's Halloween Documents and systemd, Wayland, Etc.
Maybe one day Wayland will be widespread. Or maybe not.
 
Links 15/07/2025: Press Freedom at Risk and New Facebook Blunders
Links for the day
The Danes Want GNU/Linux
David Heinemeier Hansson recently moved to GNU/Linux
Cory Doctorow Explains Why Software Freedom Matters, Whereas "Open Source" Misses the Point and Helps Monopolies
It's a very long article
BillPR (EpsteinGate-Bribed NPR) is Turning Into a Partial Slopfarm that Promotes Slop
"I went on a date with a chatbot!"
Two Weeks Passed Since Latest Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, More Expected Next Month
Blaming the debt on "AI" is just self-serving storytelling
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 14, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 14, 2025
Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Gemini "Style Sheets" and Switching From Microsoft GitHub to Codeberg
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Another OSI Scandal, This One Implicating Molly de Blanc
OSI has been fairly quiet lately
Outreachy & Debian pregnancy cluster, Meike Reichle evidence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Again, "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
Microsoft Lunduke is not trying to "protect" Linux
One of the Most Hilarious Things About the Microsoft SLAPPs
It's so ridiculous
Financial Support for the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project
The FSF has extended until Friday its fund-raising campaign
Illegally Hiding (or Demanding Secrecy Around) Illegal Requests or Attempts at Extortion
unlawful communications like threats
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: BOFH Archive, Updating Old Palm PDAS, and Nginx vs Slop Bots
Links for the day
Ubuntu is Becoming GAFAM-Like
What does that say about Canonical and Ubuntu?
Slopfarms Which Take Real Articles About GNU/Linux and Turn Them Into Copycats Which Are False
Even before the LLM hype those were quite common
The Firm That Picks on Techrights is Accustomed to Working With Criminals
Techrights never did anything illegal. So why is it being picked on by people who work with criminals?
Microsoft Said the Mass Layoffs Were for "Investment" in "AI", But It's Also Laying Off the "AI" and "Copilot" Staff
Months ago we showed many so-called "AI" people were getting the boot and this time it's the same
DryDeadFish is Dead, Long Live DryDeadFish
We kept checking, hoping it can recover from some temporary technical issue
For Quite Some Time Already Microsoft Attracts Crackpots, Scams, and More
Occasionally we talk about the situation at IBM as there are many parallels
Links 14/07/2025: Chatbots Broken Again, McHire LLM Shows Limits of the Hype
Links for the day
Changing One's Name Won't Change One's Past
People who have earned a bad reputation are not magically "entitled" to reset
People Who Assault Women Are Not Victims of "Distress"
It seems like an American tradition. In a country with almost 50 presidents, not even one was a female.
Slashdot Media Turned Linux Journal Into a Slopfarm and Now Slashdot Actively Promotes Anti-Linux Slopfarms
Yes, "no-nonsense" apparently means actual nonsense
Adoption of Gemini Protocol Still Growing
Gemini Protocol is being obscured by the media - it doesn't help that Google 'hijacked' the word "Gemini" - but people still manage to find out about it, download a client, and use it
Links 14/07/2025: Arresting Photographers, Threats to Revoke US Citizenship Over Criticism
Links for the day
More EPO Leaks on the Way
We hope that Mr. Rowan will actually try to refute what we say and show, not merely point the finger at the messengers
Decommodification is a Corporate Strategy Against Communities
systemd is led by Microsoft and hosted by Microsoft
copyleft.org 'Hijacked' by the People Who Attack the Person Who Created Copyleft
So far there's nothing "tasteless" in copyleft.org, but that can change at any time in the future
Asking People to Take Down Articles and Videos Only Makes These More Popular and "Viral"
If you do something bad, one of the worst things you can possibly do it try to silence those who speak about it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 13, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 13, 2025
Two-Thirds Towards FSF Goal, Richard Stallman to Give Talks in Europe
There are 67 left before reaching the target
Brett Wilson LLP "Takes it Personal" (Character Assassination, Not Professionalism). Everybody Can See That.
On behalf of violent men
Gemini Links 14/07/2025: Politicised Tech and "Leaving GitHub"
Links for the day
Pissing Contests and Pissing Off Everyone
people who came from Microsoft are trying to vex and divide the community
Microsoft Repeats the Mistakes Made by the EPO After We Exposed a Major Microsoft/EPO Scandal 10 Years Ago
That scandal was all over the media, not just in English
The Demise of LLMs
We've just checked BetaNews again. They've dropped all the slop and went back to human authors.
Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Sonpo Museum of Art and FCEUX
Links for the day
Links 13/07/2025: UnitedHealth's Censorship Campaign, Australia Wary of China
Links for the day
Firing Away With Nonsense
Or fighting fire with fire
Links 13/07/2025: Climate Crisis, GAFAM Poisoning the Water
Links for the day
Turns Out LLMs for Code Don't Save Time and Don't Improve Quality
Neither legal nor useful
The Microsofters Will Have an Obligation to Compensate Us
This story isn't just about Microsoft. It's also about corruption, there are many women victims, there is abject "abuse of process", and many more scandals to be illuminated in years to come.
Reproducing at the EPO Instead of Producing Monopolies for Foreign Monopolies With Their Price-Fixing Cartels
Does the EPO recognise the need of well-educated Europeans to bear kids?
Valnet Inc. Dominates Real (Not LLM Slop) GNU/Linux Coverage in 2025
And likely in prior years, too
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Fund Raiser Goes on
Later this month we'll expose another OSI scandal
EPO Staff Representatives Issue a Warning About Staff's Health and Inadequate Care
Even the EPO's own stakeholders (money sources) are openly protesting against what the EPO became
Links 13/07/2025: Partly Assorted News From Deutsche Welle and CBC
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/07/2025: Board Games and Battle Styles
Gemini Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 12, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 12, 2025