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Links 6/3/2016: KDE Sprint at CERN, Collabora Office 5.0





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • ReactOS Participation in Google Summer of Code 2016
  • ReactOS: Building a Free-Licensed Windows
    From dual-booting to WINE, free software has always struggled to provide a solution for running Windows applications. However, few of these efforts have been more ambitious than ReactOS, a free-licensed implementation of Windows. The project has been at work since 2006 and, in February 2016, ReactOS finally released its first alpha version, after a decade of difficult and necessarily cautious development.


  • ReactOS Gains Btrfs File-System Support
    ReactOS, the project aiming for binary compatibility with Microsoft Windows (Server 2003), now has Btrfs file-system support.

    While there's just a primitive Btrfs driver for Windows, ReactOS has already gained native Btrfs file-system support.
  • MAME is now Free and Open Source Software
    After 19 years, MAME is now available under an OSI-compliant and FSF-approved license! Many thanks to all of the contributors who helped this to go as smoothly as possible!

    We have spent the last 10 months trying to contact all people that contributed to MAME as developers and external contributors and get information about desired license. We had limited choice to 3 that people already had dual-license MAME code with.


  • 10 months later, MAME finishes its transition to open source
    Almost a year after the folks who maintain the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator or (MAME) said they would make the project completely open source, they've declared the transition a success.

    MAME is seen by many developers to be the foremost emulator of arcade games, and while MAME source code has long been freely available for use, it hasn't technically been open source.


  • MAME is now free as well as free of charge
    MAME, the arcade emulator originally created by Nicola Salmora 19 years ago, is now comprised entirely of free and open-source software. It's taken a lot of wrangling, reports MAMEDev.org, due to the large number of contributors and interlinked components.


  • After 19 Years, MAME Goes Open Source
    The MAME Team has announced that after 19 years – MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) has gone open source.

    The arcade emulator is now available under an OSI-compliant and FSF-approved license. This means the source code for the long-running emulator is readily available to fans – you’ll now be able to modify, utilize, and distribute it for a variety of purposes.


  • Machine Learning for Hackers with Debian and Ubuntu
    Data Science and Machine Learning are hot topics at the moment. Many people are considering how to extend their skills into these areas and many solutions have appeared, including full online degrees, free online courses combined with free software and for those who prefer hard copy, a staggering choice of books on the topic.


  • Machine Learning and Open Source: What You Need to Know Now
    The basic goal with most machine learning tools is to take a vast quantity of data and reduce it to manageable, actionable insights. Now, some of the biggest tech companies are putting the tools in place to let the community advance these efforts. Expect much more in this space as 2016 continues.


  • Serro unveils new open source SDN framework, AuSM
    Serro Solutions, a San Francisco-based technology services firm, has made its new SDN framework open source. Automated Service Manager, or AuSM, is aimed at connecting network tools via API. AuSM creates a single platform from which users can write unified business policies and implement them consistently across data center networks, WANs and storage systems.


  • The One thing you can do to Ensure Success in Open Source Deployments
    What is it about an Open source project that gets business excited? and more importantly, is - ROI- under the hype?

    The primary reason most enterprises focus on Open source solutions is the potential cost savings. This is followed closely by the abilityto fix or modify the technology to something specific for the business, without having to wait for enterprise software updates. Thereare more Open source middleware products, such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings and application development frameworks, with the ability to change out an underlying, closed source vendor.


  • HFOSS: Quiz #1
    In the Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development (HFOSS) course at the Rochester Institute of Technology, quizzes are in the form of blog posts submitted during the class period. The room stays quiet, but it is an open IRC quiz, so many of the students collaborated with each other in #rit-foss on freenode for the quiz.


  • VoIP Supply Bolsters its PBX Appliances via Three Open-Source Models
  • NFV/SDN Reality Check: DDoS attack security for NFV- and SDN-powered networks – Episode 49
  • DDoS attack security for NFV- and SDN-powered networks


  • OPNFV Unveils Second Release of Open-Source NFV Platform
    "Brahmaputra" brings a range of new features that come from collaboration with other projects, including OpenDaylight and OpenStack.

    The industry consortium developing an open-source platform for network-functions virtualization is unveiling the second release of its software, which not only brings an array of new features and use cases but also is an indication of the growing maturity of the group.


  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome



      • Chrome 49 released to stable channel, smooth scrolling now enabled by default


      • Taint Tracking for Chromium
        For future work in the Web context, the approach presented here can be made compatible with server-side taint tracking to persist taint information beyond the lifetime of a Web page. A server-side Web application could transmit taint information for the strings it sends so that the client could mark those strings as tainted. Following that idea it should be possible to defeat other types of XSS. Other areas of work are the representation of information about the data flows in order to help developers to secure their applications. We already receive a report in the form of structured information about the blocked code generation. If that information was enriched and presented in an appealing way, application developers could use that to understand why their application is vulnerable and when it is secure. In a similar vein, witness inputs need to be generated for a malicious data flow in order to assert that code is vulnerable. If these witness inputs were generated live while browsing a Web site, a developer could more easily assess the severity and address the issues arising from DOM-based XSS.




    • Mozilla



      • Introducing the WebVR 1.0 API Proposal
        2016 is shaping up to be a banner year for Virtual Reality. Many consumer VR products will finally be available and many top software companies are ramping up to support these new devices. The new medium has also driven demand for web-enabled support from browser vendors. Growth in WebVR has centered on incredible viewing experiences and the tools used to create online VR content.


      • Mozilla Jumps On IoT Bandwagon
        Mozilla has been clarifying some of its plans to convert the Firefox OS project into four IoT based projects. At a casual glance this seems like a naive move that is doomed to failure.






  • SaaS/Big Data



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • Collabora Office 5.0 Release


    • Bruce Byfield Interview: Designing With LibreOffice
      Our colleague Bruce has a book coming out! It’s called Designing with LibreOffice. It tackles the subject of how to make documents look good and professional, while taking advantage of all the design features LibreOffice has to offer. So I got together with Bruce and we talked about his book, LibreOffice, design, and the eternal struggle of documenting Open Source projects.


    • Collabora Office 5.0 Released As Its LibreOffice Enterprise Flavor
      The folks at Collabora have released version 5.0 of Collabora Office, their downstream distribution of LibreOffice.

      Collabora Office 5.0 pulls in features from upstream LibreOffice 5.0 as well as some backported features from LibreOffice 5.1. Collabora Office 5.0 features improvements to the Microsoft filters, UI enhancements, remote file open/save support, security fixes, and much more.


    • Losing the Art of Wiki
      The past few months I read here and there around the LibreOffice community complaints about our wiki. According to these sources, our wiki is unusable, chaotic and poorly maintained. As we have a full time team dedicated to infrastructure management I am pretty sure that last criticism is unjustified to a large extent at least, but it also dawned on me that very few people around the LibreOffice project or any other community, for that matter, hail wikis as their most important tool or platform. Obviously, we are no longer in 2007. But what’s happening here is interesting, because it seems that people may have actually forgotten about the basic reasons wikis are around.


    • How To Cite PDF & Make Bibliography with Zotero & LibreOffice


    • How to create list for LibreOffice Calc cell






  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)



  • BSD



    • FreeBSD 10.3-RC1 Brings Security Fixes, Hyper-V Tweaks
      FreeBSD 10.3-RC1 was released today as the newest development milestone leading up to FreeBSD 10.3 that should be officially released later this month.

      FreeBSD 10.3-RC1 has a number of OpenSSL security fixes, Hyper-V driver changes, regression fixes, and other bug fixes.


    • Pre-orders for 5.9 are up!
      OpenBSD 5.9 is shaping up to be quite a big release, and pre-orders for the CD sets have just been activated.




  • Public Services/Government



    • Helsinki region utilities turn to open source
      Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority (HSY) is turning to open source software solutions for its web applications and other online services. The first open source-based service to go live is the one for water metering. Others will follow soon, says Risto Sipilä, who works for Cybercom, an IT consultancy contracted by HSY to help build the services.


    • Basque open source sector almost doubles
      The revenue and number of IT workers employed by open source service providers in the Basque Country has nearly doubled in 2015, according to figures published by a regional trade group for the sector, ESLE. The combined 2015 revenue of the nearly 40 companies that ESLE represents is 58 million compared to 31 million the year before. The number of workers grew by 413 new staff members. Altogether, ESLE members now employ 1033 people.




  • Licensing



  • Openness/Sharing



    • Open Source on another level
      BrewDog, a UK brewery which soon celebrates its tenth anniversary, has decided to “open source” all of their 215 beer recipes. From their original and still extremely popular (and tasty) beer “PUNK IPA“, moving on to “Hops Kill Nazis“, “Doodlebug” and finally arriving at their latest “Jet Black Heart” which was first brewed last month (!)


    • Raspberry Pi 3, Linux Mint security breach, Google data processing for the Zika virus, and more


    • This Open Source Script Lets You (and Police) Search Twitter For Guns
      It’s now possible to do both of these things, thanks to a free, open-source tool designed by security researcher Justin Seitz as a part of his larger open-source intelligence project.


    • Open Access/Content



    • Open Hardware



      • First Open Source GPU Could Change Future of Computing
        Nyami is significant in the research, computing and open source communities because it marks the first time open source has been used to design a GPU, as well as the first time a research team was able to test how different hardware and software configurations affect GPU performance. The results of the experiments the researchers performed are now part of the open source community, and that work will help others follow in the original research team’s footsteps. According to Timothy Miller, a computer science assistant professor at Binghamton, as others create their own GPUs using open source, it will push computing power to the next level.


      • We are happy to share our FREE and OPEN-SOURCE microprocessor system PULPino!
        Not a toy design: PULPino is a mature design: it has been taped-out as an ASIC in UMC 65nm in January 2016. The PULPino platform is available for RTL simulation as well for FPGA mapping. It has full debug support on all targets. In addition we support extended profiling with source code annotated execution times through KCacheGrind in RTL simulations.

        And it is free, no registration, no strings attached, you can use it, change it, adapt it, add to your own chip, use it for classes, research, projects, products… We just ask you to acknowledge the source, and if possible, let us know what you like and what you like and don’t like.


      • Wiring was Arduino before Arduino
        Hernando Barragán is the grandfather of Arduino of whom you’ve never heard. And after years now of being basically silent on the issue of attribution, he’s decided to get some of his grudges off his chest and clear the air around Wiring and Arduino. It’s a long read, and at times a little bitter, but if you’ve been following the development of the Arduino vs Arduino debacle, it’s an important piece in the puzzle.








Leftovers



Recent Techrights' Posts

Comparing U.E.F.I. to B.I.O.S. (Bloat and Insecurity to K.I.S.S.)
By Sami Tikkanen
New 'Slides' From Stallman Support (stallmansupport.org) Site
"In celebration of RMS's birthday, we've been playing a bit. We extracted some quotes from the various articles, comments, letters, writings, etc. and put them in the form of a slideshow in the home page."
Thailand: GNU/Linux Up to 6% of Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
Desktop Operating System Market Share Thailand
António Campinos is Still 'The Fucking President' (in His Own Words) After a Fake 'Election' in 2022 (He Bribed All the Voters to Keep His Seat)
António Campinos and the Administrative Council, whose delegates he clearly bribed with EPO budget in exchange for votes
Adrian von Bidder, homeworking & Debian unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Sainsbury’s Epic Downtime Seems to be Microsoft's Fault and Might Even Constitute a Data Breach (Legal Liability)
one of Britain's largest groceries (and beyond) chains
 
People Don't Just Kill Themselves (Same for Other Animals)
And recent reports about Boeing whistleblower John Barnett
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 18, 2024
Suicide Cluster Cover-up tactics & Debian exposed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/03/2024: A Society That Lost Focus and Abandoning Social Control Media
Links for the day
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE: Plagiarism & Child labour in YH4F
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Linux Foundation Boasting About Being Connected to Bill Gates
Examples of boasting about the association
Alexandre Oliva's Article on Monstering Cults
"I'm told an earlier draft version of this post got published elsewhere. Please consider this IMHO improved version instead."
[Meme] 'Russian' Elections in Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
fake elections
Sainsbury's to Techrights: Yes, Our Web Site Broke Down, But We Cannot Say Which Part or Why
Windows TCO?
Plagiarism: Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich) & Debian Developer list hacking
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2024: Putin Cements Power
Links for the day
Flashback 2003: Debian has always had a toxic culture
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
[Meme] You Know You're Winning the Argument When...
EPO management starts cursing at everybody (which is what's happening)
Catspaw With Attitude
The posts "they" complain about merely point out the facts about this harassment and doxing
'Clown Computing' Businesses Are Waning and the Same Will Happen to 'G.A.I.' Businesses (the 'Hey Hi' Fame)
decrease in "HEY HI" (AI) hype
Free Software Needs Watchdogs, Too
Gentle lapdogs prevent self-regulation and transparency
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE analogous to identity fraud
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 18/03/2024: LLM Inference and Can We Survive Technology?
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, March 17, 2024
Links 17/03/2024: Microsoft Windows Shoves Ads Into Third-Party Software, More Countries Explore TikTok Ban
Links for the day
Molly Russell suicide & Debian Frans Pop, Lucy Wayland, social media deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Our Plans for Spring
Later this year we turn 18 and a few months from now our IRC community turns 16
Open Invention Network (OIN) Fails to Explain If Linux is Safe From Microsoft's Software Patent Royalties (Charges)
Keith Bergelt has not replied to queries on this very important matter
RedHat.com, Brought to You by Microsoft Staff
This is totally normal, right?
USPTO Corruption: People Who Don't Use Microsoft Will Be Penalised ~$400 for Each Patent Filing
Not joking!
The Hobbyists of Mozilla, Where the CEO is a Bigger Liability Than All Liabilities Combined
the hobbyist in chief earns much more than colleagues, to say the least; the number quadrupled in a matter of years
Jim Zemlin Says Linux Foundation Should Combat Fraud Together With the Gates Foundation. Maybe They Should Start With Jim's Wife.
There's a class action lawsuit for securities fraud
Not About Linux at All!
nobody bothers with the site anymore; it's marketing, and now even Linux
Links 17/03/2024: Abuses Against Human Rights, Tesla Settlement (and Crash)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, March 16, 2024
Under Taliban, GNU/Linux Share Nearly Doubled in Afghanistan, Windows Sank From About 90% to 68.5%
Suffice to say, we're not meaning to imply Taliban is "good"
Debian aggression: woman asked about her profession
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 17/03/2024: Winter Can't Hurt Us Anymore and Playstation Plus
Links for the day