Links: PC-BSD 8.1 and Lightspark 0.4.2 Released, Other Free Software/Open Source News
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-07-22 18:55:05 UTC
- Modified: 2010-07-22 19:00:10 UTC
Summary: Today's news about digital freedom and openness
Morevna is an open source anime project made using open source tools like Synfig, Blender, GIMP and Krita. Unlike Project London Movie, Morevna is not only created using free and open source tools, but Morevna anime will also be released and distributed as free content. This project definitely deserves a lot of appreciation.
Whether you just want to balance your checkbook or you need to track the finances of a large global corporation, you can find open source software to do the job. For our list of open source financial tools, we cast a wide net and included applications related to enterprise resource management, point-of-sale and even employee time tracking. Not to mention traditional accounting and financial management tools.
One trend worth noting -- a huge number of the open source tools on this list, particularly the business applications, are now available on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis. For businesses, this model seems to make sense, as it gives them access to support and reduces the need for in-house staff to deploy and monitor applications. It also enables a more mobile workforce and keeps costs low. And of course, this model is also great for open source vendors as it gives them another way to monetize their open source projects.
Without further ado, here are fifty open source applications that might be able to replace the financial software you currently use for your home or business.
If you haven’t run into a situation where you need to rename multiple files in one go, you haven’t been using a computer for long. When the next time comes, turn to KRename. Its simple graphical interface makes renaming files easy for average users, and it offers a powerful template language for advanced users with more complex renaming tasks. Although it was written for the KDE desktop, KRename works under other Linux platforms and even on Windows.
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Web Browsers
Last week we showed Opera 10.60 to be the world's fastest Web browser. That was in the Windows world. But where do Chrome, Firefox, and Opera stand in Linux? Today we find out. Adding the Win 7 results, we'll also learn which OS has the speediest browser.
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Mozilla
Firefox 3.6.7 and Firefox 3.5.11 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.7.
The latest Firefox 4.0 nightly build adds a new download ("Save link as") / upload dialog - in Linux that is, as I didn't try Firefox 4.0 Windows or Mac builds. This may have been added earlier but only now I've noticed it.
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SaaS
There’s a real explosion of cloud platforms and management tools, it seems you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one these days. In the commercial proprietary solutions space you have – CA’s 3Terra AppLogic, Enomaly, Nimbula, RightScale. In open source there are Eucalyptus, Cloud.com, Open Nebula and Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. There are a bunch more that I failed to mention. It makes you wonder do we really need another one? How much different can they be?Rackspace Champion's Open Source Cloud I am not sure but the newest one appears to be rather significant.
NASA is dropping Eucalyptus from its Nebula infrastructure cloud not only because its engineers believe the open source platform can't achieve the sort of scale they require, but also because it isn't entirely open source.
NASA chief technology officer Chris Kemp tells The Reg that as his engineers attempted to contribute additional Eucalyptus code to improve its ability to scale, they were unable to do so because some of the platform's code is open and some isn't. Their attempted contributions conflicted with code that was only available in a partially closed version of platform maintained by Eucalyptus Systems Inc., the commercial outfit run by the project's founders.
In some ways Facebook is still a LAMP site (kind of), but it has had to change and extend its operation to incorporate a lot of other elements and services, and modify the approach to existing ones.
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BSD
The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.1 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE, and KDE 4.4.5
One of the features that sets FreeBSD apart from other open source opeating systems, is its governance structure. FreeBSD is not owned by a company, though many companies use it and contribute code back, but yet is run as if it were a company, with the Core Team taking decisions and steering the Project.
The FreeBSD Foundation funds various projects each year and there are several interesting projects in progress:
* DAHDI (formerly known as Zaptel) FreeBSD driver port--this project will make it possible to use FreeBSD as a base system for software PBX solutions
* resource containers and a simple per-jail resource limits mechanism
* userland dtrace
* BSNMP improvements
* jail-based virtualization
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Project Releases
The Lightspark project has released version 0.4.2 of its free, open source Flash player. According to Lightspark develoepr Alessandro Pignotti, the alternative Flash Player implementation is "designed from the ground up to be efficient on current and (hope fully) future hardware".
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Government
Operating as the Open Information Security Foundation, and working with a number of government-related private companies, a team headed by Mark Jonkman of Emerging Threats and Victor Julien of the Vuurmuur firewall project are offering an intrusion detection and prevention engine with multi-threading automatic protocol detection for a wide variety of protocols.
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Openness/Sharing
It's an ambitious effort to preserve, restore and promote the re-use of traditional skills and inventions from all over the world.
We risk stifling the development of new tools, both commercial and academic, and new knowledge under the weight of a legal regime that was designed to cope with the printing press. At the same time a simple statement that this kind of analysis is fair dealing will provide certainty without damaging the interests of copyright holders or complicating copyright law. These new uses will ultimately bring more traffic, and perhaps more customers, to the primary documents. By taking the simple and easy step of making automated analysis an allowable fair dealing exception everyone wins.
After the election and looking to the post-Becta future, Open Source Schools has been making new plans to ensure that the community is able to respond to the changing educational landscape where the benefits offered by open source are becoming ever more important.
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Open Data
Opening up food and agricultural data requires an information architecture and infrastructure that does not currently exist. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization is a leader in providing easily accessible, highly usable, and surprisingly current data, but right now it is far ahead of the pack in terms of transparency in reporting.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Microsoft's XBox CEO Asha Sharma Tells Staff That Many Thousands of Layoffs Are in Fact "Return to Growth"
- Get it? Layoffs are "growth".
- Gemini Links 07/10/2026: Nostalgia, Neutral Map, and Shorthanding
- Links for the day
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- Microsoft Insiders on "Effectively Being Silently Laid Off From Microsoft"
- People are laid off by the thousands without the media uttering a word or the companies confirming anything
- Brigading Against Women - Part XXIII - Extremism in the Mix and Getting the Police Involved
- In 2012 I was getting heckled a lot for opposing back doors in Linux; it has not stopped since
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 07, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, October 07, 2026
- Gemini Links 07/10/2026: On Feeling Guilty Leaving the US, Multinet, and Limiting Net Usage
- Links for the day
- The Cyber Show Explains the Concept of "Data Rape"
- a metaphor some might find crude
- FREE BEER is Still Online, But Barely Active
- 25 years ago or even 20 years ago many spoke of open/free beer (or "COLA")
- Syria: GNU/Linux Has Surged to 8% "Market Share"
- I don't have a convincing explanation for this
- IBM Dimming Down the Lights on IBM Consulting, No Knowledge or Experience Required
- They just "ride" the (old) brand, that's all
- Statement on American SLAPP
- Crossposted from schestowitz.com
- Today The Register MS Published "SPONSORED FEATURE" and "SPONSORED POST" With "AI" 31 Times in Them
- This isn't a "Reality" or "Era of AI", it's a paid-for spam campaign
- Links 07/10/2026: Unrest in France and Rumours of Plague in Russia
- Links for the day
- Brigading Against Women - Part XXII - The Lozza Problem (in Length)
- Garrett's case was a waste of the Court's money
- JavaScript in Richard Stallman's Web Site
- For search he is using CGI, not JavaScript
- EPO's Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) Plans Presentation Next Week (Coinciding With Apparent Coronation of 'Cocaine King' Campinos)
- They've outsourced this session to the dictator's spying eye
- The GNOME Foundation's Code of Conduct Has Been Misused to Hide Corruption
- People who value free speech and freedom of expression won't touch social control media with a 10-foot bargepole
- Voting for Freedom of the Press
- American elections happen every 4 years
- What Brett Wilson LLP and Matt Garrett Don't Want People to See/Read
- Book-burning is counterproductive
- Book-Burning Mindset Does Not Work
- It makes the suppressed voices more widely known
- Microsoft's XBox in 'Freefall'
- XBox is practically finished
- Slop is Plagiarism
- Plagiarism is not "theft" and copyright infringement is not "piracy"
- IBM is Almost Defunct
- IBM is doomed. It just tries to test how much more patience the shareholders have.
- Criminalisation of Journalism
- "Journalist Derya Okatan arrested in Turkey for allegedly possessing classified material"
- Brigading Against Women - Part XXI - Hiding Behind the Veil of "Privacy" After Telling Nazi Things in IRC Channels of Techrights and Physically Threatening People
- To merely explain an abuse (or crime) requires naming people; that's a fundamental tenet of reporting
- Links 07/10/2026: Quitting Smartphone and "Meta's Muse Is Spying on All Your Friends and Family"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/10/2026: Greed, In Praise of Zotero, and The de-Google Path
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 06, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, October 06, 2026
- Microsoft Hiring Only on the Cheap
- Much of the same can be said about GAFAM and IBM
- Gemini Links 06/10/2026: Nightfall Express, Shorthanding, and Raspberry Pi Desktop Gets a Debian Trixie Refresh
- Links for the day
- 20th Anniversary Next Month
- We are currently trying to agree on a plan for next month's celebrations
- Taking Photos With Richard Stallman (RMS)
- What's the point?
- GAFAM Attack on FreeDesktop
- Now they push lots of LLM slop into Linux
- EPO Union Bemoans Lack of Social Dialogue as Dictator Wishes to Govern Forever (No Elections, No Rivals), Hide the Many Issues
- "Exchange of open letters"
- GNU/Linux Has Risen in France Since the Order to Adopt GNU/Linux (in Public Services)
- We can expect the same in countries like Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and The Netherlands
- On Microsoft Hiring Freeze or No Permanent Jobs at Microsoft Anymore (Amid Many Silent Layoffs)
- Microsoft has changed what it can offer workers
- IBM Cannot Hide the Layoffs Forever
- we welcome whistleblower to tell us more and send us documents related to that
- EPO's Central Staff Committee Asking The Council to Get Rid of Corrupt Campinos
- We'll be covering EPO scandals around the time of that meeting
- Gemini Links 06/10/2026: EU Kids Act, Practicality of Gemini, and Games
- Links for the day
- Links 06/10/2026: Data Breaches Epidemic and Turkey Blocking Journalists
- Links for the day
- The Whole Point of Computing is That Computers Are Deterministic (Speed With Predictable Accuracy)
- Unlike stochastic parrots that stochastically utter out lies
- It's Not a Linux Back Door If It's an Unpatched Device
- "Linux Backdoor" is a glaring misfit, a possibly 'obscene' term
- What is a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA)? When Law Firms Become the Litigants.
- And the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) needs to be more serious about tackling this
- Brigading Against Women - Part XX - Attempts by Lozza to Deplatform Techrights and Tux Machines Only Days After I Sued Garrett and My Wife Also Sued Garrett (Shortly Before the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Joined)
- in 2024
- Links 06/10/2026: A Year Since "NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner Released From Prison", World Tries to Deal With El Niño
- Links for the day
- "SIRIUS CORPORATION LIMITED" as Evidence of the Financial Shell Games in the UK
- Rianne and I still have some fond memories of the time the ex-wife of the CEO treated us like human beings
- Lots of Silent Layoffs at IBM Last Week, Employees Explain Patterns of Those Impacted
- It wasn't just gossip, it actually happened even if the media chose to look the other way (as usual)
- Gemini Links 06/10/2026: Fighting for Purpose, Gemlogs, and Gemtext
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 05, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, October 05, 2026