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Links 29/5/2012: Fedora 17 is Coming, Linux Mint 13 Reviews





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Want Freedom from Vendor Lock-in? Survey Says: Choose Open Source
    It's no secret that open source software is playing an increasingly prominent role in businesses around the globe, but a recent survey has uncovered a few surprising findings about adopters' motivations for choosing it.


  • Freedom from vendor lock-in drives adoption of open source
    According to a report by the 451 Group, many companies are now identifying freedom from vendor lock-in as an important reason for switching to open source software. In a recent survey by the group, 60% of respondents said that the top factor that made open source software "attractive" was the absence of the dependency on one particular vendor. The second most quoted factor was lower acquisition and maintenance costs (51%) followed by better code quality (43%) and the ability to look at the source code (42%).


  • Apache Wookie Delivers Open Source Widgets
    As all geeks know, today is the 35th anniversary of the release of Star Wars (and it's also Towel Day too). What you may not have known is that today also marks the release of Apache Wookie 0.10.0.


  • Interview with the Sage Mathematics Software Project


  • Living With Open Source


  • Open source and the National Security Agency, together again
    The Open Source Software Institute, a non-profit group that supports open-source adoption and the National Security Agency (NSA), the organization in charge of all out of country eavesdropping, will co-host an Open Source Software Industry Day on Wednesday, May 30, 2012. The unclassified, one-day event will be held at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory’s Kossiakoff Conference Center near Fort Meade, MD, which is where the NSA is based. Alas, pre-registration is already over.


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Crazy Geckos: Nitot on Mozilla's post-Firefox mobile crusade
        First came the BlackBerry, bringing the smartphones for suits perfected by RIM to consumers. Next came the iPhone, which quickly hoovered up 23 per cent of the market. But the iPhone came at a price: the freedom of users and coders. It is tightly controlled by Apple, as Adobe quickly found to its cost with Flash.

        Next up was Android. In just four years, Android exploited consumers' desire to poke and stroke their phones to become the world's most popular smartphone OS – burying the iPhone – with 59 per cent of the market.

        Android had a plus: freedom of choice for both coder and consumer thanks to an open-source code base.






  • BSD



  • Project Releases



  • Public Services/Government



  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open access and open source in the context of scholarly publishing
      Scholarly publishing in the English-speaking world has been in turmoil since the reduction in higher education funding in the 1970s affected university presses and libraries. Scholarly publishing is not about money, at least not directly, but about personal reputation, research dissemination, impact and the advancement of knowledge. Open publishing accounts for a relatively small proportion of scholarly publishing, though its impact is growing and affecting the commercial publishing models. Agata Mrva-Montoya






Leftovers

  • Skip Internet Explorer for Web Dev. Save $100,000
    Even better is the fact that the company got few complaints -- meaning that IE support isn't a big deal anymore.

    This is fantastic news for Linux users (who can't run IE) and good news overall that the hegemony of IE is now a thing of the past. Reality of course is that today, desktop users run multiple browsers and developers go mobile first (WebKit/iOS/Android) first in many instances.

    It's also interesting to see how much more it costs to build an IE website. It's shocking that it could cost $100,000 more isn't it?


  • Security



  • Copyrights

    • Microsoft take-down requests – needs its own house in order first?
      Some Microsoft Advocates often refer to Linux/FOSS users with the derogatory term “freetard” and even if we look past at the apparent double standards Bing employs in comparison with requests made of Google and we ignore the millions of Windows users using the uTorrent client and downloading copyrighted material, we need only look to Microsoft themselves and a very interesting article by torrent freak, who, after researching a few Microsoft IP addresses, find that records show, their machines have been very busy downloading copyrighted material for free too. Hypocricy? Would we expect anything less from a company that employs a man someone like Steve Ballmer?






Recent Techrights' Posts

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Does UPRP maladministration extend to the false belief that qualified and experienced scientists can play the role of circus clowns?
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'polite' bullying
Who Imitates Who? Plagiarist as Client (From Microsoft), 'Plagiarism' at the Law Firm?
let's revisit the subject
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Step 2
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a form of extortion
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Meanwhile we got compliments on our recent articles, which means that they are effective
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IBM's CEO Roasted, Sizzled and Grilled for Dumb and Inconsistent Vapourware Promises
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IBM's Goal Is Not (and Never Was) Computer Users' Freedom
More than 1.5 decades ago I found IBM to be an "ally of convenience" because of OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Wayland Shows the IBM/Red Hat Way of Doing Things
IBM is trying to 'kill' X
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Slopfarm Catastrophe
Seems like BetaNews (or BetaNoise) has just suffered a major data loss and restored the site from a week-old backup
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VIII: Illegal Working Conditions
How many people need to die for these people to get their massive salaries?
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