Free Software News Roundup: Careers, Liberations, and Lots More
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-20 16:32:26 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-20 16:32:26 UTC
Summary: Recent news stories about Free/Open Source software (FOSS)
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For most students, an internship presents a major opportunity to learn and grow in a real-world environment. Interns who join an open source company or project also seem to learn a lot about themselves along the way. Recently, I asked some former Red Hat interns—both newly hired and long-time Red Hat associates—what lessons they learned by working in an open source culture and what advice they have for our next group of interns.
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Wikipedia defines “open-source” software as computer software with its source code made available and licensed with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Translated into English this just means it’s free to anyone who wants to download it. Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and Google’s Android are open source operating systems and are available and easy to download even for computer illiterates like myself.
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The University of California, Berkeley, has been authorised by Alcatel-Lucent to open sauce all Plan 9 software under the GNU General Public License, Version 2.
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The takeaway from this presentation should be that , not necessarily because of the usual claims of superior quality (Many eyes make fewer bugs etc.) but because FLOSS emphasizes Freedom and flexibility. I agree with FLOSS being the right way to do IT but I still believe the FLOSS that users will use from solid distros like Debian will be featureful and of high quality as well as being Free. The Debian developers filter out most of the crud included in the depressing statistics of median number of developers and such. It’s a part of their social contract: “We will give back to the free software community
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For the last decade we’ve watched an epic contest unfold between open source and proprietary technology, and 2014 is the year that this dynamic will radically transform. The lines between open source and proprietary are becoming irrevocably blurred as proprietary firms pour resources into open source development and open source companies dial in their revenue models. Above all else, the open source community is producing the technologies businesses need to be competitive in the data-rich 21st century.
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VCs are realizing the next billion-dollar software company won't make money from software, but from what open source enables it to deliver
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These were some of the questions asked by Amandeep, a New Delhi based owner of a small scale clothing company, when I pitched to him a few open source solutions that could make his day-to-day operations more efficient. For someone without any IT background (but a sharp business sense), these were brilliant and relevant questions. The answers to these questions won't just help Amandeep, but if shared broadly may help reduce the apprehension of a significant number of small scale business owners, especially in India. My interactions have shown that a lot of these businesses are looking to grow, enhance their productivity, and most importantly, save costs.
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Marcus Hanwell is a physicist by training, but his background in science led him down a different path than most reseachers. Today he is a contributer to a number of open source projects aimed at helping the scientific community better analyze and visualize their data. If you've got a question about finding the right open source tool for a scientific application, Marcus can point you in the right direction.
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Red Hat is perhaps the most recognized player in the entire open source field. As addition to promoting its operating systems, the company has been involved in storage for quite some time. Red Hat Storage is an open platform that is available for on-premise, public clouds such as Amazon, and hybrid cloud deployment. Pricing is by annual subscription based on the number of storage nodes.
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He went on to tell me how he had looked up “Linux” on the Internet and became interested in the “free” part of software. It took him a bit to get his head around the fact that people from around the globe are contributing to FOSS for not much more than the spirit of kinship and giving. From that moment, in Eddie Baker’s eyes software became more than things you click on to make other things happen.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Microsoft Windows Falls to All-Time Low of ~60% in Switzerland, GNU/Linux Among Top Gainers
- What will it take for mainstream media (not just geeks' site) to cover it?
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- Observing Slop's Demise
- If energy becomes more scarce, then one rare/side perk (or upside) will be slop companies screaming for lifeboats
- Links 06/04/2026: Crackers Breached the European Commission, Why "Old Way of Campaigning Won’t Cut It Anymore"
- Links for the day
- Enron Versus NVIDIA (the Cost of Circular Financing, or Funding Your Own Customers to Buy Your Products) - “The Inventory Paradox” or “The Vibe Revenue Admission”
- Round-tripping (finance)
- You Know "The Economy" is Fake When 6 Months After Oracle Says Debt-Saddled 'Open' 'AI' (Slop) Will Pay It $300,000,000,000 Oracle Says It Must Lay Off 30,000 Workers at 6AM
- Oracle is in deep debt, which increased at a pace of almost 4 billion dollars per month lately
- Free Software Will Outlive GAFAM
- GAFAM is overhyped
- Techrights Was Further Decentralised Three Years Ago
- In 2020 we began working on IPFS stuff
- The Military Attacks on Dubai Internet City as Reminder That GAFAM Isn't Safe (Disregard the "Nobody Gets Fired for Buying GAFAM" Mindset)
- These are all realistic and foreseeable scenarios that GAFAM sceptics have long warned about
- The Wars Aren't Ending, Now We See GAFAM Facilities Being Bombed
- This is becoming a tech issue
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- Links for the day
- Links 06/04/2026: Ex-Microsoft Engineer Explains Why Azure Fails, Germany Prepares for War
- Links for the day
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part XI - EPO Strike Enters Its Second Week, EPO Sheds Off Qualified Staff to Make Way for Nepotists
- More than six months ago the "Cocaine Communication Manager" got arrested for cocaine use
- Another Microsoft Outlook Downtime
- Microsoft has sloppy code, it's not something suitable for mission-critical things
- Week 2 of April IBM Layoffs Accelerate Based on Rumours
- "Heard about Layoff at IBM"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 05, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, April 05, 2026
- Culture of Harassment Inside Microsoft, Says Former Director at Microsoft
- listen to Microsoft insiders
- Drone Strikes on Amazon (GAFAM) Datacentres Highlight Azure's Miniscule Share
- Azure is failing
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 35 Out of 200: How to Make ~10,000 Pound Sterling (13,220.50 United States Dollars) by Copy-Pasting and Editing 10 Pages
- Today it's Easter Sunday, so we'll keep this part relatively short
- Gemini Links 05/04/2026: Artemis II Mission Tracker, Meditation on Copyright, Alhena 5.5.5, "Gemini as the Final Frontier of Human Cognition"
- Links for the day
- Mainstream Media on "Practical Survivalism"
- Suffice to say, panic buying begets more panic and price surges
- Cloud Computing as a Cloud of Smoke (Your Hosting Provider is a "Legitimate" Military Target)
- When a French datacentre went up in flames people joked that the "cloud" meant a cloud of smoke
- Andreas Tille Congratulates Sruthi Chandran Before the Election for Debian Project Leader (DPL) is Even Over
- Andreas Tille, the current Debian Project Leader (DPL) who has been in this role for nearly 24 months
- When You Try to Change the World for the Better and Somehow They Find a Way to Say You Are the Villain
- Don't be a fool. Don't fall for inversions of narratives.
- Slop Was a Flop and Energy Crisis Will be Slop's Final Blow
- Today we see no slopfarms in Google News
- Links 05/04/2026: "Taiwanese Airlines to Hike Fuel Surcharges 157%" and Openly Racist Voter Suppression Starts in the US
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 05/04/2026: Playing with Hyprland and Migrating Antenna Filters
- Links for the day
- Links 05/04/2026: "Confidential Computing" as Proprietary Bundle of False Promises and "The Web Is an Antitrust Wedge"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 04, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, April 04, 2026
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 34 Out of 200: The Necessity of Transparency, Illuminating Garrett's and Graveley's 'Tag-Team' Act, Misusing the British Docket (From Far Away in America) in Efforts to Hide Bad Behaviour
- Transparency is paramount
- Red Tape at Red Hat (IBM)
- Now the guiding principles are the whims and moods of people who peddle buzzwords to manipulate IBM's share prices
- The So-called 'AI' (Slop) Companies Will Have the Plug Pulled
- It can vastly accelerate this bubble's implosion
- Dr. Andy Farnell on a "Technology Plan B"
- based around Free software
- Windows Lows Across the Mediterranean
- Judging by this month's data from statCounter
- The Future of the Net is 'in Space'
- Gemini Protocol is growing and GemText remains the same, so it's made to endure
- Linux Foundation Profits From Scams, Fraud, and Grifting
- Don't be misled by the name "Linux Foundation"
- Too Hard for IBM to Keep Everybody Silent About How the Company Has Gone South
- IBM is busy trying to keep disgruntled or ex workers silent using NDAs
- Microsoft Transmits Malware and Back Doors to GNU/Linux Servers, Media Points the Finger at Everyone But Microsoft's Servers
- Is Microsoft too poor to vet and check what it hosts and transmits?
- Gemini Links 04/04/2026: "Fuzz Guy", "Reusing Old Computers with Arch Linux and DWM", and Bubble v10.0 Released
- Links for the day
- Links 04/04/2026: eBay Scam, "Music Publishers’ X Copyright Lawsuit Officially on Pause"
- Links for the day
- Links 04/04/2026: Social Control Media Verdict and Bans, Whistleblower (Axel Rietschin) Explains How "Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars"
- Links for the day
- Reaching the End/Event Horizon of LLM Slop
- Are we moving towards a post-LLMs world?
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 03, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, April 03, 2026
- Gemini Links 04/04/2026: STXGE and Computer Relationships
- Links for the day