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
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- This Saturday It's Gonna be 3.5 Years* Since Russia Invaded Ukraine. No Microsoft Protests Against Microsoft Having Provided Russia With Services.
- Companies do not have consistent policies and enforcement of "corporate values" is somewhat of an egg salad
- Slopwatch: Sites Gone Rogue, Google Promoting Lies, and DDoS Attacks by Plagiarism Giants
- Charlatans and frauds engage in a war against artistic industries, mislabeling plagiarism as "AI"
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- Microsoft Workers on Canonical's Payroll
- If you want something that's sort of like Ubuntu but is not controlled by Canonical, then look into Linux Mint, Debian, or LMDE
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- Sierra Leone isn't a very rich country (to say the least), but it's better off than some of its neighbours
- The SLAPPS Run Out of Oxygen Because They're Abuse of Process
- At the end of the day we plan to publish over 1,000 articles explaining what happened
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- Where they don't charge an arm and a leg
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- It's not just Guyana
- About 25% of the "Linux" News/Results in Google News Today Are LLM Slop, Almost 20% From the Same Rogue Operators of Slopfarms
- Google, which tries to market itself as an LLM giant, apparently fails to understand what's wrong with it
- Harassing People on Holiday
- There are "no-go areas"; but that assumes all laws firms have ethical standards
- The Great, Undeniable Value of Paper Trail, Not Purely Digital Systems
- Suppose you have nothing but bits on someone else's computer and "word of mouth"...
- The Company Behind Ars Technica, Reddit and Wired Caught Publishing LLM Slop (It Also Admits It Now)
- Condé Nast busted
- Links 22/08/2025: Lagrange 1.18.8, Wired Magazine and Business Insider Caught Resorting to LLM Slop
- Links for the day
- Links 22/08/2025: Cisco Layoffs, LA Times Says "AI Hype is Fading Fast"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 22/08/2025: K for Kentucky and Caddy Versus LLM Slopbots
- Links for the day
- The "End Software Patents" Initiative of the FSF Explains "WHY [to] ABOLISH SOFTWARE PATENTS"
- We hope to cover patent-related issues more and more as the big anniversary of the FSF approaches
- Freenode Sniffing
- The grown-ups left the building
- The Only Thing Worse Than Misinformation is Misinformation Sold to Everyone as "Intelligence"
- Misplaced trust is worse than none at all
- The Register MS Now Openly Admits LLM Hype Does Damage, But It's Also Being Paid to Participate in the LLM Hype (With Paid 'Articles' and 'Webcasts' for Paying Advertisers)
- The Register MS gets paid to do this
- End of the Smartphone Era? No.
- Maybe the media should focus on producing accurate, factual news
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 21, 2025
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- Enshittification of Airports, Airlines, and Airplanes
- If people are willing to tolerate standard declines and enshittification (nowadays sold as "pivot to AI" or "replaced by AI" or "AI layoffs") they will pay for it some other way
- Latest Is Not Greatest: The Case of "Foldable" Tech
- don't be shamed into abandoning old things just because the "fashion industry" of Apple and Samsung tells you to
- Airlines and Their Tricks That Only Work in the 'Digital Age'
- People sceptical of the direction technology has taken are not "Luddites"
- Open Source Initiative (OSI), Which Became a Propaganda Front of Microsoft and "Hey Hi" (Hype, Misnomer), Wants You to Forget These Scandals
- A lot of these issues won't be set aside until there's a resolution
- The Culture of Overnight Coding
- An industry-wise push-back is needed
- Windows Down to New Lows in Guinea Bissau and Many Countries Around It
- If Android is accounted for, Windows is down to about 10%
- Gemini Links 21/08/2025: Modern Dating, Debian 13, and Apache
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Has Had About 10 Waves of Mass Layoffs So Far This Year (Not Two as Mainstream Media and Slopfarms Endlessly Claim)
- Notice how the MSM (Mainstream Media) never mentions the debt of Microsoft. It is a conscious, deliberate decision.
- Links 21/08/2025: Covid Cases on the Rise, "Social Media Trolls", Russia's Attacks Intensify
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/08/2025: The Attraction of Back Alleys, Initramfs, and BSD ISPs
- Links for the day
- Links 21/08/2025: Stephanie Shirley Dies and "Groklaw Domain Hijacked?"
- Links for the day
- Search in 2025 (Age of DDoS Attacks Under the Guise of "AI" "Innovation")
- One common concern when things go "live" is that any random bot out there can execute queries, pumping up RAM and CPU usage, as happened when we used MediaWiki and WordPress
- Using Slop for Images Does Not Make Your Site Look Advanced or Witty, It Just Makes Your Whole Work Look Like Presumed Plagiarism
- Lazy slobs and Serial Sloppers use the guise/excuse of "AI" to plagiarise and spam the Web
- Financing of the "Hey Hi" (AI) Bubble by Those Who Profit From Planetary Destruction (Global Warming)
- It's about personal gain, too
- Richard Stallman Will Speak in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress
- it's good to see that the FSF pays considerable respect to it founder, who is moreover invited to speak at events
- (At Least) Second Wave of Mass Layoffs in Microsoft This Month
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- Over at Tux Machines...
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- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 20, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, August 20, 2025