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)
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
VCs are realizing the next billion-dollar software company won't make money from software, but from what open source enables it to deliver
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
- Links 28/06/2025: The Age of Integrity and FreeBSD Foundation Added John Baldwin as Board Member
- Links for the day
- Fedora 44
- IBM now does to Fedora what it did to RHEL
- Microsoft Already Shaved Off Costs Anywhere It Could. It Was Not Enough.
- Office and Windows aren't "selling" (licences) like they used to
- Scheduled Maintenance Next Week
- Our community is alive and well
- BetaNews: We're Publishing LLM Slop About LLM Slop
- Beta version of a slopfarm?
- 3-Month Updates on Our Complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
- In short, the complaint remains open, updated, and is advancing
- IBM Red States Hat (Project 2025): Our "New Thing" Replaces This "Old Thing"
- The new replaces the old. That's how IBM frames it.
- Start X
- Just because something is old does not mean it is bad
- Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, Google News Slopfarms, and Linux Journal (LJ)
- Today we take a quick look at 3 slopfarms
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 27, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, June 27, 2025
- Links 28/06/2025: "CC Signals" Virtue-Signals to Slop Ponzi Schemes, North Korea Aims for Tourism
- Links for the day
- Links 27/06/2025: International Tensions and Contentions Over Plagiarism Perfumed as "Hey Hi" and "Fair Use"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 27/06/2025: Poetry and Censorship by Social Control Media Centralisation
- Links for the day
- Links 27/06/2025: Journalists Under Fire and Microsoft Has Serious Slop Problems
- Links for the day
- X is Dying, But Not XServer/X11. Twitter X.com is Dying.
- People or businesses or government officials (and departments) that still rely on Social Control Media are playing Russian Roulette with their future online
- Wayland is About Less Choice, About Removing Choices, It's Not About Freedom
- IBM insists that it cares about "diversity"
- Keeping Things Accessible
- Gemini Protocol seems to be growing
- Escaping Colonialism (or 'Hegemony') Requires Abandoning GAFAM, Microsoft in Particular
- Europe is already in the process of abandoning Microsoft
- Microsoft Will Shut Down More Studios This Week, Its Media Operatives Will Tell Lies About the Magnitude of the Shutdowns and Layoffs (They Always Do)
- Many people who get counted as "workforce" are "temps" or similar
- Not Much Better Than LLM Slop: Linux Foundation-Funded 'News' Site Writes Linux Foundation 'News', Composed by Linux Foundation Operative, Quoting Linux Foundation Staff
- ...they get paid (sponsored) to produce this spam. Then they call it "journalism".
- What Linux Foundation 'Research' is: Paid Marketing
- What is Linux Foundation 'Research'?
- Annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 22x) 'Bought' by Microsoft and Microsoft Exceeded Sponsorship Limits by Giving Double the Maximum Permitted Amount
- When people get bribed they tend to forget how to utter a simple word: "No."
- No, IBM Does Not Care About People With Disabilities
- "Aktion T4" did not seem to bother Watson
- Microsoft's Financial Problems Mean Shutdowns, Not Just Mass Layoffs
- If the original rumour is true, then expect almost 30,000 Microsoft workers to be let go this year
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 26, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, June 26, 2025
- The Netherlands: GNU/Linux Measured at All-Time High
- Are any Dutch cities going to announce dumping Microsoft?
- Gemini Links 27/06/2025: "Interstitial Existence" and Autocorrect
- Links for the day
- EPO Examiners Point Out to the Heads of Delegations in the Administrative Council of the EPO That the "AI Policy" of the Office is Illegal
- "the Central Staff Committee (CSC) asks the Administrative Council to exert its supervisory role and instruct EPO management to enter into genuine dialogue with the staff representation on the AI Policy, to revise the “Leverage AI” target of 90% AI-automated classification in the SP2028 and to put in place the measures supported by staff in the resolution."
- Technical People Need Technical Lawyers
- Technical Litigants in Person (LIPs) have many real and concrete advantages
- 10,000+ Articles in About 20 Months (and How We Got Here)
- More bloat does not beget efficiency and "bells and whistles" tend to have a hidden cost
- French Cities Dumping Microsoft Because They Recognise Software Freedom, Open Standards, GNU/Linux Autonomy
- We hope that more French cities - maybe Paris - will follow Lyon.
- Links 26/06/2025: Illegal Kangaroo Court (UPC) Failing Scandinavia, K-Pop Agencies Abuse People
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 26/06/2025: AuraGem Twitch Proxy is Back and UI Sluggishness
- Links for the day
- LWN is a Voice of GAFAM (Through Linux Foundation, Their Front Group or Occupying Force Inside Linux)
- remember who the chief editor works for and who sponsors many of the articles
- Links 26/06/2025: Noise Pollution Considered High in Europe, Mass Layoffs Next Week in Microsoft Confirmed, Very Large in Scale and Scope
- Links for the day
- The 'Case' of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft is a Lot of Copypasta (Maybe Also LLM Slop) From the Matthew Garrett 'Case'
- 5RB deserves to know and the matter shall be properly reported in due course (when the time is right)
- EPO Squeezing the Staff - Part II - Office Breaks Rules, Ignores Courts, Defies Justice
- False promises everywhere
- No, I Don't Want Your Latest XYZ, ThankYouVeryMuch...
- Wayland is finally ready?
- China Keeps Breaking Into Microsoft Systems, So for True Sovereignty, Nations Wary of China Need to Dump Microsoft
- Looking at data from Taiwan (not China) and Maharlika (not Philippines, the king is dead and Spain is out), there are encouraging signs
- Linux Journal Wants Ads on Its LLM Slop or Ads as 'Articles'
- it's basically another BetaNews
- How to Kill a Monopoly
- in 10 simple steps
- IBM - Like Microsoft - is a Dying Company and Perishing Brand ("AI" is a Lie and Decoy)
- "Arvind is cutting costs (layoffs, PIPs, forced RTO, etc...) like crazy. IBM offices are closing all over the place in the US."
- "Code of Conduct" Invoked When Fedora and Red Hat Users (Since the 1990s) Don't Want to Use Wayland
- That is IBM "DEI"
- Mozambique: GNU/Linux Rose From 0.5% Last Year to 3% This Year
- what (or how) statCounter is measuring
- Microsoft Layoffs Next Week: About 10% to be Laid Off in Microsoft Gaming (2 Days Before Independence Day), About 20%+ of XBox Staff
- Microsoft is rapidly collapsing
- Next Month Marks 11 Years Since Our In-Depth EPO Coverage
- The same is happening to Microsoft right now
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) Campaigns Against Vista 11, Adds 4 New Associate Members Per Day
- If more people understood the underlying principles, more of them would flock to Free software overnight
- Canonical Seems to Have Culled Some Sources of LLM Slop From Planet Ubuntu
- It's like "junk food", it's not information
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 25, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, June 25, 2025
- On "Weak Claims"
- For the record, they sent me unjustified threats, repeatedly tried injunctions (censorship)
- EPO Squeezing the Staff - Part I - Burnout and Family Health
- more exceptional circumstances
- This Month's Mail (MX) Server Survey Shows Microsoft at 0.20% "Market Share"
- We need to remind people that desktops and laptops decline (in proportion to other client devices) and at the "back end" GNU/Linux is already dominant and has long been dominant
- Links 26/06/2025: Filespooler Guide and Learning to Code
- Links for the day