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
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Battistelli's "Baltic Crusader"
- Gilles Requena, Battistelli's erstwhile "Baltic Crusader" and the loyal servant of his successor Campinos
- Microsoft's XBox "Bloodbath" Seems to Have Already Begun (Informally), Studios Allegedly to Face Shutdowns, Layoff Notices Handed Out, 100% Layoffs in Some Cases, 10% in Others or on Average
- So is a complete closure/shutdown imminent? (Compulsion Games in this case)
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 105 Out of 200: When Bad Legal Advice Results in Your Client, Dale Vince, Ordered to Pay £600k - or 801,930 United States Dollar (USD) - to the Person Frivolously Sued (Lord Bailey of Paddington)
- "A judge has ruled that Dale Vince must pay punitive costs to Lord Bailey of Paddington, the Tory peer, over the 'unexplained abandonment' of his" SLAPP
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- SLAPP Censorship - Part 106 Out of 200: 100 Kilograms of Legal Papers
- When one party's communications and filings weigh at about 3 KG of paper and another's... at about 100 KG of paper
- Links 14/06/2026: More Google Layoffs, Wall Street Deems Companies That Lose Money "Worth" Trillions
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 14/06/2026: "The Universe is a Hologram", "Matrix Brain Download", and "Happy 0th Year"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 13, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, June 13, 2026
- Links 13/06/2026: University of Nottingham Confirms Data/System Breach, Courts Fuming at Fraudulent Lawyers Who Fling LLM Slop at Them
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/06/2026: World Cups and 做人
- Links for the day
- Discussing Morale at IBM and Conversations Regarding IBM Layoffs (Disguised as Other Things)
- Trolling can be a form of censorship
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: All the President's Men
- Gilles Requena,Patrice Pellegrino, and Sandro Mendonça
- SUEPO Elections Coming Up, Union Leaders at Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) to be Determined Soon
- The staff union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO) is having an election soon
- How Long for Can American Taxpayers Justify Bailing Out Microsoft?
- How many times need the American taxpayers give Microsoft money for vapourware that's neither necessary nor delivered?
- IBM is Importing/Exporting Corporations' Regime of Censorship (Hiding the Wrongdoing) to Free Software Communities
- Is IBM protecting criminals in the name of "manners"?
- Links 13/06/2026: Microsoft’s XBox Crisis and "Apple Deepfakes"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/06/2026: Why Humans Are Mostly Right Handed and "Getting Things Done"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 12, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, June 12, 2026
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 104 Out of 200: Exactly Two Years Ago Brett Wilson LLP Humiliated or Weaponised Our Solicitor's Judaism in an Effort to Censor and Gag Us
- dated 12/06/24
- Half a Year Since Slopwatch Died
- To Google's credit, it did manage to delist a lot of slopfarms in recent months
- Links 12/06/2026: Science, Windows TCO, and More
- Links for the day
- "AI" 46 Times in One 'Article' Because The Register MS Got Paid to Push it
- Today is just another opportunity to remind people that the slop bubble and GPU bubble are based on inauthentic fake 'journalism'
- Gemini Links 12/06/2026: FTP and Gopher, Cluster Outage Postmortem After Cleaning by Wife
- Links for the day
- Sonny Piers Finally Spills the Beans on GNOME Cover-up, Points Finger at Robert McQueen, Misusing "Defamation" to Silence Critics of Wrongdoing
- Robert McQueen, who is extremely connected to Garrett (they share digital nests)
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Transcending Partisan Rivalry in the National Interest
- Up until now, Campinos has generally been regarded as a Portuguese "asset" on the international stage
- Gratitude to Whistleblowers or Sources of Techrights
- Whistleblowers are what makes journalism work
- Techrights Was Months Ahead of "XBox" News (Mass Layoffs)
- Next: end of XBox as a console
- More Commentary on June 2026 IBM Layoffs and Why They Happen
- It sounds a lot like what happened to the EPO
- Links 12/06/2026: "NearlyFreeSpeech" No More, Openwashing by Google (DiffusionGemma)
- Links for the day
- Today There's a Massive EPO Strike (Like Every Friday), Workers Explain Further Cuts Despite the EPO Making More Income by Granting Illegal Patents (or Invalid Patents Illegally)
- "Recent exchange with the Administration on the implications of the SAP on the Education and Childcare Allowance"
- The Cyber Show: Remember That Code is Art
- The article is very long, very profound, and speaks of "the next installation"
- Communicating With Freedom - Part IV - Quibble Now in quibble.chat, Open for Contributions Via Codeberg
- Today we continue the series about Quibble
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: The Importance of Having "Pals from the Palacete"
- for his reappointment bid to succeed, Campinos will need to be able to rely on the support of both the Portuguese Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, and the President of the European Council, António Costa
- Cyber Show on How Updates or Upgrades Break Workflows, Even in Free Software
- "We did a big upgrade on the AV production pipeline"
- Discussions About IBM Layoffs in June, Including by RTO and PIPs
- mass layoffs are becoming increasingly difficult to conceal
- Gemini Links 12/06/2026: Decks and Work Essay
- Links for the day
- "Rolling Strikes" Continue at the European Patent Office, the Administrative Council Needs to Take Action Against Crooked Office Management
- This coming weekend we'll talk about some of the other issues and concerns expressed by the union
- Only Days After Mass Layoffs in Microsoft's Azure There Are Headlines About Much-Expected XBox Layoffs
- XBox as a console is basically dead or "fast-dying"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 11, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, June 11, 2026