Free Software/Open Source Software News
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-31 16:09:40 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-31 16:40:21 UTC
Nuxeo
Xen
Army
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has initiated a program to develop approaches for fixing software flaws by using big data analytics principles, GCN reported Monday.
DARPA intends for the Mining and Understanding Software Enclaves program to boost the reliability of building, verifying and maintaining software systems, according to the report.
Security
GlobalSign has offered to give a free wildcard SSL certificate for qualified open source projects, as a way of supporting open source and as a way to encourage adoption of industry best practices.
The project must have an OSI-approved license, be actively maintained, be non-commercial, and pass some simple requirements, all of which are desirable conditions.
Tor
Almost three months after being alerted to its presence, Apple has taken down from the App Store an allegedly fake Tor Browser containing adware and spyware.
It's notable that according to recent statistics available through Tor Metrics Portal there has been a large 1increase in the number of Tor clients used and more than a million users are now connecting to the network. Tor, from the Tor Project, is one of the most powerful and flexible open source solutions for online anonymity, and it's clearly gaining popularity.
Blender
Blender is perhaps open source's biggest poster child for years now. And in every year or two, Blender foundation showcases the product's 3D graphics capabilities by releasing animated movies created exclusively using Blender software. They are called "open movies" and you're free to download and reuse the movies the way you want, standing true to its open source credentials. We have featured each and every Blender "open" movie ever released here and here. Now its time for the fifth one codenamed "Gooseberry", and unlike its predecessors, the project's goal would be to produce a feature length animated film.
Out today is another big update to the open-source Blender 3D animation software.
New features include initial support for volumetrics in Cycles, and faster rendering of hair and textures. The motion tracker now supports weighted tracks and has improved planar tracking. For mesh modeling there are new Laplacian deform and wireframe modifiers, along with more control in the bevel tool. The game engine now supports object levels of detail.
Sony
Sony is making it Authoring Tools Framework product available to programmers for free under the Apache 2.0 open source license.
The Authoring Tools Framework (ATF) will be free to download and use.
Industry commentators have suggested that this may now create an incentive for independent third-party developers to start developing games (or indeed porting existing games) to the PlayStation.
Misc.
The main question behind open source software is: Why would developers want to create software or contribute to another piece of software for free? For a lot of developers the answer is easy. They rely on some piece of open source software for their business so they have an active interest in supporting the community around that software.
If you enjoy making music you might be interested in a new open source midi keyboard kit called the Kyub which offers users a feather touch three-dimensional midi keyboard which is supplied as a kit.
Jacie Buckner and Alexis Wills are teenagers. Both grew up in the same Appalachian region of North Carolina. Jacie describes herself as quiet. Alexis says she is a rebel. They met in middle school, when they ran into each other in the lunchroom. " I looked at Jacie and thought 'oh my goodness, she’s going to hate me!'"Alexis says.
Tajo, a big data open source project predominantly developed by domestic developers, has gotten recognition from developers around the world.
The open source project Tajo, an on-going project led by domestic big data company Gruter, was chosen as a “top level” project on March 23 by the Apache Foundation, the world’s biggest open source organization. Tajo made its introduction in the Apache Foundation in March, last year.
The announcement at the turn of the year that a bunch of seventies and early eighties videogames were being released to play for free in a web browser was met with something of a sneer in some quarters. If you missed it, this is the latest work from the Internet Archive, which kicked off its latest project, The Console Living Room, with games for five different machines. Two of them were Ataris, while titles from the ColecoVision, the Magnavox Odyssey and The Astrocade were also featured. All you now have to do if you want to play one of the available games is to head to Console Living Room, click on your machine of choice, and pick a game – but don’t blame me if you overrun your lunch hour.
Irish 21-year-old who founded CoderDojos after-school clubs tells of huge impact on young worldwide
There’s an ongoing conversation about the shifting role of developers and what that means for IT departments. They’re now shaping product and user experience with such great influence that businesses must understand their importance in order to be as successful as possible.
Which open source software should you consider for your business? Here, Steve Nice from Reconnix reviews three of the leading providers.
Recent Techrights' Posts
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- So "PIPs" are definitely in the EPO and we saw letters sent to staff
- Time for Change, More New Articles, Less Curation
- The oligarchy wants to gut the real press and replace media with slop and social control media (or social control media with slop in it, i.e. their own voices, mechanised)
- Almost 1,600 EPO Employees Went on Strike Last Week
- There is another strike coming 2.5 weeks from now
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
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- Microsoft does not behave like a company riding trillions but like a company that struggles with payroll
- Better Outcomes When Facing the Discomfort of Conflict
- Don't take the easy way out when the "hard way" is the right way and it can result in positive revelations
- Leaving the United States 3 Years Ago Was the Best Decision We Made
- A lot of stuff is being consolidated
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- Links 05/02/2026: Canadian Government Uses US LLMs to Override Expert Opinions, NVIDIA Troubles Due to Enablement of Mass Plagiarism ('Piracy') Misleadingly Obscured as "Hey Hi"
- Links for the day
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- this letter (with annotation) is critical
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- The Web as a resource/source of information is perishing
- "Sponsored by Azul" to Write Fake 'Article' About Azul, Quoting Azul Itself
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- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 05/02/2026: Coercion, Antibiotics, and LVDT Project
- Links for the day
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- IRC logs for Wednesday, February 04, 2026
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- Links for the day
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- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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- Links for the day
- Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Used to be Widely Used in Geminispace, Now It's Down to Just 0.2% of the Whole
- Let's Encrypt is not your friend
- What IBM Does Is Clearly Illegal in the US: Tying Severance Packages to NDAs (Non-Disparagement Agreement/Clause)
- The NDAs make things worse; they keep people isolated and silent
- Microsoft's Giant Snowball of Layoffs and PIPs (in 2026)
- They would delay until March or April if they wanted to, but then we can expect numbers exceeding 10,000 layoffs (Microsoft always low-balls the real figure/s)
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- Mozilla is still a slop pusher
- Links 04/02/2026: "Laws of Succession" and Microsoft's VS Code as Code-Stealing Malware
- Links for the day
- BillBC (BBC) Covered Up Pedophilia, Now It's Covering Up for Its Sponsor Bill Gates by Reprinting His Lies, Which His Own Wife Disputes
- Is Bill Gates having orgies (group sex)?
- Phoronix Swims With the Real Trolls, People Who Fancy Proprietary Software and Back Doors
- If Larabel begins to actively participate in provocation with the "Microsoft GitHub fans club", what does this tell us about Phoronix?
- They Know Microsoft Layoffs Are About to Hit Them Hard
- The gaming division at Microsoft is a complete catastrophe, lots of money (debt) down the drain [...] Buying Activision was all about misleading shareholders or hiding the deep trouble/problems XBox was having
- Red Hat is Not a Linux Company, It's IBM's Ponzi Scheme Enabler
- Had we still been stuck in 2021, perhaps IBM would plaster "NFT" or "metaverse" all over RedHat.com
- Keep Grinding
- "Don't let the bastards grind you down"
- Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part III - Who's Going to Pay for the EPO's Corruption? (Aside From European Citizens)
- Some people inside the EPO reached out to us
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- A few decades from now IBM will only be remembered in the same sense many so-called 'AI' companies will be remembered
- EPO Staff Union: "Very High Strike Participation on Friday 30 January", Another Strike Starts 19 Days From Now
- EPO management in a bit of a panic
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- It's important to have a grasp of how contemporary censorship works and how to tackle it
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- this is what Google links to
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
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- IRC logs for Tuesday, February 03, 2026
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- Links for the day
- IBM Falls by Over 10%
- a recipe for disasters like accounting fraud
- Links 03/02/2026: Windows Copies GNU/Linux, Windows TCO Shown Again
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/02/2026: Alhena Turns One, Slop Rejected, and Max Roy Carrouges Recalled
- Links for the day
- How to Identify Demonisation or Dehumanisation Tactics Against Interesting Figures or Luminaries in Free Software
- Rather than in general or generally in technology
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- Why can't European companies and government recognise and react to a threat (when they see one)?
- Dr. Andy Farnell on Why and How European Authorities Can Adopt Free Software, Parenting in the Age of Digital Abundance
- Will Europe use technology that Europe controls (not the hegemon), for a change?
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- They want people to pay for a licence
- Seems Like IBM Trolls Use Chatbots to Vandalise Platform That Discusses IBM's Secret Layoffs, Forever Layoffs
- Not for the first time either
- You Know Your Company is Dead or Basically a Pyramid Scheme When Jim Cramer Keeps Promoting Its Stock
- How much does IBM pay for "puff pieces" or "fluff" about QC?
- Red Hat (Under IBM) Works for Microsoft (Proprietary Software) and Slop
- Yesterday Red Hat's official site, redhat.com, published exactly 5 new blog posts
- IBM is Dying (More Layoffs), Red Hat Will Continue to Suffer From the Acquisition
- Financial engineering
- Colombia Adopting GNU/Linux Even Faster (at Microsoft's and Apple's Expense)
- Do politics play any role in this?
- An Effort to Tackle Slavery in 'Open Source' Clothing
- "a civil rights lawsuit to examine the concerns of censored developers in the free, open source software ecosystem"
- $15 billion lawsuit: Ubuntu, Google & Debian crowdfunding campaign launch
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part II - Why We Need to Expose the SRA to More Daylight, Public Scrutiny
- SRA is neither effective nor regulated
- Links 03/02/2026: "Distraction is a Sin" and Fake "Encryption" (Surveillance With Good Marketing)
- Links for the day
- 400-Page US Federal Court Against Abuses by Google, Microsoft and Front Groups That Abuse Volunteers for American Corporations
- There are 386 pages in total (in the US claim)
- Corporate Influence Never Impacted Us
- There's no reason to assume we'll ever "sell out"
- Growth of GNU/Linux in Cuba
- Right now a lot of the world drafts or already implements a GAFAM exit plan
- A Day After EPO Strikes an Escalation to Heads of Delegations to the Administrative Council
- They rely on the European media playing along, helping them to hide major blunders, even crimes
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 02, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, February 02, 2026
- Gemini Links 03/02/2026: Stargazing, Development Boards, and Tcl/Tk Slop
- Links for the day
