Free/Open Source Software News: More Advocacy, Liberation, and Free Software on the Web
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-06 13:37:30 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-06 13:37:30 UTC
Advocacy
The APC Chris Nicol FLOSS Prize recognises initiatives that are making it easy for people to start using free/libre and open source software (FLOSS). The prize will be awarded to a person or group doing extraordinary work to make FLOSS accessible to ordinary computer users.
Imagine a world with fewer queues in banking and retail, and more self-service options. Imagine no longer relying on one cubical or terminal for service. Sounds unreal? This world is now a possibility in South Africa thanks to the partnership between LSD and Cashware.
Essentially, an open-source software or OSS is a kind of computer software which has its source code made available and licensed by virtue of such a license agreement which authorizes the copyright holder to study, modify and distribute the software to anyone, without any further charges and for any purpose whatsoever.
Open-sourcing
As part of the ROS team the engineers at Willow Garage wanted a low price point entry available for new programmers. The TurtleBot's SDK contains a collection of programs that range from basic to advanced. Instructions show how to set up the bot, operate with a keyboard, operate with a joystick, and fully utilize the Kinect camera data. There's also a cleverly titled section about maintenance called TurtleBot Care and Feeding.
Cisco may be a multi-billion entity that was built around a proprietary operating system, but if recent moves are any indication, a wave of open interoperability has been steadily reshaping how Cisco is bringing next-generation IT infrastructure to market.
A few months ago we wrote about Linksys Reviving The WRT54G Router In 802.11AC Form. Belkin, which owns Linksys, has begun releasing code for this new router -- the WRT1900AC -- but with this early code is still some glaring problems.
Misc.
XBMC, an open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media that is available for multiple platforms, has just reached version 13.0 Beta 3 and is now available for testing.
Events
Apache and Nginx
Two of the world's most widely deployed web servers have both recently been updated to fix security vulnerabilities.
With so many Apache Hadoop distributions on the market, what sets them apart? MapR is hoping that bringing feature-rich open source searching to its Big Data platform via integration with Elasticsearch will help draw users by making Big Data analytics and business intelligence faster and more comprehensive.
Mozilla
Mozilla and the Rust community are pleased to announce version 0.10 of the Rust compiler and tools. Rust is a systems programming language with a focus on safety, performance and concurrency.
If you've ever done any web development work, you are probably intimately familiar with the fact that what you build on the web may show up fine in one browser, yet be completely broken in another. It used to be that this problem simply meant testing sites and pages across popular desktop browsers, but in the age of mobile technology, you now have to test your creations across mobile devices, too.
While Mozilla has mostly been in the headlines this week for news related to contributions made by its new CEO Brendan Eich, another piece of meaningful news regarding the company is largely being ignored: Google Chrome has moved past Firefox to take second place in desktop browser market share, according to web traffic stats from Net Applications. In March, Chrome grabbed 17.5 percent of desktop brower traffic, while Firefox sat in third place with 17.2 percent. This is a first for Chrome, according to Net Applications' data, and is possibly driven by Google's extensive advertising for Chrome and Mozilla's new focus on Firefox OS and mobile technology.
The latest Mozilla Firefox nightly builds have begun enabling the generational garbage collector to better compete with Google's Chrome on performance grounds.
In an exciting collaboration with Mozilla and Google, Intel is bringing SIMD to JavaScript. This makes it possible to develop new classes of compute-intensive applications such as games and media processing—all in JavaScript—without the need to rely on any native plugins or non-portable native code. SIMD.JS can run anywhere JavaScript runs. It will, however, run a lot faster and more power efficiently on the platforms that support SIMD. This includes both the client platforms (browsers and hybrid mobile HTML5 apps) as well as servers that run JavaScript, for example through the Node.js V8 engine.
Thimble is actually a subset of Mozilla’s Webmaker project, which is aimed at teaching all kinds of web literacy and development skills.
Many, many people have noticed that if we had a way to reliably record program execution and replay it later, with the ability to debug the replay, we could largely tame the nondeterminism problem. This would also allow us to deliberately introduce nondeterminism so tests can explore more of the possible execution space, without impacting debuggability. Many record and replay systems have been built in pursuit of this vision. (I built one myself.) For various reasons these systems have not seen wide adoption. So, a few years ago we at Mozilla started a project to create a new record-and-replay tool that would overcome the obstacles blocking adoption. We call this tool rr.
We support the Mozilla community and the vital work they've done—and must keep doing—for the open Internet. EFF has been following the discussions around the choice of Brendan Eich as Mozilla’s CEO, including the announcement that he is stepping down.
As partners to Mozilla in campaigns that have included the fight against SOPA/PIPA, the StopWatching.US Coalition against mass surveillance, the effort to Encrypt the Web, the battle to prevent non-consensual online tracking, and ongoing work to make Firefox a more secure browser, we appreciate the frank and honest discussion that the community has undergone over this issue and respect the openness of the process. In that respect, as in many others, the difference between a closed and an open community is profound.
McAvoy clearly appreciates his ability to speak his mind without fear of retribution. But he also demands the termination of employment of a person that he disagrees with.
That sounds like hypocrisy, and intolerance, to me.
The worst of what I’m seeing is this – people who have steadfastly supported gay rights (and minority rights in general) but don’t like seeing how Eich is being treated are being called bigots and worse by their colleagues.
Chrome(ium)
Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop app beta is released for invite-only. Chrome Remote Desktop allows you to set up your computer for secure remote access. This includes setting up your computer so that you can access it later from another machine; or you can also use the app to let a friend remotely access your computer temporarily, perfect for times when you need help solving a computer problem.
Last April we introduced Blink as the new rendering engine for Chromium. Since then, the project has grown to include over 200 active contributors, and code complexity has been reduced significantly. We’ve also made encouraging progress on our top priority for 2014: mobile web performance.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- IBM is "Making an Exit". Only the Executives Will Get Rich.
- failure disguised as success
- 2026 is the Year of Blockchains, Says IBM's CEO a Decade Ago?
- "falling upwards"
- Most Coders Used to be Women, Not Men (and Men Who Dropped Out of College Now Plunder Everything They Can)
- "Ethics For Hackers"
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Down But Not Out – Costa's Comeback
- he managed to secure a top-level EU position in June 2024
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- Links 05/06/2026: Lawyers in Trouble for Citing Cases That Don't Exist (Slop Too Bad to Justify Costs; Even It It Did Work, It Would Still be Far Too Expensive)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 05/06/2026: Bears in the Streets, WWII Revisionism, and Westworld
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's LinkedIn Called "Dying Platform" by One Who Worked There
- The co-founder of LinkedIn has just stepped down too
- GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) Layoffs Are Due to Surging Debt, or About 120 Billion Dollars Borrowed in One Year Alone
- It's well above 150 billion dollars if one adds Oracle
- After One Jeffrey Epstein Associate 'Leaves' Microsoft's Board Another Jeffrey Epstein Associate Steps Down, Workers Concerned About the Mass Layoffs
- How many more loans can Microsoft receive? Those loans are becoming increasingly risky.
- IBM Exploits Overambitious, Hungry Young Men to Help the "Great Quantum Hype Campaign" (Pumping the Stock Based on Deliberate Misinformation or Outright Disinformation)
- The boot-licking campaign is live...
- What Will Likely Happen When the Slop Bubble Pops (and When It'll be Widely Accepted That It Popped)
- all the "most successful" slop companies are so deep in debt
- The Register MS is Part of the Problem, It's Publishing "AI" SPAM Because it's Paid by Chinese Military-Connected Firms
- Given that The Register MS is run by a Microsofter (since last summer), destruction seems inevitable
- IBM's CEO Does Not Use GNU/Linux, So Why Did He Suggest Buying Red Hat Only to Lay Off Its Workers, Market Slop Instead of Linux, and Sack UNIX Professionals?
- Shortly after IBM had bought Red Hat and there were mass layoffs we pointed out that Red Hat's CEO was not using GNU/Linux
- If You're Not Focusing on Software Freedom, All You'll Get is Slopware and Buzzwords
- If you're not focusing on attaining Software Freedom (and remember "Linux" is just a brand), then you're losing sight of the goals that actually matter
- Red Hat/IBM: Microsoft is Our Partner of the Year
- Red Hat is a really bad gravy
- Gemini Links 05/06/2026: Enshittification of Institutes for Project Management, Codebases Contaminated With Slop, Personal Stories
- Links for the day
- Communicating With Freedom - Part II - Quibble Breathing New Life Into LibreJS
- Notice how work on one thing led to thousands of lines of code added to a mostly dormant (but nevertheless important) project
- Slop Has no ROI, an Economy Built on False Assumptions of Slop is Doomed
- we're all going to suffer from this Ponzi scheme
- Links 05/06/2026: More GAFAM Layoffs, Google Faces Regulatory Crackdown in UK Over Plagiarism in "AI" Clothing
- Links for the day
- Rumour That Layoffs at Microsoft Will Kick Off on July 1st, 2026 (Impacting 10,000 or More Workers)
- this is what the rumour mill or the word through the grapevine is
- Mission:Libre, Which Teaches Young People Free Software Ideals, Needs Financial Backing
- plea for assistance with Mission:Libre
- The Slop Ponzi Scheme is a Problem and Threat to All of Us (Even Those Who Don't Invest in or Use Slop at All)
- This problem is systemic, not contained
- "Blind Justice" Examines the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Turning a Blind Eye to Abuse by British Solicitors
- We have some jaw-dropping examples of how the SRA does not do actual regulation - to the point where its staff does not actual work and does not look into any evidence at all!
- 7 Days From Now the FSF's Founder Gives a Talk in Bern, the FSF Has Just Advertised This
- Meanwhile the FSF (or GNU) processes and uploads many recent talks by RMS
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 04, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, June 04, 2026
- Links 04/06/2026: Self-hosting Remotely and GemText Emphasis
- Links for the day
- Links 04/06/2026: Ukraine’s Daily Moment of Silence and Uber Lays off 23% of HR
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 98 Out of 200: Microsoft Threatening Real Security Researcher With Criminal Investigation for Talking About Microsoft's Bug Doors/Back Doors
- The crime should be the back doors (deliberate attack on every user's data protection), not talking about those back doors
- Microsoft Would Get Away Even With Pedophilia
- "Microsoft should never be above the law"
- Journalists Should be Ashamed for Parroting False Claims From IBM Management About "Quantum Computing", Say IBM Insiders Who Work on "Quantum Computing"
- IBM is a buzzwords vendor. International Buzzwords Machines.
- Free Software is Nourishment to Software Users, Unlike Proprietary Software
- Quit treating "mere users" of software "like animals"
- The "Peanut Gallery" of GAFAM Has Infiltrated Free Software Projects or Disrupts Free Software Communities
- They contribute nearly nothing and do substantial damage; they're freeloaders who attack the most productive members of projects
- Coding is Not a Quantity Game (It Never Was!)
- "less is more"
- Exposing Corruption Using a Highly Resilient Platform
- Growing levels of trust, based on our track record, help us attract whistleblowers
- Mass Layoffs Expected at Microsoft in July 2026
- They're preparing more "lists" of people
- Reflection on EPO Leadership That Harbours Cocaine, IBM Leadership That Pumps-and-Dumps the Shares, and More
- ManCity replaced Manuel Pellegrini with a more famous manager it didn't envision winning 20 titles in 10 years (it could only hope) [...] Team-building is something that "Pep" seemed to be good at, as was Jürgen Klopp
- Pump and Dump by IBM Insider Traders: Nickle LaMoreaux, Gary Cohn, James Kavanaugh, Arvind Krishna, Robert Thomas, and Others
- the shares are already collapsing
- FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) Has Weakened If Not Ruined What's Left of Big Media
- Many things that have existed for decades are now being rebranded as "AI"
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 97 Out of 200: Garrett in Hiding (From the Simple Observable Fact He's Closely Connected to the Microsofter Who Strangles Women, Tells Women to Kill Themselves, and Worse)
- They use one another; they are coordinating this via the SLAPP industry in another continent
- Links 04/06/2026: Microsoft Threatening Security Researcher for Naming Back Doors in BitLocker, "Demand is Booming for" Old Tech
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/06/2026: "Word Vomit", Slop", and Moving to Gopher/Gemini
- Links for the day
- Rust Outsources its Financing (or Financial Control) to Microsoft
- How long before the third "E"?
- "Format Sovereignty" Can Only be Accomplished With LaTeX or OpenDocument Format (ODF) or Vendor-Neutral Standards for Editable Documents
- Microsoft is, in effect, above the law
- IBM's Shares Fell Nearly 13% in One Day (Including After Hours)
- its main product is false promises
- The Cyber Show on the Importance of Software Freedom and Why GNU/Linux Could Not be Stopped
- an excellent article
- Drew DeVault Can Still Redeem His Reputation. Revisiting His Attacks (and Attack Site) on Richard Stallman Might be a Good Start.
- DeVault has openly apologised (this past spring)
- The Register MS is Publishing Paid SPAM; Some of It is Designed to Prop Up the "AI" Pyramid Scheme
- The Register MS participates in scams
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: "Operation Influencer"
- Costa's political career was far from finished
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 03, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, June 03, 2026
- GNU/Linux Usage Rising Among Gamers, But "Hardware Survey Data Not Available."
- Not anymore, not for now anyway
- Jumping Up and Down on the Shoulders of Giants, Never Talking About What Bill Gates Did
- We're back to 2019
- Despite LLM Slop or Chatbots, Our Traffic Has Doubled Since We Moved Everything to the UK (in 2023)
- The demise of news sites was not what we thought it would be
- Software Developers Attacked by Plagiarism Engines Because These Developers Can Teach People How to Exercise Control, Not Outsource to Monopolies of Slop and Back Doors
- "Universities should be telling industry what is to be done next, not the other way about. Present education policy has the tail wagging the dog."
- Quantum Quantum Quantum Quantum (Pump, Then Dump)
- What has IBM become?
- Communicating With Freedom - Part I - Developing “Quibble” and Improving GNU LibreJS in the Process
- In the next part we shall examine where things currently stand
- Quantum Computers Are "All the Rage" (35 Years Ago, What IBM Promises This Year is What People Promised When the CEO Was in His 20s)
- "Quantum" hype is high on the agenda
- How IBM Removes 15% of Its Staff Without Even Checking Performance of Staff (or Calling That "Layoffs")
- Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) as veiled RAs
- Links 03/06/2026: Mobile Systems, Openwashing, and New Antenna
- Links for the day
- Canonical as Reseller of Back Doors in "Ubuntu" Clothing
- Microsoft is the antithesis of security and autonomy
- Romania Used to be Windows Stronghold, But That's No Longer the Case
- Windows was once upon a time so ubiquitous that institutions didn't bother supporting anything except it
- KDE Has Long Used Dragons, and Dragons Come From Hatched Eggs
- That Microsoft Lunduke tries to paint this as some "trans agenda" thing says a lot about Microsoft Lunduke and his COVID-19-damaged brain
- IBM Announces 5 Billion Dollars "Invested" in "AI", in "Security", and 10 Billion Dollars for "Quantum", But IBM Does Not Have This Kind of Money (It's Fake News to Manipulate the Share Price)
- IBM has fast-growing debt and liabilities, it does not intend to invest this kind of money, it's a smokescreen and false promises timed to alleviate the sagging share price (52-week low)
- When Science and Religion Are on the Same Side, United Against Slop Pushers
- The "Mathematics Pope" (sometimes known as "Pope Pi") brought together science and religion, united against technofascists who are mostly college drop-outs who abhor women
- Links 03/06/2026: "In Turkey, Criticizing a Corporation Can Land You in Jail" and "Court Bans X Account of Turkey's Oldest Newspaper"
- Links for the day
- Web Censorship Benefits the Corrupt and the Criminal
- More so when corrupt politicians are in charge
- Have a "Lifetime" Without Microsoft
- The online rage over this is still ongoing
- Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine Undoing Censorship of Corporate Wrongdoing
- That won't go away anymore
- "For Entertainment Purposes Only" But Everyone Must Adopt It for Work and Governance, Say Anti-Scientific Technocrats
- "The present mentality around "AI" is like driving to the gym to use a treadmill - it's walking for people who hate fresh air and beautiful changing scenery."
- Gemini Links 03/06/2026: Ian Murdock's Ex-wife Footprint in Debian and Alhena 5.6.1 Released
- Links for the day
- Irish Company statCounter Recognises It Overestimated Microsoft Windows' Market Share in Ireland
- it seems like the Irish people are gradually moving away from Windows
- Corporate Media Participates in the Lie That Mass Layoffs at GitLab and Loss of Geographic Footprint in More Than a Third of Countries is "AI" and Thus "Success Story"
- There's no way to spin this as positive news
- Slop Prompting is Not a Coding Skill and Slop Deserves Shunning
- Red Hat is hypocritically shunning the very same thing it keeps promoting
- IBM colleagues "handed out a PIP and then right after the end date they are gone"
- Some go into early 'retirement' to save face
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 96 Out of 200: When You Receive Death Threats From Anonymous Sockpuppets/Burner Accounts Connected to People Who Strangle Women and Tell Women to Kill Themselves
- Women are not objects and my wife ought not be mentioned in "threats to kill" (how cops have described this)
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: A Tale of Two Antónios - Introducing the Other António
- António Costa
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 02, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, June 02, 2026