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
- Freedom Is Not Free of Charge, Freedom Can be Very Expensive
- Being someone's "slave" is the "default" when no resistance exists
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXX - Swatting by Proxy
- Using imbeciles who lie to cops and then dox cops (and already have arrest record and court documents wherein they admit being stoned in front of the cops)
- Intel Craters at Taxpayers' Expense (Bailouts for Failing Companies Simple Don't Work)
- GOP, which did this, has lost many seats
- Mass Layoffs at IBM, Also Outsourcing to India
- What IBM does to itself it is doing to other entities as well
-
- Links 06/11/2026: Slop "Companies Race to Lock Down Oil Clients" and Salon Shuts Down
- Links for the day
- Our Third Decade
- Our anniversary is tonight at midnight
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, November 05, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, November 05, 2026
- During Strikes and Industrial Actions Lots of EPO Staff Organised Yesterday and Will Do the Same Next Week
- There really needs to be a genuine election, not a reappointment
- Gemini Links 06/11/2026: Hadestown and "Where Has the Electronics Shop Gone?"
- Links for the day
- Links 05/11/2026: Rule of Law Vanishing in Turkey, Joshua Wong Still Martyred by Chinese Regime
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 05/11/2026: Classical Music, Politics, and Seeed Studio
- Links for the day
- Like Almost Every Slopfarm, UbuntuBuzz Seems to Have Thrown in the Towel
- Linuxsecurity and Linuxiac (to some extent Linuxjournal) are still going, but for how much longer?
- EPO 'Midterm' Elections Should Oust the Dictator
- Tentatively a failure to secure another (unprecedented) reappointment before Christmas
- Secret IBM Layoffs and Increase in PIPs (Silent Layoffs)
- The media is failing to do its job
- Links 05/11/2026: "Voice is Underutilized" and How Data Centres Lost the Midterm Elections
- Links for the day
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXIX - Crime Numbers Regarding GGG (Americans) and Why Those Still Matter
- Time does not undo the actions
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXVIII - Telling the Police About the Defamatory Blog Where Posts Targeted My Wife and I (From Across the Atlantic Ocean)
- Two years ago we spoke to cops a lot
- The Register MS is Losing Money Again, Based on The Register MS
- Selling out didn't pay off for very long
- There Are No "Layoffs" Anymore, Layoffs Got Rebranded
- We're entering bizarre times when layoffs are said to be "down" (according to the regime that suffered a 'bloodbath' in the election) because companies quit using the term "layoffs"
- Gemini Links 05/11/2026: Rivers of London, Soul Cakes, STMicroelectronics, and Slop
- Links for the day
- The Register MS Has Just Published Fake Article With "AI" 84 Times in the Page Because It Was Paid to Do This!
- Astounding number of mentions of "AI" (84 in total)
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 04, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, November 04, 2026
- Links 04/11/2026: Slop Helps Break Laws and Scam Altman Pretends Chatbots Are Persons
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/11/2026: Abacus and Spare IT Equipment
- Links for the day
- Viet Nam and Thailand at High Adoption Levels of GNU/Linux, Other Nations Nearby Are No Exception
- Helen Chiang and her colleagues say it's a "clown show" at Microsoft
- Richard Stallman on What It's Like to be Threatened by Strangers With Software Patents
- We hope that some EPO insiders will take time to listen to this talk
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXVII - Tasteless, Tactless Time for "Virtue-Signalling" (When Your Actions Are Much Like the GOP's)
- Violence by cops isn't a "leftist" thing
- Stealth Layoffs at IBM (PIPs and Bailouts)
- string of reports or unverified hearsay
- United Arab Emirates: GNU/Linux at Over 8%
- According to statCounter
- As XBox Goes Out of Business Helen Chiang Adds Insult to Injury
- XBox sales are worst in 25 years
- Steven Vaughan-Nichols is Slop
- Just look at this
- The Register MS is "Hosting a Dinner" for Sponsors
- Remember that The Register MS keeps publishing spam about "AI"
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXVI - A Potent Microsoft Threat to Administration of Justice Globally (Not Just Fair Elections)
- Breaking into machines to cover up one's own crimes
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXV - When One Does Not Understand Security (Nor Ever Pursues Security)
- One might therefore conclude that Garrett is a proponent of American back doors
- Links 04/11/2026: "Democratic Establishment" Wins Big and "Pentagon Sued Over Hegseth’s New “Future of Warfare” Committee Led by Musk"
- Links for the day
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXIV - Women as Hostages, Even Spouses
- First he put his own spouse behind bars by accusing the spouse of what he himself seems guilty of
- A Geminispace Tally
- That's not the Web, it is an alternative to it
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXIII - Shooting the Messenger is a Presidential Tactic
- why our ministers are looking for ways to fix the law.
- Andy's Latest Writings About Proton CEO Andy Yen, "JavaScript Required", and Slavery in Technology
- Andy (of The Cyber Show) has some new material
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXII - Malfunctions Reported in Windows Voting Machines (as Usual)
- "There are always problems," Ryan told us
- Gemini Links 04/11/2026: GoAccess, Adopting Gopher, and Twisty Passages
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 03, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, November 03, 2026
- "The Judge Accepted That Mrs Schestowitz Had Been the Subject of a Vicious Campaign of Online Harassment"
- That's consistent with how they men treat women