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
- Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Does Not Support Women, It Imitates Authentic Organisations, Embraces Misogynists, Then Projects
- They try to monetise for personal gain at the expense of unpaid volunteers
- When You're Evil and You're Publicly Attacking Something, That Something Will Become More Popular
- when an oppressor becomes openly oppressive and does anything to squash/censor critics, the outcome will typically be detrimental to the oppressor
- Links 10/08/2026: "Against Oligarch" and "The Invisible Women"
- Links for the day
- Social Control Media Deathwatch: After Nearly a Million Posts Sent EchoFeed Shuts Down
- EchoFeed is hardly unique
- When the LLM Chatbots Industry (Trillions in the Red) Quits Paying the Media for FOMO
- fear of missing out, or FOMO for short
- Microsoft Killing Morale
- branding the process “inhumane” and “demoralizing”
- Google's "AI Overview" as Proprietary Censorship Engine and Gatekeeper
- People do not choose to use this, Google is just shoving that in people's faces, encouraging laziness and misinformation
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 145 Out of 200: They Tried Hard to Hide the Fact Their Client Had Been Sued, Twice Even
- A month ago Brett Wilson LLP tried to take my wife "to the side" (in effect isolated) to make her an offer
- statCounter: GNU/Linux Up to 8.95% Globally
- So the estimates are being "corrected" upwards, not downwards
- Explaining How Someone Attempted to Cancel RMS This Year (and Failed)
- The process itself involved debunking some falsehoods
- Microsoft's "XBOX Ranks Last", IBM is Headed for Extinction
- If Microsoft cannot dominate its own "home turf", what prospects are there elsewhere?
- DebConf6 fight denied by Google artificial intelligence
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 09, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, August 09, 2026
- Gemini Links 10/08/2026: A Mild Monday, Sleepy Saturday, OUYA, and Moving to GNU/Linux
- Links for the day
- Links 09/08/2026: US Blackouts (Energy Wasted), Slop to Evade Accountability, and Software Patents Framed as "Hey Hi"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 09/08/2026: Parakeets in Britain and Rant About 'Modern' Washing Machines
- Links for the day
- Links 09/08/2026: Social Control Media Weaponises Immigration, Europe Suffers Severe Drought, and "Internet of Stuff" Explained
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 144 Out of 200: The "Hired Guns" ("Media" at BW) Shrank Almost Three-Fold Since They Sued Us in 2024
- No wonder they're so visibly outnumbered
- 10 Days Ago Red Hat Formally Terminated Employment of About 500 Technical Workers (the Media Didn't Mention This)
- IBM has nothing left to do except fire people (in secret) whilst attacking sites that give these people a voice
- Freenode Continues to Shed Off Servers and Users, Good Thing We Abandoned It
- you cannot sell communities. It leads to chaos
- Daniel Pocock in the Sunday Times (Today)
- Expect the attacks (from Pocock's haters, motivated by envy) to intensify
- Controlling One's Platform
- We need to strive for or actively pursue a Web where everyone has their own platform/s and where censors ("moderators") have no direct control over these platforms
- Improving the Static Site Generator (SSG), Fixing Bugs
- Next month the site's SSG turns 3
- Gemini Links 09/08/2026: Meatballs (1979), Gopher, RSS Experiment
- Links for the day
- 2026: The Year Richard Stallman Came Back to American Campuses
- There's more on the way
- IBM's "Next Step" Program
- Apparently close to 1,000 people being laid off by IBM wasn't worth reporting
- XBox is Rotting Away, Technical Issues for Second Time in Two Weeks
- XBox is dying
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 08, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, August 08, 2026
- Red Hat is in Need of a 'Jolla', as an IBM-Controlled Red Hat is Becoming Like the Microsoft-Infiltrated Nokia
- Dying fast, partly by design
- Gemini Links 08/08/2026: Gigs, Poems, SREs, and Shared Passion
- Links for the day
- If GNU/Linux Rising is Just "Bots" (It's Not, Many Surveys Show the Same), Why Does Microsoft Rush to Lie About System Requirements of Vista 11?
- The real reason is, GNU/Linux is rising
- Kompromat Tactics in GNU and Linux
- Kompromat as a concept was covered here in the past in relation to Microsoft
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 143 Out of 200: After Nearly 10 Attempts to Settle With Us and Over a Million Pounds Spent on Lawyers and Barristers
- We are in no particular hurry
- 20 Years and 43 Years
- GNU/Linux is not just code, it's a philosophy, licence (copyleft), and community
- GNU/Linux Turns 43 Next Month, Many Distros Actively Maintained
- A lot of Debian-based distros are still actively maintained (we talk about this in IRC this evening), so the stability of the Debian Project is important
- Links 08/08/2026: GAFAM Colonialism "Paved Over Protected Wetlands", Slop Companies Hoard Software Patents as Debt Soars to Trillions
- Links for the day
- Links 08/08/2026: "Palantir Paid No Federal Income Tax" and "Who's Responsible for This Mess?"
- Links for the day
- Retained: The Time IBM's Red Hat Tried to Hijack or Take Offline Site of Critics, Failed on All Grounds (Meritless Action Intended to Harass Critics)
- Replicated from adrforum.com
- IBM's 'Final Solution': Censor Sites Not Controlled by IBM, Sites Where Dissent is Expressed
- IBM has no culture of free speech
- More Mass Layoffs Coming IBM's Way (Ones IBM Cannot Hide, Cannot Convince Enough People to Leave or Unjustifiably PIP Them When They Say No)
- The company that was like a "father of modern computing" is now stingy when it comes to travel. Not a good sign.
- What Will it Take for Mainstream Media to Report Silent or Secret Layoffs at IBM?
- "Silent" or "secret" sometimes because the media won't cover them
- Is the Future of IBM Red Hat Temporary Staff, Contractors?
- They want cheap, obedient lemmings
- Gemini Links 08/08/2026: Tribute to Lloyd Center, Radio Amateurism, Homeworlds
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 07, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, August 07, 2026