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Links 25/3/2015: India Moving to Free Software





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Open source and DevOps aren’t mandatory, but neither is survival
    I can’t recall the exact time I learned about open source software, but I can certainly narrow down the place. I quickly realized how transformative it could be. In 1996, I was sitting in the tech support department of a large ISP that provided hosting and connectivity to the Fortune 1000. Most of our servers ran Solaris, floppy disks arrived via snail mail, and we applied security updates manually adhering to a regime of updates and invoices prescribed by Sun Microsystems. It was a huge change from my university career of dumb terminals and mainframes.


  • How open source can improve your software's security
    Let's be blunt: your code is full of security holes. Just as bad, your employees are careless with passwords and other ways of cracking into your data.

    Hence, while we may wring our hands over security breaches at Target, Morgan Stanley, or dozens of other breaches, the reality is that the only reason your company has yet to be cracked is that hackers haven't bothered to try. Yet.


  • Govt formulates policy on adoption of open source software
    The Government on Wednesday formulated a 'Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India' that would encourage the formal adoption and use of Open Source Software (OSS) in Government organisations.

    Currently most eGovernance solutions are developed using Closed Source Software (CSS), which is licensed under the exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. In that the users' right to make modifications, sharing, studying, redistribution or reverse engineering is limited.


  • What the New York Times CIO asks when evaluating open source software
    In this interview, New York Times CIO Marc Frons explains how his teams evaluate whether to use open source or proprietary software and the simple question that helps guide the conversation.


  • Why Amnesty International uses Booktype 2.0 for report publishing
    Human rights NGO Amnesty International, a movement of more than seven million people, released its Annual Report for 2014-15 at the end of February. This 500+ page print book is published simultaneously in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic, and translated into 12 other languages by local teams. It is composed of 160 detailed chapters written by regional experts on the human rights situation in most of the countries of the world.


  • Action Launcher 3.3 released with new open-source Live Wallpaper API


  • Events



    • Two microconferences accepted for the Linux Plumbers Conference
      The Checkpoint/Restart and Energy-aware scheduling and CPU power management microconferences will be held at LPC.


    • Shevirah Set to Break Into Mobile Penetration Testing Market
      Weidman, no stranger to the world of mobile security, was the recipient of a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Cyber Fast Track grant in 2012 for her open-source Smartphone Pentest Framework project. In 2015, Weidman has been accepted into the Mach37 Cybersecurity accelerator program, which invests in security startups and provides tools and training to launch companies.




  • SaaS/Big Data



    • Scaling
      ownCloud runs on small Raspberry Pi’s for your friends and family at home but also on huge clusters of web servers where it can serve over hundreds of thousands of users and petabytes of data. The current Raspberry Pi doesn’t deliver blazing fast performance but it works and the new raspberry pi 2 announced last month should be great hardware for small ownCloud deployments. Big deployments like the one in Germany or at CERN are usually ‘spread out’ over multiple servers, which brings us to the secret sauce that makes scalable software possible.


    • MapR Notes Big Demand for Free Hadoop Training Offerings
      Recently, MapR Technologies, focused on Hadoop, has been out with some interesting announcements that we covered. We also interviewed the company's Tomer Shiran (shown), who noted that there is a serious lack of job candidates with advanced Hadoop and data analytics skills. He added that MapR is providing free online training for Hadoop. Now, there is some evidence of how popular the free training has been, with the training program enrolling more than 10,000 registrants worldwide in its first 30 days.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • Healthcare



    • Why open source is key to mHealth data standards
      Open source software that allows for sharing and integration of mHealth data poses tremendous benefit for diagnosing, treating and preventing disease as well as the development of a more tailored patient healthcare strategy, according to Ida Sim, Ph.D, professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • GCC 5 Compiler will be released soon
      And the developers expect to have the final version ready probably at the end of April, this year.


    • LibrePlanet 2015 brings free software luminaries to MIT
      The 2015 LibrePlanet free software conference drew nearly 350 activists from around the world to discuss issues of freedom, privacy, and security in computing. Free Software Foundation founder and president Richard Stallman delivered the opening keynote, "Free software, free hardware, and other things" before a packed room at MIT's Stata Center, with hundreds of remote participants tuning in online.


    • GNU Manifesto Published Thirty Years Ago
      It was in March 1985 that Richard Stallman first set out his belief in the ideal of Free Software with the publication of the GNU Manifesto.

      [...]

      If you have always referred to Linux as just "Linux" then you might be surprised to know that the FSF claims that it really should always be called "GNU/Linux". There is also now a modified GNU/Linux system that has all proprietary and non-free code removed - Linux-libre.




  • Project Releases



  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming



    • Intro to Grace: an open source educational programming language
      When it comes to picking a programming language to use when teaching people how to program, there are many, many options. Scratch is a good choice when teaching the basics because of its drag and drop building block method of programming. Python or Ruby are also good choices—both languages have a straight-forward syntax, are used in major real-world projects, and have excellent communities and supplemental projects built around them. Or there is Java, Objective-C, and C#, which are solid programming languages and marketable job skills. Honestly, they are all good choices, but when it comes to teaching programming in an academic setting, are they really the best way to go about doing it?






Leftovers



  • Germanwings to Cancel More Flights as Crew Members Refuse to Fly
    Germanwings will have to cancel more flights today as some crew members refuse to fly, a day after an Airbus A320 operated by the budget arm of Lufthansa crashed in the French Alps.

    "There will be irregularities... There are crew members who do not want to fly in the current situation, which we understand," a spokeswoman for Germanwings said.


  • Germanwings Is An Example Of European Carriers Trying To Compete In The Budget Airline Game
    Germanwings, the airline operating Flight 9525 that crashed in the French Alps Tuesday, may not be well known outside Europe. But the low-cost carrier owned by Lufthansa Group is emblematic of a trend many flag carriers in Europe are embracing: launching their own budget airlines for short-haul flights to compete with wildly successful low-cost carriers that have snatched 26 percent of market share in Europe.


  • Security



    • Google Hit Again by Unauthorized SSL/TLS Certificates
      The purpose of an SSL/TLS digital certificate is to provide a degree of authenticity and integrity to an encrypted connection. The SSL/TLS certificate helps users positively identify sites, but what happens when a certificate is wrongly issued? Just ask Google, which has more experience than most in dealing with this issue.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • New York Times: Nuclear Establishment Tool
      The New York Times' longtime nuclear power reporter, Matthew Wald, has announced that he's been hired as the senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the chief lobbying arm of the nuclear industry. Investigative reporter Karl Grossman wrote a piece a few years ago on the ties between the Times and the nuclear power establishment that go back to the dawn of the Atomic Age.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • Jeb Bush Returns to the Washington Fund-Raising Well
      Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, has sounded that theme regularly in his fledgling presidential campaign. But even as he positions himself as a Washington outsider, he seems to have mastered a skill that is crucial in this city: tapping into the money-raising clout of the K Street lobbyists, political operatives, superlawyers and business leaders in Washington’s permanent class.


    • Information Warfare: Automated Propaganda and Social Media Bots
      NATO has announced that it is launching an “information war” against Russia.

      The UK publicly announced a battalion of keyboard warriors to spread disinformation.

      It’s well-documented that the West has long used false propaganda to sway public opinion.

      Western military and intelligence services manipulate social media to counter criticism of Western policies.




  • Privacy



    • Britain’s Surveillance State
      Edward Snowden exposed the extent of mass surveillance conducted not just by the United States but also by allies like Britain. Now, a committee of the British Parliament has proposed legal reforms to Britain’s intelligence agencies that are mostly cosmetic and would do little to protect individual privacy.


    • On CISA the Surveillance Bill
      After the Senate Intelligence Committee passed CISA, its sole opponent, Ron Wyden, said, “If information-sharing legislation does not include adequate privacy protections then that’s not a cybersecurity bill – it’s a surveillance bill by another name.” Robert Graham, an expert on intrusion-prevention, argues, “This is a bad police-state thing. It will do little to prevent attacks, but do a lot to increase mass surveillance.”




  • Civil Rights



    • White House chief of staff: 50 years of Israeli occupation must end
      White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough made it clear Monday that the crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations over the issue of a Palestinian state has not dissipated, despite efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to clarify remarks he made late in the election campaign that no such state would be established on his watch.


    • The $450 an Hour Terror Industry Echo Chamber
      Matthew Levitt, a prominent figure in the Terror Industry, has been testifying in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial. He’s one of a number of noted figures who gets presented as experts at trials who doesn’t speak Arabic, who hasn’t bothered to learn Arabic over the course of years of this work.

      Yesterday, Levitt spent several hours explaining how the explanation Dzhokhar wrote on a boat in Watertown had to have come from Anwar al-Awlaki’s propaganda.

      Just before Levitt testified yesterday, he RTed an article describing him as the expert that would testify at Dzhokhar’s trial. As soon as he got done, he RTed several more articles about his own testimony, describing himself as an “expert” “decoding” the boat. And then, for good measure, he RTed a livetweet from his own testimony.

      Today, on cross, it became clear the Awlaki propaganda on Dzhokhar’s computer was all Levitt got from prosectors. He didn’t know how long it had been on Dzhokhar’s computer. Nor did he know what else Dzhokhar has read. He also doesn’t know much about Chechnya, except in the context of Jihad. And though Levitt testified yesterday that there always must be a “radicalizer,” he did not know, nor was he asked, to identify the “radicalizer” in Dzhokhar’s life.


    • In Defense of Doing Wrong
      I want to say that it’s the wrong answer to the wrong question. It’s the wrong answer because we all have a lot to hide. We all talk and behave scandalously, and if all that [information] were available to everybody, it would cause no end of grief. It’s the wrong question because, as you’ve heard from all three of my fellow panelists tonight, privacy isn’t fundamentally about secrecy. It’s about things like autonomy—we’ve heard dignity, liberty, power, control, and maybe we’ll talk about that later. - See more at: http://thepointmag.com/2015/politics/in-defense-of-doing-wrong#sthash.fQbKXkkE.dpuf


    • The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Jail: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Prison


    • A Prosecutor Seeks Redemption. Can We Allow Prisoners the Same?
      BY NOW MANY have read and been moved by the extraordinary mea culpa published in the Shreveport Times by a man named Marty Stroud III, who more than thirty years ago sent Glenn Ford to die for a crime he did not commit.


    • NYT Reported Japanese Internment as 'Pioneering Chapter in US History'
      Reporter Lawrence E. Davies described the first internees as "weary but gripped with the spirit of adventure over a new pioneering chapter in American history." This rah-rah treatment continued throughout the article: The internees were said to have begun "assembling long before daylight near the Pasadena Rose Bowl, scene of many a great football game." Their destination was "a new reception center rising as if by magic at the foot of snow-capped peaks."

      Only two internees are quoted in the article. One, Arthur Hirano, a former New York City chef, says: “This is a wonderful place. We didn’t expect such fine treatment.” Another, Mike Nishida, who is scheduled to join the US military, says, “I'm going up there to do any job they put me on in the meantime.”




  • Internet/Net Neutrality





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
 
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