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Links 8/6/2015: Red Hat Upgraded, Debian 8.1 is Out





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Debunking 4 misconceptions about open source software
    Misconceptions range from the belief that open source is not secure enough for businesses, since it is community-based, to misunderstandings about the availability and quality of technical support. While some of them have been propagated since the early days of open source, enterprise-ready offerings today provide the same, if not higher, levels of security, capabilities and reliability as proprietary counterparts.


  • 2/3 Internet Exchange Points use Czech open source router
    Almost two-thirds (64 per cent) of Internet Exchange Points are now using BIRD, an open source router solution maintained by the Czech CZ.NIC Association, taking first place from proprietary routers.


  • 3 Financial Companies Innovating With Open Source
    The financial industry is on the verge of an open source breakthrough, say three companies on the cutting edge of the trend. Traditionally very secretive about their technology, banks, hedge funds and other financial services companies have begun in the past few years to talk about how they use open source software in their infrastructure and product development. They have also been steadily increasing their contributions to upstream projects in the form of user feedback and code. And some companies have initiated their own open source projects or released portions of their own code to the open source community.


  • Open-Source NFV Group Launches First Software Release
    The Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) project has rolled out "Arno," an open-source platform that group officials said will give users and developers a framework for testing NFV efforts, checking out basic NFV uses cases and trying out virtual network functions (VNFs). The growing demand among telecommunications vendors and other organizations for ways to more quickly adopt and implement NFV is driving the OPNFV's efforts, according to Chris Price, technical steering committee chairman and open-source manager for software-defined networking (SDN), NFV and the cloud for network vendor Ericsson.


  • NASA Releases Source Code for Its Software Tools
    NASA has released the source code for a complete set of software tools that that cover pretty much everything from aeronautics and propulsion, and from system testing and handling.


  • Events



    • SELF 2015: Linux, Guns & Barbecue
      From what I learned talking with Jeremy Sands last Tuesday, everything about the SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) will be marinated in southern culture. So much so that if this were twenty years ago, I’d be expecting to see geeks with cigarette packs rolled-up in the sleeves of their T shirts. But these days people don’t smoke much anymore, not even in North Carolina, a state built by tobacco money.




  • SaaS/Big Data



  • Education



    • Open education at the Raspberry Pi Foundation
      When I started working at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, we set out to revamp the website and add learning materials for educators. In the mean time, we wanted to get a few resources out in time for Hour of Code week, so we wrote them on GitHub for easy sharing. It's easy to get started writing with markdown, and it made collaboration straightforward. Despite all being new to GitHub, the education team really liked the way this worked and wanted to stick with the method, so we did.




  • BSD



    • Call for testing: OpenSSH 6.9
      OpenSSH 6.9 is almost ready for release, so we would appreciate testing on as many platforms and systems as possible. This release contains some substantial new features and a number of bugfixes.




  • Public Services/Government



    • Indian government includes open source in RFPs
      The Government of India has implemented a remarkable new policy-level change for open source software (OSS) deployment. The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has asked that open source software-based applications be included in Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for all new procurements. Note there is not a plan at this time to replace existing proprietary systems with open source software.


    • Estonia: A Model for e-Government
      The bold plan is a logical step forward in an unprecedented roll-out of e-government services that began in 2000, when Estonia introduced a public system for electronic tax filing. In 2002, Estonia introduced a universal electronic identification card with digital signatures, which every citizen gets at the age of 15. The ID cards and signatures have become the keys to nearly universal access to government information and services as well as private-sector services in health care, banking and education, and law. In the years since, the Estonian government and industry have put more and more functions online, all connected by a nationwide data backbone called X-Road.


    • New case studies proof competence gvSIG’s GIS tools
      Four case studies published the past weeks by the gvSIG community show the usefulness of this suite of open source Geographic Information Systems. The cases detail the gvSIG use by public administrations in Spain and Italy, to collect, manage and analyse information on gas pipelines, to create hiking trails, examine city commerce, and plan public transport networks.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Open-source “MMO for makers” aims to crowdsource manufacturing design
      Software developers have long been able to collaborate through community sites like those based on Git and Apache Allura to contribute code, synchronize software builds, and track issues around a project. And games like Minecraft allow people to collaborate in building virtual environments with embedded behaviors—including "mods" that leverage the games' simulation capabilities to interact with other objects in a virtual world. Now, an open-source Web platform originally designed with Defense Department funding could let communities collaborate to build more tangible things—like tanks, planes, and consumer appliances.




  • Programming



    • A Heterogeneous Execution Engine Might Make Its Way To LLVM
      An intern from Qualcomm's Innovation Center has been designing a heterogeneous execution engine for LLVM that he's hoping to eventually upstream within the LLVM project.


    • C++ at a functional programming event
      In the end, I decided to talk about functional reactive proramming in C++ which will be a thrilling and enticing tale of event-based systems and the power of reactive streams. I’ll also cover some fun new things we are to expect from C++17 that are bringing even more functional programming concepts than we have in the current standard






Leftovers





  • Finance



    • Labour Call Unemployed “The Work-Shy”
      I just read the Guardian’s account of today’s Labour leadership hustings, and they are not Tory Lite, they are Tory High Octane. Supporting Tory benefit cuts, calling the unemployed “the work-shy”, defending €£9,000 a year tuition fees, supporting Trident and falling over themselves to reject autonomy for the Scottish accounting unit. But what I find even more astonishing is that the Fabian Society audience were lining up afterwards for selfies with Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham, and according to the Guardian nobody wanted a photo with Jeremy Corbyn, the one decent human being there.


    • Urgent: TTIP Vote - Please Write to Your MEPs before Wednesday
      There is a very important plenary vote in the European Parliament on TTIP this Wednesday...


    • Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans
      My mother could no longer afford the tuition that the student loans weren't covering.




  • Censorship



    • Lawyer who sued EFF blames Ars readers for hacking, defamation
      Atlanta IP lawyer Sanford Asman isn't happy that CaseRails CEO Erik Dykema won't hand his company's name over to him—in fact, he's filed a trademark lawsuit over it, just as he said he would last month.

      Asman believes that CaseRails is infringing his trademark rights to CaseWebs and CaseSpace, two websites that house his own litigation-management software. In fact, Asman believes any Web-based legal software with "case" in its name should be under his purview.




  • Privacy



    • The Mass Surveillance of US Public Continues as USA Today Declares It Ended
      And that points to a bigger problem with declaring that the NSA’s data collection has “ended”: The same data will still be collected, only it will be held in phone company computers rather than the NSA’s computers. The NSA will still have access to the data, only having to get an OK from the FISA court–a notorious rubberstamp that operates in secret. As NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe told FAIR, “It’s more of a psychological maneuver to make us all feel good than a true constraint.”




  • Civil Rights



    • LAPD officer convicted in videotaped beating of handcuffed suspect
      A Los Angeles Police Department officer was convicted Friday in connection to the videotaped beating of a female suspect who was struck in the throat and crotch in a patrol car.

      Officer Mary O'Callaghan, an 18-year veteran, was accused of felony assault under the color of authority in a 2012 incident largely captured on a patrol-car camera. The 35-year-old victim, Alesia Thomas, died later that July evening. Medical examiner officials said cocaine intoxication was a "major factor" in the Los Angeles woman's death.


    • Save Majid Ali
      Glasgow City College student Majid Ali faces torture and death if returned to Pakistan. Majid Ali’s brother and other members of his immediate family have been taken and I am afraid very probably murdered by the Pakistani authorities as part of their relentless persecution of the Baloch people and desire to wipe out Baloch national identity. The UK Home Office intends to deport Majid. The people of Scotland must defend him.


    • Saudi court upholds blogger's 10 years and 1,000 lashes
      Saudi Arabia's Supreme Court has upheld the sentence of 1,000 lashes and 10 years of imprisonment on blogger Raif Badawi, despite a foreign outcry.

      Speaking from Canada, his wife Ensaf Haidar told the BBC she feared his punishment would start again on Friday.

      Badawi was arrested in 2012 for "insulting Islam through electronic channels".


    • There is no justice: What cops and courts get wrong about the human brain
      Neuroscience explains why our justice system keeps sending innocent people to prison — and letting guilty ones go


    • Kalief Browder, 1993–2015
      Last fall, I wrote about a young man named Kalief Browder, who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. He had been arrested in the spring of 2010, at age sixteen, for a robbery he insisted he had not committed. Then he spent more than one thousand days on Rikers waiting for a trial that never happened. During that time, he endured about two years in solitary confinement, where he attempted to end his life several times. Once, in February, 2012, he ripped his bedsheet into strips, tied them together to create a noose, and tried to hang himself from the light fixture in his cell.

      In November of 2013, six months after he left Rikers, Browder attempted suicide again. This time, he tried to hang himself at home, from a bannister, and he was taken to the psychiatric ward at St. Barnabas Hospital, not far from his home in the Bronx. When I met him, in the spring of 2014, he appeared to be more stable.

      Then, late last year, about two months after my story about him appeared, he stopped going to classes at Bronx Community College. During the week of Christmas, he was confined in the psych ward at Harlem Hospital. One day after his release, he was hospitalized again, this time back at St. Barnabas. When I visited him there on January 9th, he did not seem like himself. He was gaunt, restless, and deeply paranoid. He had recently thrown out his brand-new television, he explained, “because it was watching me.”

      [...]

      Ever since I’d met him, Browder had been telling me stories about having been abused by officers and inmates on Rikers. The stories were disturbing, but I did not fully appreciate what he had experienced until this past April when I obtained surveillance footage of an officer assaulting him and of a large group of inmates pummeling and kicking him. I sat next to Kalief while he watched these videos for the first time. Afterward, we discussed whether they should be published on The New Yorker’s Web site. I told him that it was his decision. He said to put them online.


    • Left Divided as Violence and Protests Derail Mexican Elections
      Mexico’s latest elections are threatened by drug cartel violence, social protests, and the mass resignation of election officials. The left, which in the past has succeeded in rallying a third or more of the nation’s voters for a single party, goes into this election deeply divided, prompting expectations of a win for the ruling party.


    • On Equality
      A good rule of thumb is that if we feel the views of others are offensive, they probably feel our own views are offensive as well, a view they are completely entitled to when they do not act on it to harm us. If we wish to have our freedom to own and express our views protected, we must also actively respect — preferably protect — the rights of others to the same freedom.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality



    • EU Commission Tries to Rip Citizens Off Net Neutrality
      The European Commission attacks Net Neutrality again, by introducing a “compromise document” that refuses to enshrine a definition of this crucial principle into the law. A strong coalition including the EU Council, the European Commission and a handful of MEPs is working against the general interest by including loopholes that will be used by the telecom lobby to circumvent the proposed protections against discrimination, thereby undermining fundamental rights and innovation.




  • DRM



    • Apple Music and the terrible return of DRM
      My Amazon Echo just arrived, months after I pre-ordered it. I'd totally forgotten about it until I got a ship notification the other day, and then it was there, a strange little tube promising yet another peek at a future that never seems fully within grasp.




  • Intellectual Monopolies





Recent Techrights' Posts

Symptom of Publishers Dying: They Move to Adopt Slop. Symptom of Software Companies Dying: They Move to Adopt Slop ('Vibe').
It'll always fail. It's hype. It's a bubble.
Under IBM, Red Hat Replaces Code With LLM Slop, Fedora is Slopware
Not even hiding it, those things are in plain sight
"systemd is essentially a corporate IBM/Redhat project and corporations of course will comply"
Microsoft and IBM care about users' freedom like Cheeto Lump cares about the US Constitution
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini"
Links for the day
 
SLAPP Censorship - Part 17 Out of 200: A Long Track Record of Online Abuse, Then Choosing a Low-Cost Law Firm to Muzzle People Who Have Illuminated This Abuse for Over a Decade
Censorship by targeting ISPs and webhosts isn't unprecedented
Plagiarism in "Linux" Clothing (LLM Slop in linuxiac.com, LinuxTeck.com, and linuxsecurity.com)
The net effect of those slopfarms is very negative
Links 20/03/2026: Facebook Weaponised Politically, Openwashing by LF and NVIDIA, Encyclopedia Britannica Sues Microsoft Proxy for Plagiarism
Links for the day
The EPO's Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) Explains to the Administrative Council (AC) How Bad Things Have Become at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, Biggest Patent Office, and Corruption/Cocaine Hub (Jobs Sold to Friends)
We'll say a bit more tomorrow
IBM's Red Hat Diversity: Only 3 Women (Out of 11 Leaders)
For comparison's sake, the FSF is about 50% female
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Depictions of Culture and The Social Smolnet
Links for the day
SimilarWeb Was Never a Reliable Yardstick for Traffic
5RB may need some "house-cleaning"
Strangulation, suffocation, Jonathan Carter & Debian toxic culture confirmed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Reports or Hearsay Suggest Ogilvy Broke Up With IBM and Insiders Report Mass Layoffs in "Infrastructure" (Might Impact Red Hat Entrants)
hearsay in Social Control Media
Scheduled Server Maintenance Tomorrow Night
Starting 9PM
None of the Above (NotA) & Debian snubbing Sruthi Chandran
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/03/2026: Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award and BMG Sues Anthropic for Copyright Infringement
Links for the day
Even Uganda Understands That Journalists Never Belong in Prison
"Ugandan authorities must respect the spirit of this ruling and abandon any measures that seek to jail Ugandans for the free flow of ideas."
Inaction Helps Your Enemies
Without freedom, there's nothing else left
Windows Down From 99% to ~50% in Republic of Seychelles (République des Seychelles)
Windows fell by a lot
Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Over Over 800 at Confluent, Not Just 800
For the record, the layoffs at Confluent won't be over. After the bluewashing there will be "IBM RAs" impacting Confluent folks, aside from PIPs
The Layoffs at IBM Carry on (Shades of Enron)
Is IBM another Enron?
"IBM boss Arvind Krishna... financial package valued at $38 million in calendar 2025 - equivalent to the average collective pay of 765 Big Blue workers."
continues to ruin the company to enrich himself while pretending he has a strategy
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 16 Out of 200: Detailing the Actors and Explaining Techrights' Own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Network
For those who have not followed our story
Microsoft "hiding behind bigger news of war, Epstein, other companies' layoffs"
They know what's coming, they just don't know when
Joerg Jaspert (Debian Account Manager/DAM) personally approved Raphael Hertzog's wife Sophie Brun
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Letter 'A' prohibited by Code of Conduct extremism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Spoiler: Diversity & Debian means different things to different people
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits Failures and Criticism of Inaction on SLAPPs
many if not all solicitors and solicitor firms in the UK are in effect unregulated
Archiving or Preserving Pages About IBM Layoffs
Layoffs at IBM and the media does not talk about these
ABC, the American National Broadcaster, "Now Publishes Slop"
If the "big media" absorbs slop, it'll no longer be trusted and therefore not read/watched by the public
Links 19/03/2026: Culling Deepfakes of Artists’ Music and "Age Verification Isn’t the Answer"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/03/2026: "Aktion GPT-4" and "Kill All Descendants"
Links for the day
"AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.
gets paid to do this
People Who Decided to Boycott Novell Over Its Microsoft Alliance Should Also Boycott Canonical
As an associate put it, "selling out further, due to Microsoft moles inside Canonical"
Links 19/03/2026: "AI Glasses" as Euphemism for Mass Surveillance and ABC (US) Has Begun Publishing Slop as 'News'
Links for the day
The European Patent Office, Europe's Second-Largest Institution, is on Strike Today
Lots more to come
What People Impacted by the Bluewashing Layoffs at IBM Confluent Say (While the Media Says Nothing at All, in Effect Burying the News)
Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop
This is IBM policy
IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed
Companies taken over by IBM will be exploited and destroyed to keep a bubble inflated for a little while longer
In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already)
In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated
For Confluent employees who survived the layoffs there will be "culture chock"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Links 19/03/2026: LLM Fatigue (It Doesn't Work as Advertised), "Small Web Feeds"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 15 Out of 200: Background and Particulars of Truth Regarding Techrights and Tux Machines
the basic facts (this has aged well, except the times/ages/numbers)
A Slopfarms Survey for Today (linuxteck.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com)
Not only did Google news link to a slopfarm; it linked to three run by the same team!
Links 18/03/2026: "Venture Capitalist Warns That It’s All About to Come Crashing Down" Due to Slop Bubble, "Birdwatching for Fun and no Profit"
Links for the day
IBM Red Hat is Still Promoting Restricted Boot Which Restricts Users' Control Over Their Computers
Red Hat under IBM is a total catastrophe
Arvind Says... Something Something "Hey Hi" (the State of Today's Media)
Look for news about IBM and most likely it'll boil down to some sound bites from an executive and nothing else
New Post Has Just Explained How IBM Gets Robbed by the People Who Fail IBM
Their plan for IBM is a personal plan
Slop-Spewing GAFAM LLM That Knows Nothing and Understands Nothing, It's a Stochastic Parrot That Cannot Even Figure Out Tux Machines is a Community That Started in Tennessee 22 Years Ago
RMS rightly calls those things "bullshit generators"
Cusdeb Makes New Presentation About Where GNU Hurd (Still a Possible Linux Replacement) Stands in 2026
coming from a generally RMS-friendly account
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Librarians, Phone Anxiety, Growing 'Small' Net, and Slop Versus Software Engineering
Links for the day
Estimates That IBM to Lay Off Close to 10,000 Workers in 2026 (Not Counting People Pushed Out)
There's still chatter about Confluent mass layoffs
Smug Threat by Garrett to Put My Family and I in Prison Doesn't Prove We Did Anything Wrong, It Only Proves He's Truly Desperate to Stop Further Publications That Embarrass Him
his reputation is poor in the United States
systemd Increasingly Microsoft Project, Controlled by Microsoft and Slopware
Cannot allow choice
What IBM Meant to Red Hat: "Proprietary Bundling, Restricted Source Access"
Anyone or anything that joins IBM likely shortens its lifespan
IBM Thrashing Confluent Upon Arrival, Based on Rumours
We deem it a bigger issue that investigative journalism perished, not that one must rely on hearsay online or mere "rumours"
Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money
Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
UPC is Still Illegal and Unconstitutional (Kangaroo Court for Patents, Manned by Corporate Staff), Federal Court of Justice of Germany Receives Belated Complaint About It
What is happening to Europe???
EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further
The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage"
Links for the day
A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
Not going to work all month long
EPO Staff Demonstration Today
The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
Links for the day
LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026