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Links 18/2/2016: New Ubuntu Phone, Go 1.6





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • 7 Reasons Why Open Source Code is Better Than Proprietary
    I'm always surprised when users wish that Microsoft Office or PhotoShop would be ported to Linux. Probably, some just want to be able to use standard industry software on their favorite operating system. But so far as I am concerned, applications like LibreOffice Writer or Krita are not just substitutions -- even without my ideals, I would choose them as the highest quality software available for my needs.


  • Top 4 open source issue tracking tools
    So let's take a look at four excellent choices for managing bugs and issues, all open source and all easy to download and host yourself. To be clear, there's no way we could possibly list every issue tracking tool here; instead, these are four of our favorites, based on feature richness and the size of the community behind the project. There are others, to be sure, and if you've got a good case for your favorite not listed here, be sure to let us know which is your favorite tool and what makes it stand out to you, in the comments below.


  • How to make sense of any open source mess
    Open source development and collaboration takes place online, in places made of information. From individual commit messages to project websites and even larger digital structures, each piece of information we create is part of a mess. This is not a slight against open source; all human endeavors are messy, because that is just the way we are as human beings. We all bring our own strengths and failings, wisdom and ignorance, to everything we do.


  • ONF Offers OpenDaylight Support in Latest Atrium SDN Stack
    The embrace of the OpenDaylight SDN controller follows the support of the ONOS controller in the first release of the Atrium software last year. Open Networking Foundation officials are hoping to accelerate the adoption of network virtualization by including support for the OpenDaylight SDN controller in the latest release of its open-source Atrium software distribution.
  • Wikimedia: We’re Building Something, But It’s Not A Search Engine To Challenge Google
    The Wikimedia Foundation has rejected the media reports that claimed that the non-profit is working on some search engine that will be a one-click replacement of Google.


  • ReactOS 0.4.0 Released


  • Open source Windows-clone ReactOS hits version 0.4 (ten years after 0.3)


    The developers of ReactOS have been working to develop an open source operating system capable of running Windows software since 1998.

    It’s been slow going: version 0.3.0 was released in 2006. Nearly 10 years later, ReactOS 0.4.0 is available for download.


  • Skytap Supports the Modern Developer Toolchain with Vagrant, Open Source Contributions


  • Here's why Bottle Rocket is contributing open-source code
    Bottle Rocket has stepped out from behind its proprietary code and expanded its reach into the open-source market.

    The Addison-based company, which creates custom mobile applications for business customers, has released its first few pieces of code for Android and plans to build on the code it has shared with the development community.


  • IBM Contributes Thousands of Lines of Code to Blockchain Efforts


  • IBM Goes Open-Source For Better IoT Apps
    Putting limits on what the Internet of Things can do to transform everything from in-store retail operations to multinational logistics is a great way to hamstring a potentially revolutionary technology. So too is keeping the way IoT apps and services are developed locked away behind the closed doors of intellectual property laws.

    Fortunately, IBM has seen the light of publicly supported solutions and is releasing a new open-source IoT development tool by the name of Quarks. Supported by the IBM Streams platform that specializes in compiling and analyzing gigabytes of live data in real time, Quarks might be used alternatively by hospitals to share designs for vitals monitoring apps that can be used with wearables and by industrial companies outfitting their workers’ uniforms with safety sensors, TechCrunch reported.


  • IBM's Open Source Quarks Pushes IoT Analytics to the Edge
    IBM has open sourced new technology called Quarks to push Internet of Things (IoT) analytics from centralized systems out to the actual edge devices that are collecting and spewing out vast amounts of data.


  • The Grid: Web Design by Artificial Intelligence
    Flow-Based Programming (FBP) is a software development paradigm where applications are built by "wiring together" various reusable components inside a graph.

    Since running into the concept in 2011, I've built the NoFlo environment, which brings Flow-Based Programming to the universal runtime of JavaScript, allowing flows to be run on both Node.js and the browser.


  • Google’s TensorFlow Serving Goes Open-Source


  • Google ups the ante in the machine learning wars


  • Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google Introduces TensorFlow Serving


  • Google Delivers TensorFlow Serving, Advancing Machine Learning


  • Google's TensorFlow Serving goes open source for large scale machine learning model creation
    Google has released TensorFlow Serving to the open-source community, a fresh addition to computer learning software for large-scale modeling projects.


  • Events



    • Devconf – Amazing place for a developer
      As a fresh start of 2016, I got a chance to be part of Devconf – an annual conference which takes place in the beautiful Brno city of Czech Republic. From past three years, its been happening in February month’s first Friday to Sunday and hence this year it was from 5th to 7th February.


    • Get ready to Fork the System at LibrePlanet
      Hundreds of people from around the world will meet at LibrePlanet 2016: Fork the System, March 19-20, 2016 at MIT in Cambridge, MA. This year's conference program will examine how free software creates the opportunity of a new path for its users, allows developers to fight the restrictions of a system dominated by proprietary software by creating free replacements, and is the foundation of a philosophy of freedom, sharing, and change. Sessions like "Yes, the FCC might ban your operating system" and "GNU/Linux and Chill: Free software on a college campus" will offer insights about how to resist the dominance of proprietary software, which is often built in to university policies and government regulations.




  • SaaS/Big Data



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • LibreOffice 5.1 Offers Reorganized User Interface for Its Apps
      The Document Foundation (TDF) released LibreOffice 5.1 on Feb. 10, providing users with a new milestone update of the popular open-source office suite. LibreOffice originated as a fork of the open-source OpenOffice suite in 2011 and has been downloaded more than 120 million times since then. LibreOffice includes Writer document, Calc spreadsheet, Impress presentation, Base database and Draw drawing programs as part of the integrated suite. In the LibreOffice 5.1 update, a key area of improvement is the user interface throughout the suite's programs, which all benefit from a reorganization as well as menu additions. With the 5.1 update, the office suite's integrated programs can now load and save files from remote locations directly through menu dialog box. LibreOffice is the default standard office suite in many mainstream Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE and Ubuntu. LibreOffice is also available for both Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the highlights of the new LibreOffice 5.1 release.


    • LibreOffice Is Getting Better GTK3 Support
      Last year LibreOffice made much progress in receiving GTK3 support that it also began running on Wayland. The battle though is not over and more GTK3 improvements are still forthcoming.






  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)



  • Public Services/Government



    • Tallinn schools piloting open source software
      Schools in the city of Tallinn (Estonia) are gradually moving to PC workstations running on free and open source software. A pilot in March 2014 switched 3 schools and 2 kindergartens. Students, teachers, school administration and kindergartens’ staff members are using LibreOffice, Ubuntu-Linux and other open source tools.




  • Openness/Sharing



    • 2016 Open Source Awards Finalists Named


      The Benjamin Franklin Award is a humanitarian/bioethics award presented annually by Bioinformatis.org to an individual who has, in his or her practice, promoted free and open access to the materials and methods used in the life sciences.


    • Open Data



      • Geography students bring open-source mapping group to State College


        Two geography students have started a Maptime chapter in State College to support community cartography and teach people how to use and create maps. The endeavor is co-sponsored by The Peter R. Gould Center for Geography Education and Outreach in Penn State’s Department of Geography.

        “I really want to put State College on the map—literally,” geography graduate student Carolyn Fish said. “So much open-source mapping is centered in large cities, such as New York, Washington and San Francisco.”




    • Open Access/Content



    • Open Hardware



      • Open Source CowTech Ciclop 3D Scanner Kit Available on Kickstarter for $99
        Montana-based startup CowTech launched an affordable 3D scanner kit on Kickstarter and they easily breezed past their funding goal in the first 24 hours. The CowTech Ciclop is a $99 3D laser scanner kit that was designed specifically with owners of 3D printers in mind. The buyer can print most of the scanner parts out on their own 3D printer and the parts were designed to fit on virtually any desktop 3D printer with a print bed volume of 115 x 110 x 65 mm (4.5 x 4.3 x 2.6 in) or higher. Once all of the components have been printed, the assembly process is quick and simple, and the Ciclop can start scanning in less than 30 minutes.






  • Programming



    • Go 1.6 is released
      Today we release Go version 1.6, the seventh major stable release of Go. You can grab it right now from the download page. Although the release of Go 1.5 six months ago contained dramatic implementation changes, this release is more incremental.

      The most significant change is support for HTTP/2 in the net/http package. HTTP/2 is a new protocol, a follow-on to HTTP that has already seen widespread adoption by browser vendors and major websites. In Go 1.6, support for HTTP/2 is enabled by default for both servers and clients when using HTTPS, bringing the benefits of the new protocol to a wide range of Go projects, such as the popular Caddy web server.


    • Go 1.6 Released


    • Women write better open source code on GitHub than men [Ed: conveniently (and wrongly) concludes from that it’s FOSS (not CS) that discriminates against women]
      Woman may be more competent than men at writing code but still there is evidence that they are discriminated against in open source communities because they are women.


    • A New Study Suggests That Women Write Better Code Than Men
      A recent study conducted by researchers from the computer science departments at Cal Poly, San Luis, Obispo and North Carolina State University reports that women write better code than men.


    • If Women Are Better at Coding, It’s Because They Have to Be






Leftovers



Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Media Operatives and Bill Epsteingate-Funded Sites Said Microsoft Lays Off 9,000, But Other Sites Say More (Including 2,300 in Redmond Alone)
We might never know the real number/s (Microsoft will keep the cards close to its chest) until there are leakers or unless there are whistleblowers with hard proof
GNU/Linux Reaches All-Time High in the United States of America
Windows is trending down
Why the Microsoft People Who Started SLAPPs Against Techrights Could Very Well be Sent Back to Prison
White-collar crime is also a crime
 
Links 02/07/2025: Deep Microsoft Cuts, Macron Speaks to Putin
Links for the day
Confirmed: Microsoft Shutdowns Today, Not Only Mass Layoffs
"The Initiative is the only studio closure planned today, although some other teams have seen cuts of varying degrees."
GNU/Linux is Replacing Microsoft Windows. But We Need to Eradicate Microsoft, It's a Hub of Crime.
I have been writing about Microsoft since the 1990s when I was in school
Microsoft Windows Nosedives in Switzerland While GNU/Linux Leaps Above 6%
sooner or later they might have to make the move anyway
Anxiety at Microsoft: Many Workers (Maybe Over 10,000) Still Don't Know They're Being Laid Off Just Before US Independence Day
"Has anyone gotten the notification yet?"
Microsoft "Declined to Say How Many People Would be Laid Off," According to Associated Press
Some other prominent publications said they reached out for comment from Microsoft and received none
The X War is Over and the "Wayland People" Lost
People will gravitate towards what works for them
20 Years Since My Thesis
It's still online
GNU/Linux is Replacing Windows in Laptops/Desktops
The world will move on while Windows and Microsoft shrink
Now Comes the Expected Webspam, Framing Microsoft Layoffs as "Hey Hi" Success Story (False Marketing That's Piggybacking the Layoffs)
falsely marketed as "intelligence"
Hungary: Microsoft Windows Sinks to 17% "Market Share"
In many nations in Europe it seems like the era of Windows is coming to an end
Microsoft Layoffs in Spain, Portugal Record for GNU/Linux
in Portugal we see GNU/Linux at record levels
Yes, Microsoft is Again Using Its Favourite Liars (Stenographers) to Seed Fake Layoff Numbers, Much Lower Than What's Really Happening
It is Jordan Novet again, just as we predicted
Will Microsoft Once Again Choose Its Favourite Liar to Spread Lies About Today's Layoffs, Quickly to be Replicated and Spread by Slopfarms?
What lies is Microsoft briefing its media moles to tell today?
"OSS Fetishism" Wins After Ferenc Zsolt Szabó Ousted (Microsoft Mole From Capgemini)
Many people said 2025 would be the "year of Linux on the desktop"
There is Nothing That LLMs Can Offer Honest People
LLMs are a passing fad; they're expensive and offer poor "value" for energy; they usually offer no value at all unless you are a cheater, spammer, and liar
What statCounter Shows Today Helps Explain Microsoft's Helplessness, Mass Layoffs
Since many US journalists are already away on holiday almost nobody will dare ask the difficult questions or give a voice to whistleblowers
Microsoft Gets the Chop in South America
The notion of digital sovereignty gained a lot of popularity
Europe Has an 'Exit'
Let's see what happens the rest of this year
El Presidente Talks, Canada Walks (Away From Windows)
GNU/Linux rising
Cities in France and Germany Move to GNU/Linux and statCounter Detects Big Differences
Will governments lead by example?
Microsoft Lost Its Foothold in Africa
How many of these are "old" Windows machines converted to GNU/Linux? Probably a lot.
Led by Europe, GNU/Linux Makes Big Gains This Month
statCounter started showing new/fresh stats
Links 02/07/2025: Massive Microsoft Layoffs About to Commence, "Tesla's Robotaxi Program Is Failing"
Links for the day
The Company Run by Former (and Last Proper) Red Hat CEO, Promoting Microsoft Mono, Faces Shock as Senior Partner Jailed for 33 Sexual Offenses Including Pedophilia
"As reported by The Oxford Mail in April 2025, the offenses include rape, sexual assault, engaging in non-penetrative activity with a child, and more."
Microsoft Lost 29% of Windows Users, Based on Microsoft, Now Come Massive Layoffs
Microsoft collapse is today
Slopwatch: Google Serves to People Linux Slop and Linux FUD (Made by Bots)
"Slopwatch" finds it difficult to ignore Google's role in encouraging LLM slop
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 01, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 01, 2025
"Wayland People" Behave Like the Googles and Microsofts of This World
Published yesterday by Igor Ljubuncic
Gemini Links 02/07/2025: Arch Linux and Fulfillment in Gemini
Links for the day
Links 01/07/2025: "Independence Day in Taiwan", Bounties on Software Patents
Links for the day
What Happens When Your Law Firm is Preoccupied With Harassing and Trying to Extort a Humble Couple in Manchester, Even on Behalf of Violent Microsoft Staff From Another Continent
It's good to see that law firms which operate in bad faith are perishing
Lawyer X, Law Firm X and Elon Musk's X: scandals linked by Old Xaverian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 01/07/2025: Distraction-Free Writing and Hytale Mismanagement
Links for the day
Links 01/07/2025: "Beauty of Blogging" and "Etiquette of Collapse"
Links for the day
Microsoft Uses LLM Slop to Defraud (or Rob) Shareholders
Microsoft is basically defrauding its shareholders by LLM slop
The Web is a Dead End
We need to adopt alternatives
When Words Lose Their Intended Meaning
examples of words that, at least in the technical spheres, don't mean what they sound like
People Who Disagree With You on Technical Matters May or May Not Agree With You on Political Things (But Usually They Do)
What bothers me a great deal is seeing left-leaning people accusing other left-leaning people of being "nazis"
"Too Much Choice" and "Too Many Programming Languages"
What IBM and its apologists aim for was attempted in the 1930s and it failed
Microsoft Lost 400,000,000 Windows Users, According to Microsoft
more people adopt smaller computers and many people replace Windows with GNU/Linux, as they don't really need a new computer
The "Davos Effect": Tarnishing the Reputation of Places Not by Overtourism But by Oligarch Infestation
The last Venice needs is an affiliation with Venetian oligarchs
Half a Year Gone, What's to Come Next
In the second half of 2025 we expect to be done with the Microsoft SLAPPs
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 30, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 30, 2025
People at the Very Top of Microsoft Know How Bad Things Really Are
There's no product that can replace the former profitability of Windows licensing and stuff that went on top of Windows
Gemini Links 01/07/2025: Mid Year and a Tour of Old Languages
Links for the day
EPO Presentation Bemoans Misuse of Slop in Decision-Making on Patents and in Classification (Which is Likely Illegal Too)
We habitually mention failed use cases of LLMs on the Web
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Confirmed, "XBox Hardware Is Dead"
It's possible that over 20% of the staff will be laid off
Links 30/06/2025: Kyrgyzstan vs Media Freedom, Dalai Lama Succession
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/06/2025: Backend Programs in Gemini and Dynamic Content Without The Scripting
Links for the day
Links 30/06/2025: Zuckerberg’s Tax-Evading Scheme Harms Kids, US Copyright Office Lacks Leadership
Links for the day
Microsoft Isn't Laying Off Tens of Thousands to 'Invest' in Slop ('Hey Hi'), It's Laying Off Tens of Thousands Because It's Running Out of Money (and Willing Lenders)
the layoffs are a sign of the business failing, not "hey hi" (whatever that is) replacing staff
Intel Lays Off 20% of Its Workforce, Microsoft is Doing the Same This Year
Like a yoyo, whatever goes up will come back down
Microsoft XBox Layoffs: Almost 2,000 Layoffs Became "Over 2,000"? (Over 20% of the Staff)
over 20% of staff will be let go, not counting staff that leaves voluntarily
GNU/Linux Rises to New Highs in Angola, Africa in General is Abandoning Windows
Western media barely covers Microsoft layoffs in Africa, but in recent years Microsoft culled the workforce and even shut down entire operations
Summer Plans in Techrights and Elsewhere
massive layoffs at Microsoft
Destination Geminispace (in the Age of LLM Slop and Slop Images That Infest the Web and Social Control Media)
Geminispace isn't vast, but at least it is - on average - a lot "cleaner"
GNU/Linux Growing in Sierra Leone This Year
Based on what statCounter is seeing, this year there are more and more people there who adopt GNU/Linux
Serial Sloppers Gonna Slop
More sites out there ought to call out the cheaters
Quartz (qz.com) is Spam and a Slopfarm
It used to be OK. Then they fired the staff.
Links 30/06/2025: US Economic Woes, Extreme Heat
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 29, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 29, 2025
Gemini Links 30/06/2025: "The AI Hype" and New AuraGem Ask
Links for the day