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Links 23/3/2016: Red Hat's Record Results





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Why community managers must wade (not dive) into communities
    If you are part of an organization looking to get into the community-support game, you would do well to tread carefully and deliberately. Communities, particularly at the start of your involvement in them, can be delicate and fragile things. Stomping in there with big words and big plans and big brand engagement will cause a lot of damage to the community and its ecosystem, often of the irreparable sort.


  • How our high school replaced IRC with Mattermost
    The Mattermost project was named because the developers wanted to emphasize the importance of communication. And the design provokes a conceptual shift in classroom communications. Unlike email, Mattermost is a convenient virtual meeting room and a central dashboard for our district technology operations. When everyone connects in a transparent conversation stream, collaboration naturally happens in the open. I was incredibly fond of our internal IRC system, but I really love the Mattermost platform. It costs nothing more than a little server space and occasional software update attention. But even better, it serves as the communication hub for our Student Technology Help Desk, and helps our students collaborate during times when they are not together in the same physical space during a given class block.


  • A channel guide to Open Source success
    Much has changed within the storage channel over the past few years. New technologies, especially cloud-computing, have created innovative business models that have transformed not only what channel businesses sell, but the way they sell them too. As a result, many resellers have evolved into service providers in a process that is now fairly well understood.

    However, there is another, lesser-known evolution that is equally important: not only is the channel changing, but so too are customers. This new type of customer is comfortable with cloud technologies and with the increasingly related area of open source operating systems, which they are looking to use in new ways. If channel organisations are to capitalise on these customers then they need to understand how they can add value through open source.


  • Open source software altering telecom operator, vendor space
    The increased focus and adoption of open source software is bolstering telecom operator plans, forcing vendors to rethink strategy


  • Events



    • Event planning tips from the Django Girls Budapest team
      Szilvi Kádár, Daniella KÅ‘rössy, and I are the organizers of Django Girls Budapest, a free workshop that teaches women how to code. We held our first Django Girls workshop in December 2014, and we're currently planning our fourth event. We'd like to share some bits and pieces of event organizing advice, and we hope you'll find some useful ideas for your next event.


    • LibrePlanet day two in a nutshell
      We are just forty-eight hours after LibrePlanet 2016 successfully concluded. The second day carried the energy and excitement from Saturday, and attendance remained strong in all sessions.


    • Uganda to host the 7th African Conference on Free and Open Source Software and Digital Commons
      The Government of Uganda through National Information Technology Authority (NITA-U) will host the 7th African Conference on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Digital Commons (IDLELO 7) in August 2016. The conference aims to support uptake of Open Source in Uganda and the region.

      The Ministry of ICT has recently developed a Free Open Source Software (FOSS) Policy to provide guidance on deployment of Open Source Software and the use of Open Standards as a means of accelerating Innovation and local content development.




  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome



      • Google will kill its Chrome app launcher for Windows, Mac, and Linux in July


        Google today announced plans to kill off the Chrome app launcher for Windows, Mac, and Linux in July. The tool, which lets users launch Chrome apps even if the browser is not running, will continue to live on in Chrome OS.

        As you might suspect, the Chrome app launcher was originally ported from Chrome OS. Google first started experimenting with bringing the app launcher to its desktop browser in May 2013. The Chrome app launcher debuted on Windows in July 2013, followed by OS X in December 2013, and finally Linux in July 2014.






  • SaaS/Big Data



    • GoDaddy Offers Amazon-like Cloud Services, Based on OpenStack
      Small business domain host GoDaddy is famous for its racy commercials and its long history of servicing domains, but now it is entering the cloud business and placing its bets on OpenStack. The company has expanded its hosting services to offer Cloud Servers and Bitnami-powered Cloud Applications. The new offerings are designed to help the individual developers, tech entrepreneurs and IT professionals to quickly build, test and scale cloud solutions.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • CMS





  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)



  • BSD



    • FreeNAS 9.10 Open-Source Storage Operating System Adds USB 3.0 & Skylake Support
      Jordan Hubbard from the FreeNAS project, an open-source initiative to create a powerful, free, secure, and reliable NAS (Network-attached storage) operating system based on BSD technologies, announced the release of FreeNAS 9.10.

      FreeNAS 9.10 is the tenth maintenance release in the current stable 9.x series of the project, thus bringing the latest security patches from upstream, support for new devices, as well as several under-the-hood updates. As expected, FreeNAS 9.10 has been rebased on the latest FreeBSD 10.3 RC3 (Release Candidate) release.




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Public Services/Government



    • Polish eGovernment strategy advocates open source
      Poland’s new eGovernment strategy recommends that publicly financed software should use an open architecture, and consider publication under an open source licence. The eGovernment strategy twice emphasises the use of open source, for a new system of public registers and for a eInvoicing system that interoperates with a national document management system.


    • EC and EP use open source for software development
      The European Commission and the European Parliament generally use open source tools and methods for software development, concludes the EU-FOSSA project, following a review of 15 ongoing projects. The institutions’ project management tools make room for agile, collaborative development cycles.




  • Programming



    • Swift programming language update introduces Linux support
      Almost two years after its launch and four months since it was open sourced, Swift 2.2 has been released by Apple. The update is a major one because it now runs on Linux. Officially, Swift runs on Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 15.10 but it won't be long until it unofficially arrives on other distros such as Arch and Manjaro via the Arch User Repository (or AUR).






Leftovers



  • Science



    • UK Government Forbids Publicly-Funded Scientists And Academics From Giving Advice It Disagrees With
      That might sound reasonable, especially the last part about not being able to lobby for more funding. It is aimed mainly at organizations that receive government grants, but many academics believe that it is so loosely worded that it will also apply to them, and will prevent them from pushing for new regulations in any circumstances. Even if that is not the UK government's intention, the mere existence of the policy is bound to have a chilling effect on the academics, since few will want to run the risk of having their grants taken away by inadvertently breaking the new rules.




  • Apple



  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • WATCH: President Obama in Cuba: "I Have Come to Bury the Last Remnant of the Cold War"
      On the final day of his historic trip to Cuba, President Obama addressed the Cuban people. "The United States and Cuba are like two brothers that’ve been estranged for many years," Obama said. "We both live in a new world, colonized by Europeans. Cuba was in part built by slaves who were brought from Africa … Like the United States, Cuba can trace her heritage to both slaves and slave owners.”




  • Transparency Reporting



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • Donald Trump bewilderingly denies that climate change poses a serious risk
      Republican presidential candidates haven't exactly set a high bar for their understanding of climate science during the 2016 race so far. However, front-runner Donald Trump wins the prize for the most confounding denial of global warming expressed by a major party's presidential candidate to date.






  • Finance



  • Censorship



  • Privacy



    • Silk Road 2.0 Right-Hand Man Pleads Guilty
      The second iteration of the Silk Road drug marketplace was shuttered in November 2014, almost exactly a year after it opened. Now, 17 months later, the right hand man of that website has accepted a plea agreement in a district court in the Western District of Washington.

      Brian Farrell has formally admitted to being “DoctorClu,” a staff member of Silk Road 2.0 who provided customer and technical support, approved vendors, and promoted other employees, according to a court document filed earlier this month.


    • Tor Project says it can quickly catch spying code
      The Tor Project is fortifying its software so that it can quickly detect if its network is tampered with for surveillance purposes, a top developer for the volunteer project wrote on Monday.

      There are worries that Tor could either be technically subverted or subject to court orders, which could force the project to turn over critical information that would undermine its security, similar to the standoff between Apple and the U.S. Department of Justice.

      Tor developers are now designing the system in such a way that many people can verify if code has been changed and "eliminate single points of failure," wrote Mike Perry, lead developer of the Tor Browser, on Monday.


    • Apple v. FBI: What Just Happened?


    • Icloak Stik
      Anyone who values anonymity can benefit.


    • Tor Project Hardens Privacy Features, Points to Apple vs. the FBI
      There continue to be many people around the globe who want to be able to use the web and messaging systems anonymously, despite the fact that some people want to end Internet anonymity altogether. Typically, the anonymous crowd turns to common tools that can keep their tracks private, and one of the most common tools of all is Tor, an open source tool used all around the world.

      Even as Apple continues to make headlines as it squares off with the FBI over privacy issues, Mike Perry, lead developer of the Tor Browser, wrote in a blog post that Tor developers are hardening the Tor system in such a way that people can verify if code has been changed and "eliminate single points of failure." "Even if a government or a criminal obtains our cryptographic keys, our distributed network and its users would be able to detect this fact and report it to us as a security issue," Perry wrote.


    • Idaho mom who sued Obama over illegal surveillance loses at appellate court
      The Idaho mother who sued President Barack Obama over alleged unconstitutional telephone metadata collection has lost again in court. Anna Smith had her initial case dismissed in 2014, and this week her appeal met a similar fate.

      On Tuesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Smith, finding that her case was now moot in light of the new changes to the now-expired Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
    • Ninth Circuit Tosses Challenge to NSA Spying
      Anna Smith, a nurse and mother of two, sued President Barack Obama and other high-ranking government officials in June 2013, upon the exposure of a program that collected metadata from every American's phone records.


    • NSA is not 'intentionally looking' for Americans, says agency's privacy officer [Ed: Rebecca Richards is a liar. NSA hired her to lie to media. Job title: “privacy and civil liberties and privacy”]
    • Before We Even Know The Details, Politicians Rush To Blame Encryption For Brussels Attacks
      You may remember that, right after the Paris attacks late last year, politicians rushed in to demonize encryption as the culprit, and to demand backdooring encryption before the blood was even dry. Of course, it later turned out that there was no evidence that they used encryption at all, but rather it appears that they communicated by unencrypted means. Just yesterday, we noted that the press was still insisting encryption was used, and using the lack of any evidence as evidence for the fact they must have used encryption (hint: that's not how encryption works...).


    • Appeals court: NSA surveillance case partly moot


    • Appeals court partly dismisses NSA surveillance case as moot
      A three-judge federal appeals panel has partly dismissed an Idaho woman's lawsuit over the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records as moot.

      Nurse Anna J. Smith sued the government in 2013, arguing that the agency's collection of call records violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.
    • British Spy Agency GCHQ Moves Fast to Prevent Mass Energy Hack Attack
      The UK intelligence agency GCHQ has stepped in to prevent a massive hack attack on Britain's energy networks after discovering so-called "smart meters" - designed to replace 53 million gas and electricity meters can be easily hacked.


    • GCHQ steps into protect smart meters against hackers [Ed: still distracting from GCHQ offense]




  • Civil Rights

    • Bernie Sanders Spoke Up for Suffering Palestinians, but Few in Broadcast Media Covered It
      As leading presidential candidates spoke at the Washington gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), promising support and a crackdown on boycotts of Israel, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders made a dissenting speech in Salt Lake City, where he spoke up for suffering Palestinians. It received little broadcast media attention.

      As Sanders trails Clinton in delegate count, his campaign has effectively been discounted by major media.


    • Clinton Attacks Israeli Boycott Movement in AIPAC Speech


    • My too intimate relations with the TSA: James Bovard
      The Transportation Security Administration finally obeyed a 2011 federal court order March 3 and issued a 157 page Federal Register notice justifying its controversial full-body scanners and other checkpoint procedures. TSA’s notice ignored the fact that the "nudie" scanners are utterly unreliable; TSA failed to detect 95% of weapons and mock bombs that Inspector General testers smuggled past them last year while the agency continues to mislead the public about its heavy-handed treatment of travelers.

      The Federal Register notice is full of soothing pablum about how travelers have no reason to fear the TSA, declaring that "passengers can obtain information before they leave for the airport on what items are prohibited." But it neglects to mention that TSA can invoke ludicrous pretexts to treat innocent travelers as suspicious terrorist suspects.

      Flying home from Portland, Ore., on Thanksgiving morning, I had a too-close encounter with TSA agents that spurred me to file a Freedom of Information Act request. On March 5, I finally received a bevy of TSA documents and video footage with a grope-by-grope timeline.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Silicon Valley Rides Obama’s Coattails Into Cuba
      President Barack Obama is in Cuba, and Silicon Valley is tagging along for the ride.

      Executives from several technology companies are traveling with the U.S. president on his goodwill tour or introducing new business initiatives focused on the island—or both. Among the companies joining the Cuba parade this week are Google parent Alphabet Inc., Airbnb Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc., Priceline Group Inc., Stripe Inc., and Xerox Corp.




  • DRM



    • Anti-DRM activists go to W3C meeting to protest Digital Restrictions Management in Web standards
      The protest began outside the W3C office and continued with a march past Google's Cambridge office, to Microsoft's office nearby. The companies are both supporters of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), the proposal to enshrine DRM in Web standards. The protest included free software users and developers, including Richard Stallman and Chris Webber, the maintainer of the GNU MediaGoblin decentralized publishing platform. A small number of protesters split from the group to enter the W3C meeting, then were ejected by police.

      DRM in Web standards would make it cheaper and more politically acceptable to impose restrictions on users, opening the floodgates to a new wave of DRM throughout the Web, with all the vulnerabilities, surveillance and curtailed freedom that DRM entails.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Trademarks



      • Court Dismisses Dumb Trademark Suit Between Dairy And Fishing Tackle Companies
        Part of the fun of covering the sort of silly trademark disputes that we do here at Techdirt is seeing just how far companies, most often large companies, will go in trying to apply protectionist habits where they don't belong. This typically manifests itself in the key marketplace aspect of trademark law, where the brands in question are to be competing for customers who might become confused for an infringement to have occurred. Too often this aspect of the law appears to go ignored in claims of infringement, or else the concept of competitive marketplaces is stretched to the point of absurdity. As I said, this is often times amusing to us, because we're strange.




    • Copyrights



      • Man Faces Prison Sentence For Circumventing UK Pirate Site Blockade
        A UK's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has charged a man for operating several proxy sites and services that allowed UK Internet users to bypass local pirate site blockades. In a first of its kind prosecution, the Bakersfield resident is charged with several fraud offenses and one count of converting and/or transferring criminal property.


      • Prenda's Paul Hansmeier Continues To Win Enemies, Influence Legislators With His ADA Trolling, Hiding Of Assets
        Everyone behind the failed clown school that was Prenda Law deserves what's happening to Paul Hansmeier. Unfortunately, it appears Hansmeier is taking the most damage from the fallout of Prenda's disastrous copyright trolling… or at least he's the one doing most of his suffering in public.

        Of course, it's his own fault. Rather than get out of the trolling business, Hansmeier doubled down. He swapped porn stars for wheelchairs, pursuing small businesses for Americans with Disabilities Acts violations. Fronting as a public interest, Hansmeier's "Disabilities Support Alliance" is every bit the serial litigant Prenda was.








Recent Techrights' Posts

Karen Melchior Fought the Good Fight
stay tuned for Part 29
We Need Less Gadgets, More Humanity
If people are being honest with themselves, many of the gadgets they claim they "cannot live without" are just excesses and distractions they could definitely leave behind
Daniel Pocock in The Guardian This Morning
There is an opportunity here to spread a message, even if Pocock won't win a seat
 
The Corrupt Have Historically Tried to Paint Their Exposers as the Real Problem
As usual, there are efforts to shoot or muzzle the messenger
Search Engine Market Share in Italy: Microsoft Falls to Third in Many Countries Including Italy
Expect more layoffs in Bing
Links 20/07/2026: Spotify Drowning in Slop, Expiry of Software Patents in MPEG-4
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/07/2026: Another Step Towards Owning Personal Data and Gemtext2 Envisioned
Links for the day
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Public Missions and Private Ambitions
Despite the French government's strong formal pushback, the lobbying momentum generated by Campinos and Negrão proved unstoppable
"DOOM" and "Bloodbath": the State of Microsoft and XBox
Way to piss off fans
Links 20/07/2026: Notes on E-mail Encryption, Torvalds and His Employer Paid a Lot to Promote Slop (Pyramid Scheme)
Links for the day
What a Difference Six Years Make...
We are also beta-testing a new feature for the site; we plan to announce it some time soon
When It Comes to Slop, Richard Stallman is Opposite of Linus Torvalds
When it comes to computing, Dr. Stallman has long been a voice of reason
Daniel Pocock is in Mainstream Media This Week
Pocock's haters will absolutely hate this
In His Departure Post, Poul-Henning Kamp (phk) Explains Why Linus Torvalds is Full of "Hot Air" and Slop Bubbles
Having lived through previous bubbles as a UNIX geek, phk cannot be ignored
Whistleblowers Keep Flowing
Later today a police investigator should phone us regarding death threats we've received
Technology and Gadgets Got Obese, Just Like Their Users
They now sell us so-called 'phones' for slop
"Samsung Recently Projected a 19-fold Surge in Second-Quarter Operating Profit", Now There Are Mass Layoffs
In a 9-month period Samsung's debt rose by about 80%
Gemini Links 20/07/2026: Dungeon Meshi/Undertale Crossover, "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Dark Web and Beyond"
Links for the day
IBM's Control of the Media "Just Showed What Taking Accountability Does Not Look Like"
It is no secret that IBM pays the media
Microsoft Loses XBox Lawsuit, But There Are More
The collapse of studios continues
GNU/Linux Approaching International Average in Djibouti
One can envisage further gains for GNU/Linux, seeing Microsoft is in such a bad shape
Daniel Pocock "[t]he Australian Taking on Nigel Farage — from Down Under"
This can help raise awareness of some issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 19, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, July 19, 2026
Misleading Coverage in Slashdot Promotes and Openwashes Slop
Piggybacking RMS for the headline seems like a PR stunt of sorts
As Envisioned, a Rebellion and Many Whistleblowers at Microsoft
Whistleblowers ensure Microsoft has totally lost control of the "narrative" (face-saving PR)
Microsoft is a Right-Wing Company
Just remember that when people call Microsoft "woke"
GNU/Linux "Market Share" Rises to About a Quarter in Sudan
Can anyone explain to us why?
Gemini Links 19/07/2026: Visiting Ethiopia, Two Dreams, and Price of Skinnerboxes
Links for the day
Tears in IBM, Company Falls Apart While Management Fakes "Performance" to Take Bonuses
Wall Street is a naked emperor
Telling Our Story
In the coming years we'll have some high-impact stories to share and generally tell without fear of reprisal
Microsoft XBox Studio Leaders Upset at What the New CEO Did
From what we can gather, in 2024 XBox was already entering what's known as a "death spiral". Now it's literally moving down the drain/pipe.
IRC Started in Finland, GNU/Linux Did Not
History is like that
GNU/Linux Rises to 8% in Bhutan, Same as the International Average
Taking note of estimated GNU/Linux share in that country, we see it hovering around the international median/average this month
Links 19/07/2026: "The Voice of Google" and "Chinese Surveillance Tech a Threat to Privacy"
Links for the day
Keep Both Eyes on the Ball
At the moment we have six series running in parallel; two of them concern the EPO
'Journalists' Who Help IBM Cover Up Fraud
Journalistic malpractice
The "Modern Linux" Song
Join us now, make the kernel
XBox Layoffs Vastly Bigger Than Microsoft Told the Press, Microsoft Keeps Trying to Change the Subject
Many so-called "XBox fans" are no more
Microsoft Lost 1,200 Billion Dollars in "Market Value", Take a Look at What Happened to Windows
while Windows continues to fall unstoppably GNU/Linux is surging
Links 19/07/2026: People in China Are Buying Feelings and 404 Media Has Third Anniversary
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/07/2026: Camping, Health, and Hardware
Links for the day
The State of Slopfarms
Slopfarms or LLM slopfarms are a menace and a problem on the Web
GNU/Linux Rising to 6% in Brunei
seventh in the world for GDP (PPP) per capita
Free Software is Like an 'Activist Movement'
People who argue strongly in favour of something (even very good things) will attract the wrath of those whom they oppose
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 18, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, July 18, 2026
UKIP TV (GBNoise) Covers Challengers to UKIP Nigel, Daniel Pocock Mentioned
Way to get noticed
Links 18/07/2026: Chinese State Media Depicting Neighbours as Monkeys, US "Stocks Sink on Anxiety About Tech and Hey Hi (AI) Spending"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2026: "Business Idiots Everywhere", "The Siren Song of DePIN", and Entering Geminispace
Links for the day
GNU/Linux in Lithuanian Desktops/Laptops Climbs to 8%, the Global Average
For its own national security it would be wise to abandon Windows
This Bubble is Bursting, Piecewise
It's nice to see Wall Street getting some reality checks
It's Not About XBox, Microsoft is Already Firing Hundreds of People Who Do "Security [sic] Engineering" [sic]
The official reason/excuse/lie told is something about slop, but no sane person would buy it (not even insiders who are impacted)
Can We Finally All Agree That UEFI 'Secure Boot' is a Sham That Harms Security and Gives Microsoft Remote Control Over All PCs and Servers (Even Those That Don't Run Any Microsoft Software)?
Cui bono?
Bolivian People Adopt GNU/Linux (They Have a Domestic Distro Too, PluriOS)
Notice Windows falling to an all-time low
No Technical People Write About UK Parliamentary Elections
Almost none of them work in the media, which seems to favour parrots, slop, or parrots that use slop
"But Stallman is Scaring Away Women..."
Such dishonest projections (projection tactics) needs to be called out and refuted
First Female Debian Project Leader (DPL) Affirms Low Profile and Inferior Status of Women in GAFAM
3 months ago Sruthi Chandran was elected as Debian Project Leader (DPL) for a period of 12 months
After 5 Years Vista 11 Still Adopted Less Than Its Predecessor (Orphaned, End of Life Since Last Year)
Notice Windows going down to 40%
We Don't Depend on Google (or Search Engines in General)
there's a lesson here and it extends beyond sites
Only "Torvaldos" (Linus Torvalds) Can Use the F-Word, CoC Does Not Apply to the Enforcer, and Richard Stallman Punished for Using the Other F-Word ("Freedom")
"Linus Torvalds tells AI haters to fork off"
Explaining the Culture of Bulletin Board-Style Chat
Only desperate detractors would try to present something (cherry-picked) from IRC as some sort of official statement for Techrights
Independent, But Not Fringe
"Daniel Pocock is an Independent Candidate."
In Free Software, Nobody Gets Fired
Way to own one's code and project
PIP-Styled Mass Layoffs Allegedly Coming to Microsoft by 12 August 2026
Microsoft has been doing "silent layoffs" (PIPs and more) for quite some time
Daniel Pocock's Candidacy (Election of Member of Parliament) Mentioned in BBC and Over a Dozen News Sites Since Yesterday
Funnily enough, albeit not surprisingly, the same people who attack Pocock also attack us
Links 18/07/2026: Spotify Uses Slop Song Descriptions, "San Francisco Demands Removal of Nudify Apps"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 17, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, July 17, 2026
Gemini Links 18/07/2026: A Manifesto by The Dissident, Shokz Headphones, and Gemini Tinylog Reader (GTL)
Links for the day