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10.19.12

Links 20/10/2012: Ubuntu Getting More Closed, OpenOffice.org Promoted in Apache

Posted in News Roundup at 7:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Achieving Photorealism in Blender

    (Unfortunately the video I recorded on the day was too dark and difficult to hear, so I figured there was no point in uploading it. Sorry about that!)

  • The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache OpenOffice™ as a Top-Level Project

    The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced that Apache Open Office has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), signifying that the Project’s community and products have been well-governed under the ASF’s meritocratic process and principles.

  • OSI and OSHWA agree on logo usage

    The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA), which was officially launched in June, has signed an agreementPDF with the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to settle a dispute over its Open Source Hardware (OSHW) logo. Following concerns that the logo OSHWA was using to denote the open hardware nature of devices was too similar to the OSI’s trademark, both organisations worked out an agreement that clarifies the difference between the logos and the areas they are applied in.

  • Open Call for Packagers!

    In the past, we’ve had people pull code right out of our master branch. There were a few problems with this technique for deployment; pulling out of the active branch of development meant that a podmin had no idea as to how stable the latest code for a pod could be. Secondly, we think that setting up a pod should be easier, as people shouldn’t have to mess around with a terminal and lots of config files to enjoy the benefits of a decentralized social web.

  • Open Source Vendor Zarafa Solves Apple’s iOS Problems

  • Events

  • SaaS

  • Databases

    • 10gen: Growing the MongoDB world

      10gen, the company set up by the creators of the open source NoSQL database MongoDB, has been on a roll recently, creating business partnerships with numerous companies, making it a hot commercial proposition without creating any apparent friction with its open source community. So what has brought MongoDB to the fore?

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Congrats Apache OpenOffice!

      Today the Apache Software Foundation announced that Apache OpenOffice ™ is a top level project, and I really wish to congratulate with the Apache OpenOffice Community to have achieved this important milestone.

    • LibreOffice 3.5.7 Released

      What’s a conference without a release announcement? The Document Foundation didn’t find out today because it announced the release of LibreOffice 3.5.7. 3.5.7 is “the seventh and possibly last version of the free office suite’s 3.5 family, which solves additional bugs and regressions, and offers stability improvements over LibreOffice 3.5.6.”

    • Mark Hurd: Oracle Accepts Cloud And Hadoop

      Oracle chief operating officer Mark Hurd says the company really is enthusiastic about open source, big Data and the cloud

    • Is Hadoop the Answer to Oracle Customers’ Big Data Problems?

      Oracle customers are facing a big data problem, and Hadoop is the answer – reluctant as Oracle is to admit it.

      Speaking at the Oracle product and strategy update in London yesterday, Oracle president Mark Hurd said that the company’s customers are growing their data up to 40% a year, putting tremendous pressure on IT budgets.

    • Apache Elevates Open Source OpenOffice – So What?

      There was a time when OpenOffice was where I spent a good chunk of my work day. Those days are now in the past, as I’ve moved on and so has every single major Linux distribution. We’ve all moved to a faster more agile open source office suite. We have moved to LibreOffice.

  • Education

    • Parents of non-traditional learners advocate for open education

      While Thomas Edison is often lauded as the most prolific American inventor, his mother, Nancy Edison, and how she fostered an open education and an open mind in her son is often overlooked. When a headmaster labelled Edison as being ‘addled,’ slow, and unteachable, his mother disagreed and decided to withdraw her son from school and teach him at home. She knew her son was a bright, curious, creative child who thought divergently yet was often disorganized, disruptive, and hyperactive; today he would most likely be diagnosed as having ADHD.

  • Healthcare

  • Business

    • Up to Date on Open Source Analytics

      I’ve been updating the computational analytics platform on my Wintel notebook the last few days. I’d fallen behind several versions on each of the main tools and decided to get them all back in synch at once. The good news for hackers like me is that there are so many freely-available, open source analytics products to choose from. The bad news is that it takes a focused effort to stay up to date on the latest largesse.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • New Features Coming Up For The GCC 4.8 Compiler
    • Initial ARMv8 Support For 32-bit GCC Port

      Developers from ARM Holdings have published their initial ARMv8 patch for the GNU Compiler Collection for the 32-bit “AArch32″ compiler port.

      ARM developers had already been working on their 64-bit ARM / AArch64 compiler port, which was officially approved just days ago. The latest ARM open-source compiler patch is ARMv8 in the AArch32 port with basic functionality.

  • Project Releases

    • VLC Media Player 2.0.4 supports Opus decoding

      Version 2.0.4 of the VLC Media Player has been released by the VideoLAN project. While the minor version number change may not reflect it, the new release is described as a major update by its developers as it fixes numerous regressions and introduces support for the IETF’s Opus lossy audio compression format. It also brings several other improvements and platform-specific changes.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Programming

    • The Growth of Google Summer of Code

      I recently sat down with Chris DiBona to talk about the 15th anniversary of Slashdot. In addition to discussing the joys of heading an email campaign against spamming politicians, and the perils of throwing a co-worker’s phone into a bucket, even if you think that bucket is empty, we talked about the growth of Google Summer of Code. Below you’ll find his story of how a conversation about trying to get kids to be more active with computers in the summer has led to the release of 55 million lines of code.

    • Subversive brings Subversion to Eclipse

Leftovers

  • The Pioneers of UNIX

    Steve Jobs? Steve Jobs didn’t do jack. If you want to know who is responsible for the modern world you have to look at the people working at Bell Labs in the 1970s and 1980s. The people who created UNIX. It was from that invention that we have the modern world. UNIX led to Linux which led to Android. UNIX led to the BSD family of operating systems which led to Apple OSX. UNIX led to the C programming language in which most system-level software today is written. Ever wonder why URLs use forward slashes? It’s because UNIX was instrumental in the creation of the Internet.

  • Security

  • Finance

    • Why I Left Goldman Sachs, Chapter Three: “My Alleged Competition”

      On Monday morning, Grand Central Publishing will release Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story, a memoir penned by former Goldman employee Greg Smith, based on his op-ed for the New York Times entitled, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs.” When Smith’s piece came out last March, few if any senior executives inside the bank were pleased, in part because it came as a total shock. No one at Goldman had known Smith was planning to have his resignation letter printed in the paper. No one had known he had issues with the firm’s supposedly new and singular focus on making money at all costs. No one, at least at the top, even knew who Greg was. Obviously all this left the bank at a competitive disadvantage in terms of fighting back and for the time being, Smith appeared to be handing Goldman its ass. Getting cocky, even. Perhaps thinking to himself, “When all of this is over, I could be named the new CEO of Goldman Sachs.” As anyone who has ever won a bronze medal in ping-pong at the Maccabiah Games will tell you, however, winners are determined by best of threes. And that anyone going to to the table with Goldman Sachs should be prepared for things to get ugly.

    • Big Oil and the U.S. Chamber Fight to Keep Foreign Bribery Flourishing

      In a new lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), big energy extractors are pushing for carte blanche in their interactions with foreign governments, making it harder to track whether their deals are padding the coffers of dictators, warlords, or crony capitalists. The United States Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and the National Foreign Trade Council filed a lawsuit on October 10, 2012 against a new SEC rule, which requires U.S. oil, mining and gas companies to formally disclose payments made to foreign governments as part of their annual SEC reporting.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Copyrights

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