Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 14/7/2011: More Linux in Cars, Wine 1.3.24



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Teaching open source in South Africa: Part I
    Africa is the world's second-least developed continent--after Antarctica. If you look at a world map of computer science and open source contributions, you will be struck by the blank canvas that is Africa. We are quite isolated over here and don't really have the habit of open source participation. A few dedicated souls spend inordinate amounts of time in basements and campus computer labs adding their efforts to the open source community, but the distance that separates us from the developed world is one that is as much about technology and access to technology as it is about physical distance and finances.



  • Is Open Source Driven Forward By Pragmatists or Purists?


  • Waiting for Outlook and Blackboard. Let’s have lunch?
    Open Source is so utterly opposite of proprietary software that corporations have to go to great lengths to pretend that the buyer is getting any value at all. Typically, government and other high-profile contracts, usually a result of bribery AKA lobbying, are what seals the deal for these big companies. Yet, after 20+ years of iron-fisted control of software patents, government regulations, and suing the hades out of everyone it can, Microsoft couldn’t stop Open Source from stomping it to the ground. Android is about to become the most widely used Operating System in the world, and is already far ahead of Redmond based MSFT.


  • I was talking about something a little different
    SOS Open Source analyzed Zarafa, the open-source alternative to Microsoft Exchange, maintained by the homonymous company headquartered in the Netherlands (Delft) with offices in Germany and Brasil. The Zarafa Summer Camp 2011was the perfect venue to share our findings around Zarafa (presentation), if you missed our keynote read below to know more this open source messaging and collaboration platform.


  • Where Did All the Idealism Go?
    As a writer, I am more comfortable reporting the news than making the news. For that reason, I'm reluctant to encourage the discussion started by my article, "Tech Pundits Surrender: The Retreat from Free Software and Open Standards" about the use of proprietary software when it's convenient. At the same time, I can't help wondering when idealism became a dirty word in free and open source software (FOSS).


  • A Telecom Service Provider Handles Huge Volumes of Data Using FOSS
    Singh has had varied experiences having worked on Android application development, MySQL database, C++, and PHP / Apache / MySQL /PostgreSQL (LAMPP). He embraced PostgreSQL during his stint with Mavenir Systems, and was so impressed with it that he started using it extensively in other projects. The first project Singh used it on was for NextGen, a telecom services group.


  • 10 best (unknown) open source projects
    That's right folks, another ten best! But this time I'll wager you're not familiar with any of them, or at best one or two. The free/open source software world is vast and full of excellent applications for all occasions. An interesting trend is the growth of large distributed projects such as OpenTox and AMEE. FOSS presents a natural platform for building large distributed projects because of the low barrier to entry-- open code, open standards, and freely-available robust, high-quality high-performance software.


  • Mozilla



  • SaaS

    • Piston Cloud Computing Raises $4.5 Million For Open Source Cloud
      Piston Cloud Computing, Inc., a software company developing commercialized OpenStack software for businesses, has raised $4.5 million in funding. The round was led by Hummer Winblad and True Ventures, with Divergent Ventures and others participating. Lars Leckie from Hummer Winblad, and Puneet Agarwal from True Ventures will join Piston’s board of directors.




  • Databases



  • CMS



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Introducing Jonathan Nadeau, FSF campaigns intern
      My name is Jonathan Nadeau and I'm a husband, a father of three, and a blind GNU/Linux user. I'm also the host of three podcasts about free software. I interview project leaders of free software and GNU/Linux distributions. This summer I'm interning with the FSF's campaigns team.

      [...]

      Once I started using a free screen reader with a free operating system, I had freedom in my own computing, and realized the importance of free software for accessibility — it is important for people who depend on accessible software to understand the freedoms that come with using free software, and no longer be stuck in a world of relying on nonfree accessibility software.




  • Project Releases

    • CUBRID 8.4.0 GA is now available for download
      About two month ago we have released a beta version of the new CUBRID 8.4.0 which proved once again that it is a powerful database with great optimization for Web applications. It featured twice faster database engine and over 90% MySQL SQL syntax compatibility. We had greatly


    • Fresh PuTTY
      PuTTY developer Simon Tatham has announced the release of version 0.61 of his cross-platform, open source Telnet and SSH client. The latest version comes more than four years after PuTTY 0.60: Tatham says that the project has received "quite a lot of email asking if PuTTY was still under development, and occasionally asking if we were even still alive. Well, we are, and it has been! Sorry about the long wait."




  • Public Services/Government

    • Canary Islands - Open source software to forecast and manage forest fires
      Capaware is an open source 3D geographical multilayer framework which allows to obtain realistic images of land and to navigate a given area virtually. Based on the environmental conditions of the area (humidity, vegetation and wind, among others), Capaware "gives a real-time forecast which allows to know the evolution and intensity of a fire." said José Pablo Suárez, Professor at the Department of Cartography and Engineering Graphic Design, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.




  • Licensing

    • Out Of Tune With Community
      Controversial in certain circles, the work of a loose grouping of people to create a set of standardised contributor agreements for open source projects at "Project Harmony" has reached its 1.0 milestone. At the website you'll find a release version of the agreements.

      Contributor agreements are used to accumulate copyrights into the hands of a single organisation. They are especially associated with open source projects like MySQL which use a "dual license" or an "open core" business model, but are also used by projects like Apache to provide flexibility and by the FSF to allow them to prosecute companies who fail to abide by the license.




  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming



  • Standards/Consortia

    • 6th ODF Plugfest
      The sixth ODF plugfest will take place in Berlin on July 14/15 2011, and will be hosted by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Economy & Technology.


    • ODF Symposium
      The conference is about the results of an R&D project "Developing a software quality assurance service package for applications of OpenDocument Format". The project is supported by the Hungarian National Techology Program and its main objective is to establish sound quality assurance procedures for ODF applications.






Leftovers



  • Cablegate

    • Wired publishes the full Manning-Lamo chat logs
      Yesterday -- more than a full year after it first released selected portions of purported chat logs between Bradley Manning and government informant Adrian Lamo (representing roughly 25% of the logs) -- Wired finally published the full logs (with a few redactions). From the start, Wired had the full chat logs and was under no constraints from its source (Lamo) about what it could publish; it was free to publish all of it but chose on its own to withhold most of what it received.

      Last June -- roughly a week after Wired's publication of the handpicked portions -- I reviewed the long and complex history between Lamo and Wired Editor Kevin Poulsen, documented the multiple, serious inconsistencies in Lamo's public claims (including ones in a lengthy interview with me), and argued that Wired should "either publish all of the chat logs, or be far more diligent about withholding only those parts which truly pertain only to Manning's private and personal matters and/or which would reveal national security secrets." Six months later, in December, I documented that numerous media reports about Manning and WikiLeaks were based on Lamo's claims about what Manning told him in these chats -- claims that could not be verified or disputed because Wired continued to conceal the relevant parts of the chat logs -- and again called for "as much pressure as possible be applied to Wired to release those chat logs or, at the very least, to release the portions about which Lamo is making public claims or, in the alternative, confirm that they do not exist."






  • Finance

    • America for Sale: Does Goldman Sachs Own Your City...Yet?
      In Chicago, it's the sale of parking meters to the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. In Indiana, it's the sale of the northern toll road to a Spanish and Australian joint venture. In Wisconsin it's public health and food programs, in California it's libraries. It's water treatment plants, schools, toll roads, airports, and power plants. It's Amtrak. There are revolving doors of corrupt politicians, big banks, and rating agencies. There are conflicts of interest. It's bipartisan.


    • Want to Solve All Your Problems, Rupert Murdoch? Become a Banker.
      Rupert Murdoch's got problems. His employees are being arrested, he's losing his latest acquisition, and he's just been called to testify before Parliament. But there's an easy way for Mr. Murdoch to protect himself from these inquiries and save his company at the same time: Turn the News Corporation into a Wall Street bank. There won't be any prosecutions, and the government will even sweeten the deal with billions of dollars in easy money. And if Murdoch follows the trail blazed by bankers like Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, soon they'll be begging him to acquire more companies.

      Murdoch and Dimon. One runs an organization that, as we now know, broke the law so many times it could be called a criminal syndicate. And the other is Rupert Murdoch. Yet Murdoch's fighting for his corporation's future while Dimon's name is being floated as a possible Treasury Secretary. Murdoch's losing his chance to expand market share, while our government helped Dimon's bank become more too-big-to-fail than ever by grabbing up Morgan Stanley.

      Now that's juice. Murdoch's been a power broker on three continents and his Fox empire has reshaped this country's political landscape, but Dimon's taken the power game to a whole 'nother level.




  • Intellectual Monopolies





Recent Techrights' Posts

SLAPP Censorship - Part 83 Out of 200: Religion is Still Alive, But for Many This Religion is Monetary (Greed, Monopolies, Corporate Power)
If all you keep boasting about is being able to afford a hotel room and some domestic flight, then maybe you have no real accomplishments and are more like a "Facebook serf" with a credit card
Web Browsers Are for Rendering Web Page, They Shouldn't Become PDF Editors
Linus Torvalds is quickly learning and speaking about this
 
GAFAM is Connected to Misogyny, Almost All Founders Divorced
They're not good people, even if they pay the media to pretend otherwise
Oracle Seems to Have Popularised Overnight Layoffs, Now GAFAM Does the Same
layoff emails at 4 a.m. local time
A Lot of Fake News About Microsoft's LinkedIn Today, Some Comes From Slopfarms, Some Relies on Those Slopfarms
As usual, slopfarms make the Web a huge pile of garbage
IBM's Kyndryl is Circling Down the Drain, Say Kyndryl Insiders
"IBM Dinosaurs who were recycled and catapulted into the orange trash heap by IBM"
A Lot of Coverage Adding Hype Factor to Slop Bug Reports... is Made by LLM Slop
Local Privilege Escalation [...] the slop motivates some actual people to keep writing about it
Links 20/05/2026: Mass Layoffs at NPR (Bought by the Ballmers and Bill Epsteingate), Starbucks Korea CEO Fired Over ‘Tank Day’ Ad
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Gemini Links 20/05/2026: Advantage of CD Collections, Geminaut's View of Nostr, and SSL / TLS Certificates
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IBM is Becoming a Pile of Expired Patents and Abandoned Buildings, Assets of Little Actual Value
Having laid off a ton of people, borrowed lots of money to fake growth (by acquisition), and sent some jobs to low-paid regions where innovation isn't done
Links 20/05/2026: Looting of Americans for "White Grievance Reparations Fund"; "Mark Zuckerberg Used Shell Companies to Bully Native Hawaiians"
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SLAPP Censorship - Part 82 Out of 200: British Government Intervenes in the SLAPPs by Brett Wilson LLP
At this stage our matters are dealt with by a layer below that of the Prime Minister (adjacent to it)
LinkedIn Communications Reveal That LinkedIn - Like GitHub - Will Vanish Inside the Belly of Microsoft
This is definitely going to happen.
In Wall Street, Financial Difficulties Drive Shares Up
Wall Street doesn't work that way
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XXVIII - European Patent Office (EPO) Guidebook Says Report Crimes Committed on EPO Premises. Some Did, But President Campinos Covers up for the Culprits.
The staff has long been on strike and the union (SUEPO) organised an enhanced day of action just two days ago
Gemini Links 20/05/2026: Fall of an Empire, "High Tech is a Social Exercise", and Big Cameras
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 19, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 19, 2026
LinkedIn Layoffs at Microsoft: Probably Well More Than 5% of Staff
In short, it's difficult to believe only 5% are impacted
It's Not Just a Widespread Theory, It's Apparently a Verified Fact: Home Appliances Not Made to Last Long
Washing machine repair man asserts that the machines sold a decade ago could maybe last a decade; now they last barely 5 years.
Torvalds Capitulated on Rust and Slop, Now He's Paying the Price
they are pushing Microsoft and slop for grifters and scammers
Whistleblowers Needed: We Are Seeing Many Layoffs in Red Hat (Not Just in China), We Want to Know More
Last week we learned about some people who said they had left Red Hat or are leaving Red Hat
Links 19/05/2026: More Obituaries for Peter G. Neumann, Taiwan Abandoned by Cheeto House for Don's Personal Gain
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Links 19/05/2026: Online 'Storage' (Surveillance) Accounts Lower Thresholds (Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos), Slop Debacles Expand (False Promises Made to Staff Regarding Compensation)
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SLAPP Censorship - Part 81 Out of 200: SLAPP Censorship Does Not Work If Your Sole Strategy is Revenge (and You Attack the Family)
Both yours and others'
Techrights at 20 (Soon)
It does not seek popularity or affirmation from "Establishment" outlets
We Pay More for Less, for Things That Last Less Time and Are Almost Impossible to Repair
Ever noticed how "modern" or "smart" TVs come with dumber and dumber (worse) controllers?
Vista 11 Turns 5 in a Couple of Months. Not Many People Use It.
It is the only supported version of Windows; many people move elsewhere
Head of GitHub Recently Left, Microsoft Need No Longer Report Mass Layoffs There (User Activity is Declining)
We've long said that LinkedIn and GitHub, which Microsoft bought, would likely end up like Skype
The Slop Bubble is Already Bursting
Slop is not desirable and the general public is growingly impatient, seeing that slop has improved nothing for them
Gemini Links 19/05/2026: Reliable Old Tech, Collection of Essays
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The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XXVII - European Patent Office (EPO) Became a "Toxic Work Environment" When Cocaine Addicts Put in Charge
They are putting at risk colleagues by abusing them
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 18, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, May 18, 2026
Links 18/05/2026: Slop-induced Shortages, Solicitors Regulation Authority Says It's Unable to Deal With Complaints Load (So Regulation Does Not Really Exist)
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Gemini Links 18/05/2026: Ghost Essay and World Wide Web Considered Broken
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Cooperation and Collaboration, on a More Personal Level
Rianne, to me, isn't just a wife; she is also my best friend
IBM Has Payroll Problems (Just Like Microsoft)
It's a good thing that many nations around the world are, accordingly if not proactively, divesting from GAFAM
Links 18/05/2026: 25 Years of OLDaily and Dangers of "Living With Too Much Tech"
Links for the day
Trips to London
London isn't a bad place, but it's a long journey and we'd rather stay in Manchester and write about technology
SLAPP Censorship - Part 80 Out of 200: Having Run Out of Time to Meet a Judge's Deadline, Microsoft's Graveley Had Garrett's Lawyers Argued My ~190-Page Defence and CounterClaim (DCC) Was Unclear About My Position
Nothing could be further from the truth
Working in the Shell (and Fish)
Yesterday we spent about 5 hours on the shells and fish
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XXVI - Campinos Has Put Unfit-for-Employment Drug Addicts in Charge of the European Patent Office (EPO)
How many months has Campinos got left before the delegates show him the door?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 17, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, May 17, 2026
Gemini Links 18/05/2026: Poetry, Sauna, and GNU Taler
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