Links: Apache Software Foundation Board Members, Mozilla Bug Bounty, Governments Approach Free Software
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-07-21 23:03:54 UTC
- Modified: 2010-07-21 23:03:54 UTC
Summary: Gathering of some Free software and Open Source news
We run down the 10 best open source alternatives to the business software we use every day.
Running a business can be costly at the best of times, so we’ve delved into the open source world and plucked out some great alternatives to those heavyweight proprietary applications that we all know and need.
These applications could prove viable solutions to real business needs and could save you and your organisation money in the process. What’s more, if you’re just starting out these pieces of software could have your business up and running (and earning) a site quicker, not to mention keeping you in the black for longer, which is no mean feat in 2010.
The 2010 New Zealand Open Source Awards are now open for nominations at http://www.nzosa.org.nz/.
This year's Awards will focus particularly on achievements from over the past two years.
"There were so many strong nominations for the 2008 event," said panel chair Don Christie, "that we are keen to hear back from projects that have moved forward in the last years, as well as new initiatives using free and open source solutions."
In the field of graphic arts, vector clip art is associated with pre-made images used to represent whatever medium. It is comprised completely of illustrations made using computer software, and it does not contain stock photography.
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is pleased to announce that Shane Curcuru, Doug Cutting, Bertrand Delacretaz, Roy T. Fielding, Jim Jagielski, Sam Ruby, Noirin Shirley, Greg Stein, and Henri Yandell have been elected to serve on the ASF Board of Directors.
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Mozilla
OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE HOUSE Mozilla has upped the bounty it offers to anyone that discovers a bug in its software.
In a blog post Mozilla said that the evolving threat landscape had lead it to raise its reward to $3,000 in order to "better support constructive security research".
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Education
For K-12 IT directors, the major appeal of open source software (OSS) generally focuses on savings in licensing fees and access to software that would not otherwise be affordable. Many also are finding that OSS simply is the best solution for their school districts--even compared to commercial versions.
IT directors with OSS experience largely have been opportunistic about how they got started. In a series of interviews conducted for THE Journal, three IT directors shared their experiences--the hows and the whys--launching OSS in their districts.
They have very different stories, but have all learned that the transition to an open source "shop" takes time.
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BSD
The FreeBSD Security Team have identified a little bug in FreeBSD where a lost mbuf flag can result in data loss.
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Government
The government's decision not to renew an agreement with Microsoft for up to 800,000 NHS desktops could be an opportunity for open source suppliers to prove their worth.
According to an article on IT channel website Microscope.co.uk, the government did not feel the deal, known as an enterprise agreement, which aims to give lower prices in return for group buying was not value for money. It prefers individual NHS Trusts to buy what they want, rather than being forced to be part of an enterprise wide deal.
The European Commission is planning to spend 3.344 million Euro until 2016 to continue the services provided by its projects - such as OSOR.eu and SEMIC.eu - on open source and on electronic data exchange.
The EC published the budget details last week Thursday for its e-Government project. Apart from the 3.344 million Euro planned for the new platform to provide collaborative services for current Semic.eu and OSOR.eu users, another 8.8 million Euro are foreseen to provide support for existing and future communities around eGovernment in general, including the growing Open Source community on OSOR.eu and the community around interoperablity assets on Semic.eu.
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Openness/Sharing
Why should the free and open source software community regard their work as a commons? For people focused on building a specific piece of software, the need to label it a “commons” may seem gratuitous. What’s the value? But there are some good reasons for understanding free/open source software as a commons, as I explain in a recent essay published by the FLOSS Roadmap project.
It's hard to predict how an open source hardware revolution could change consumer electronics. There are very few ideas that stem from complete air -- nearly every great new thing has come from modifying something that came before.
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Programming
Adobe has announced that its partnering with Sourceforge to expand its open-source offerings and have more flexibility with the related programs. Basically, all of Adobe’s open-source and standards efforts will be hosted and managed on Sourceforge through the site’s new developer platform. Adobe is actually the first customer of the newly launched platform.
The US State Department has thrown its weight behind an initiative to promote software development for the good of East African residents.
The Apps 4 Africa contest was launched earlier this month and aims to encourage developers to produce software that will improve the quality of life for residents of this region.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software
- Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
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- Links 27/09/2023: 3G Phase-Out, Monopolies, and Exit of Rupert Murdoch
- Links for the day
- IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”
- Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
- Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More
- Links for the day
- Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards
- This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
- Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family
- Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
- Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware
- They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
- Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up)
- There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
- 10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
- There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
- About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
- This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
- Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
- Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
- Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
- There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
- The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
- We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
- Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
- There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
- An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
- We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
- First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site
- We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
- Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
- some remaining links for today
- Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
- The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
- SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
- SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
- IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
- It's not about the clients, it's about money
- Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
- We've already begun the migration to static
- Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
- Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
- Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
- Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
- Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
- They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
- Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
- Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
- Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
- We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
- GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
- Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
- Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
- Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
- Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
- the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
- United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
- In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
- Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
- Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
- GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
- Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
