Links: PC-BSD 8.1 and Lightspark 0.4.2 Released, Other Free Software/Open Source News
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-07-22 18:55:05 UTC
- Modified: 2010-07-22 19:00:10 UTC
Summary: Today's news about digital freedom and openness
Morevna is an open source anime project made using open source tools like Synfig, Blender, GIMP and Krita. Unlike Project London Movie, Morevna is not only created using free and open source tools, but Morevna anime will also be released and distributed as free content. This project definitely deserves a lot of appreciation.
Whether you just want to balance your checkbook or you need to track the finances of a large global corporation, you can find open source software to do the job. For our list of open source financial tools, we cast a wide net and included applications related to enterprise resource management, point-of-sale and even employee time tracking. Not to mention traditional accounting and financial management tools.
One trend worth noting -- a huge number of the open source tools on this list, particularly the business applications, are now available on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis. For businesses, this model seems to make sense, as it gives them access to support and reduces the need for in-house staff to deploy and monitor applications. It also enables a more mobile workforce and keeps costs low. And of course, this model is also great for open source vendors as it gives them another way to monetize their open source projects.
Without further ado, here are fifty open source applications that might be able to replace the financial software you currently use for your home or business.
If you haven’t run into a situation where you need to rename multiple files in one go, you haven’t been using a computer for long. When the next time comes, turn to KRename. Its simple graphical interface makes renaming files easy for average users, and it offers a powerful template language for advanced users with more complex renaming tasks. Although it was written for the KDE desktop, KRename works under other Linux platforms and even on Windows.
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Web Browsers
Last week we showed Opera 10.60 to be the world's fastest Web browser. That was in the Windows world. But where do Chrome, Firefox, and Opera stand in Linux? Today we find out. Adding the Win 7 results, we'll also learn which OS has the speediest browser.
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Mozilla
Firefox 3.6.7 and Firefox 3.5.11 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.7.
The latest Firefox 4.0 nightly build adds a new download ("Save link as") / upload dialog - in Linux that is, as I didn't try Firefox 4.0 Windows or Mac builds. This may have been added earlier but only now I've noticed it.
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SaaS
There’s a real explosion of cloud platforms and management tools, it seems you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one these days. In the commercial proprietary solutions space you have – CA’s 3Terra AppLogic, Enomaly, Nimbula, RightScale. In open source there are Eucalyptus, Cloud.com, Open Nebula and Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. There are a bunch more that I failed to mention. It makes you wonder do we really need another one? How much different can they be?Rackspace Champion's Open Source Cloud I am not sure but the newest one appears to be rather significant.
NASA is dropping Eucalyptus from its Nebula infrastructure cloud not only because its engineers believe the open source platform can't achieve the sort of scale they require, but also because it isn't entirely open source.
NASA chief technology officer Chris Kemp tells The Reg that as his engineers attempted to contribute additional Eucalyptus code to improve its ability to scale, they were unable to do so because some of the platform's code is open and some isn't. Their attempted contributions conflicted with code that was only available in a partially closed version of platform maintained by Eucalyptus Systems Inc., the commercial outfit run by the project's founders.
In some ways Facebook is still a LAMP site (kind of), but it has had to change and extend its operation to incorporate a lot of other elements and services, and modify the approach to existing ones.
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BSD
The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.1 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE, and KDE 4.4.5
One of the features that sets FreeBSD apart from other open source opeating systems, is its governance structure. FreeBSD is not owned by a company, though many companies use it and contribute code back, but yet is run as if it were a company, with the Core Team taking decisions and steering the Project.
The FreeBSD Foundation funds various projects each year and there are several interesting projects in progress:
* DAHDI (formerly known as Zaptel) FreeBSD driver port--this project will make it possible to use FreeBSD as a base system for software PBX solutions
* resource containers and a simple per-jail resource limits mechanism
* userland dtrace
* BSNMP improvements
* jail-based virtualization
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Project Releases
The Lightspark project has released version 0.4.2 of its free, open source Flash player. According to Lightspark develoepr Alessandro Pignotti, the alternative Flash Player implementation is "designed from the ground up to be efficient on current and (hope fully) future hardware".
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Government
Operating as the Open Information Security Foundation, and working with a number of government-related private companies, a team headed by Mark Jonkman of Emerging Threats and Victor Julien of the Vuurmuur firewall project are offering an intrusion detection and prevention engine with multi-threading automatic protocol detection for a wide variety of protocols.
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Openness/Sharing
It's an ambitious effort to preserve, restore and promote the re-use of traditional skills and inventions from all over the world.
We risk stifling the development of new tools, both commercial and academic, and new knowledge under the weight of a legal regime that was designed to cope with the printing press. At the same time a simple statement that this kind of analysis is fair dealing will provide certainty without damaging the interests of copyright holders or complicating copyright law. These new uses will ultimately bring more traffic, and perhaps more customers, to the primary documents. By taking the simple and easy step of making automated analysis an allowable fair dealing exception everyone wins.
After the election and looking to the post-Becta future, Open Source Schools has been making new plans to ensure that the community is able to respond to the changing educational landscape where the benefits offered by open source are becoming ever more important.
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Open Data
Opening up food and agricultural data requires an information architecture and infrastructure that does not currently exist. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization is a leader in providing easily accessible, highly usable, and surprisingly current data, but right now it is far ahead of the pack in terms of transparency in reporting.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- No, Microsoft Didn't Lay Off So Many People Because of "AI" "Innovation" or "Efficiency" or "Era" or "Revolution" Etc.
- Debunking one very common lie
- What We Do When We Say "GNU/Linux" to People
- It talks about "Linux", "GNU", and what it means to say "GNU/Linux"
- Canonical Will Give You Money Only If You Work for Microsoft!
- Only if you are servicing (being a slave to) proprietary forges that Microsoft and the NSA control while violating the GPL will Canonical give you money
- There Are Also Loads of Microsoft LinkedIn Layoffs Today (Keep Track of the Subsidiaries They Keep Out of Headlines)
- Perhaps lost in the smokescreen
- There Are Bigger Rounds of Microsoft Layoffs Coming, a Cull of 10% Implemented in Waves (the "3%" Figure is Misleading, Face-Saving)
- Last night we said they might do the layoffs in three or at least two waves
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- Links 14/05/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Harms Kids, Russia Refuses to Defuse
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 15/05/2025: Poseur Nerds and Mennonites
- Links for the day
- VS Code Is Not FOSS, And Neither Is the Site "It's FOSS"
- VS Code is proprietary spyware of Microsoft, yet this site keeps promoting it like it's FOSS
- Links 14/05/2025: Facebook And Instagram Risk Nationwide Bans, Microsoft Subsidiaries Have Mass Layoffs Too
- Links for the day
- If Microsoft Staff That Strangles Woman Pays You to Write Lies, It Will Not End Well
- The past couple of years were our most productive ever
- Gemini Links 14/05/2025: "Writing My Story with Inspiration from Notable Lives" and People Start Shovelling Up LLM Slop Onto Geminispace,
- Links for the day
- Microsoft is Very Highly Stressed About Adoption of GNU/Linux at Windows' Expense (on Former "Vista 10" PCs)
- What does this tell us?
- Slopwatch: BetaNoise (BetaNews), LinuxSecurity, and Slopfarms Still Promoted by Google News
- The primary goal is to demonstrate the problem persists
- Links 14/05/2025: Google Agrees to $1.3 Billion Settlement After Spying, China Tariffs Don't Work
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 13, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, May 13, 2025
- Gemini Links 13/05/2025: Apocalyptic Future and More
- Links for the day
- Unless a Third of All Microsoft Layoffs Worldwide Are in Redmond (Washington) Alone, Microsoft Has Just Lied to Everyone Via Jordan Novet in CNBC (i.e. the Usual Any Time There's Mass Layoffs and Novet Weighs in With False Numbers)
- Maybe when Microsoft said 3% it meant ~6,000 or more in the US alone
- McKinsey (McK) is Killing IBM, It's All About Killing This Goose, "National Sales Team 80% on PIP Now" (Preceding Layoffs Without Severance)
- PIPs are not based on performance
- Links 13/05/2025: Microsoft Breaks Windows Very Badly Again, Mass Layoffs Reported (But False Figures, It's a Lot Higher)
- Links for the day
- As Expected, Microsoft Uses Media Operative (Jordan Novet) to Downplay the Scale of Mass Layoffs
- here we go
- 2025 Will be a Big Year For GNU/Linux on Desktops/Laptops
- with an economy like this, people who don't live in rich countries won't turn to Apple
- Signs of Trouble: Microsoft Job Openings for Jobs That Do Not Exist!
- Keeping up appearances?
- "Special Place in Hell" for Women Who Help Violent Microsofters From Another Continent Attack Local Women Who Did Nothing Wrong, They Just Got Bullied and Deserve Sympathy or Compensation
- Nothing says "Brat" like men who attack women, right?
- The Numbers Game: 50,000-60,000 Microsoft Workers Laid Off in 2.5 Years? And Debt Still Tripled Under Nadella.
- under Nadella Microsoft's debt trebled
- The Slow Death of Windows Will Mean the Inevitable Demise of Microsoft
- Once people stop using Windows, it'll be hard for Microsoft to sell anything to them
- Last Week's Public Talk by Richard Stallman Well Attended and Covered in Technical News Sites
- and we're looking at about 60,000 Microsoft layoffs in 3 years
- Gemini Links 13/05/2025: Shopping is an Exasperating Nightmare and Making Phones Minimal
- Links for the day
- 23,000 More Microsoft Layoffs by the End of June If the Estimates Are Correct (In Addition to About 6,000 Layoffs So Far This Year)
- There's no questions about many layoffs happening this month. It got leaked already. The only question is when (and also how many).
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 12, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, May 12, 2025
- Major Microsoft Layoffs This Week (Discussed Online)
- later we can expect a lot of spin, even misinformation
- What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: Missed Deadline
- they helped expose a number of other scandals
- Links 12/05/2025: Measles Rising and Taliban Outlaws Chess in Afghanistan
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 12/05/2025: Advice, Iorist Ethics, and Touchscreens
- Links for the day
- The Finances of GAFAM Aren't as They Seem
- MICROSOFT FINANCIAL PYRAMID revisited
- Links 12/05/2025: US Brain Drain and Reminder That "Microsoft's Lobbying Efforts Eclipsed Enron" (Fraud Coverup)
- Links for the day
- The Enshittification of Royal Mail (Post Office/Postal Services) Continues
- Enshittification is a thing, not only in the digital realm
- Red Hat's Owner is Called "America's Worst Tech Company" (IBM) and Microsoft's Liabilities Grow
- Microsoft has about a quarter of a trillion (yes, trillion with a "T") in liabilities
- If the Gossip is True, Today Microsoft Has "Large M1 Meetings" to Discuss Almost 30,000 More Microsoft Layoffs in 2025
- the claim is that Microsoft is preparing to lay off 10% of its staff
- Microsoft Has a Long and Proven History of Funding Meritless Lawsuits Against Rivals and Critics (It Always Backfires)
- It also looks like the solicitor used by two Microsofters to SLAPP us is being urgently replaced
- Links 12/05/2025: Gardens and Kitchens
- Links for the day
- Links 12/05/2025: Media Being Attacked (New Forms of Attack on the Press), Many Data Breaches
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 11, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, May 11, 2025