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Links 22/8/2012: Linux 3.4 Longterm, PowerTOP 2.1 is Out





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source



  • Walt Disney’s Real Commitment To Open Source


  • Pixar software goes open source
    The mighty animation studio has decided to share its Subd evaluation code as used on its latest feature Brave. Download the software yourself for free!


  • The 2012 Google Summer of Code fruits!
    More than two months ago, we took a look on the 29 new things that this Google summer of code would bring to the Gnome desktop environment and its various components.

    Today it is the “pencils down” for everyone as we finally reached the end of this magnificent program. Interns and mentors have done a great job providing new exciting things to the Gnome users benefit.


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla: IonMonkey Firefox Faster Than Chrome
        More than two years ago, Mozilla promised that it would catch up with Google’s Chrome performance in JavaScript. Today, JavaScript is not as much as a problem anymore as it was in 2010, but Mozilla has not forgotten its promise. IonMonkey is breathing down Chrome’s neck.






  • SaaS



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • New Program to Squash Key Bugs in LibreOffice
      If you're like many of us here at OStatic, you've probably been using the LibreOffice suite of applications for some time now. And, without a doubt, this suite has become very impressive both in terms of its overall capabilities and in terms of the speed with which problems are addressed. New releases of the suite clean up lots of bugs, with community support behind the effort. But there is a new and aggressive program that has just been introduced to crack down further on bugs in LibreOffice. Dubbed HardHacks, it should make the suite much better--and do so quickly.


    • Oracle Closing MySQL?
      Seems Oracle is on its way to close sourcing the widely used relational database management system – MySQL. It was acquired by Oracle from Sun Microsystems in 2010 and is used in millions of websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia and even Google.


    • Vagrant distances itself from Virtualbox
      Vagrant, the open source developer environment generation tool, is being re-engineered to no longer be dependent on VirtualBox, Oracle's open source desktop virtualisation platform. Vagrant allows the creation of "boxes" which contain all the assets needed to provision a fresh virtual machine. With a single command, Vagrant can create a machine from a box and bring it up. Vagrant was designed for developers who need to bring up multiple virtual machines, repeatably and easily in a testing environment. Vagrant 1.0 appeared in March this year.


    • Oracle secrecy threatens open MySQL development
      Oracle has been accused of hiding MySQL test cases and obfuscating revision history by MariaDB VP Sergei Golubchik. In a blog post entitled "Disappearing test cases or did another part of MySQL become closed source", Golubchik says they noticed that, according to the release notes, a number of bugs had been fixed in the most recent MySQL 5.5.27 release, but there were no test cases associated with any of the bug fixes – indeed, there are no tests associated with bug 61579 or 60926. When he asked on the MySQL internals mailing list, he was unable to get a response from Oracle as to whether this was new policy or an oversight.


    • LibreOffice team to focus on hard bugs
      In a new initiative, "LibreOffice HardHacks", the LibreOffice developers are being called on to take on the harder bugs in the LibreOffice code. Bjoern Michaelsen announced the programme, which is complementary to an earlier successful project "LibreOffice Easy Hacks", which set out to get the "low hanging fruit" bugs, the ones that would be easy to resolve and would bring new developers on board.




  • Funding



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Project Releases



  • Public Services/Government

    • Yet Another Government Adopting Free Software
      Google’s translation:

      “The municipality of Vieira do Minho definitively adopted productivity software LibreOffice”.


    • Swiss open source awards for canton of Waadt and Supreme Court
      The Swiss canton of Waadt(Vaud) and the country's Supreme Court are among this year's winners of the CH Open Source Awards. The Swiss Open Systems User Group /ch/open announced the awards last week Tuesday.

      The advocacy organisation writes in a statement that the 'Portail eGov du canton de Vaud' was awarded for its involvement in the open source community and its vision on using open source. "The price is to support the Canton of Vaud", ch/open says, hoping it will serve as an incentive for other cantons.

      A special award was given to the Swiss Supreme Court. Ch/open chairman Matthias Günter says the court earned the award for its "pioneering of the use of open source, even as many other public administrations are increasing their use of open source, consciously or not."


    • Government petitioned to "free the code"




  • Openness/Sharing

    • Four insights to selling and marketing open source software
      Without genuinely valuable services for your customer, you have no revenue. I am aware that "value" is an overused word. Having spent many years of my career in marketing, I have been guilty of saying "what's the value proposition?" more than a few times. But now, having been in the driver's seat selling services for open source software applications, I can provide a more specific definition of value, particularly as it applies to application software (in contrast with infrastructure software).


    • Yeastie Boys win gold for open source beer
      New Zealand brewing company Yeastie Boys added a gold medal for design to the growing swag of international gongs they have recently won for their leftfield ales, when they were awarded gold for their open source Digital IPA in the Packaging Class at the Sutton Group Brewers Guild of New Zealand Beer Awards last week.


    • Timberlake: Iceland open-sources its constitution for modern adaptation


    • Open Data

      • Open data done well is a catalyst for change
        In March 2012 I reported in a post entitled “Open by design” a paper by Harlan Yu and David Robinson entitled “The New Ambiguity of Open Government“. A discussion of the paper has now appeared on the World Bank blog by Anupama Dokeniya entitled “Opening Government Data. But Why?” [A thank you to Jacques Raybaut at en.europa-eu-audience for the heads-up]. This is also even more relevant given the UK Public Accounts Committee report back so recently which was linked to and commented upon in Transparent e-gov.




    • Open Hardware

      • MakerPlane open source hardware airplanes
        John sez, "MakerPlane is an open source aviation organization which will enable people to build and fly their own safe, high quality, reasonable cost plane using advanced personal manufacturing equipment such as CNC mills and 3D printers. The project will also include open source avionics software to enable state-of-the-art digital flight instruments and display capabilities. Basically we are designing an aircraft that can be built on a CNC mill at home, or at a makerspace which is easy to assemble and quick to build. The plans and instructions will be available for free to anyone that wants them!"






  • Programming





Leftovers

  • Wilt Chamberlain's Family Tries To Block Film About His College Years, Claiming 'Publicity Rights'
    A filmmaker is trying to make a film about basketball great Wilt Chamberlain's college years at Kansas. However, his estate appears to be threatening the filmmaker if he goes ahead, claiming such things as publicity rights over Chamberlain's image...


  • Security



    • Systemd to secure system log information against attacks
      Systemd can now secure log information on system processes stored in its journal, using a procedure known as Forward Secure Sealing (FSS). This prevents attackers who have obtained administrator privileges from clearing traces of their activity from the journal without deleting it in its entirety. A verification key is used to secure the data and, to prevent modification, it has to be stored externally. Instead of writing the key down, users can optionally save it to a smartphone via a QR code.






  • Finance



  • Privacy

    • Deep Web, Deep Privacy
      Tell someone that you know how to go off-radar on the Internet and, as a rule, they won’t believe you. They imagine shadowy intelligence agencies have state-of-the-art technology and can see everything you do. Bkut they would be wrong.

      No doubt they do have amazing technology, but it is perfectly possible to hide yourself on the Internet, to send and receive emails that nobody can intercept or read, to upload and download securely, to visit banned websites, blog anonymously, and do anything you want without being followed, profiled or analysed. Those that know how use the Deep Web.






Recent Techrights' Posts

A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe, by Richard Stallman
"The surveillance imposed on us today is worse than in the Soviet Union. We need laws to stop this data being collected in the first place"
An Update About Soylent News, With Jan Rinok "Back in the Saddle"
Burnout or "near burnout" a possibility when having to curate abuse
Rejecting 'Snoop-Phones' and Turning "Old" Phones (or Tablets) Into Freedom-Respecting Appliances
Paul Fernhout (pdfernhout.net) wrote back to Akira Urushibatathis this past weekend
 
Plagiarism With LLM Slop: Hindustan Times (HT Digital Streams Limited) Has Become a Slop Factory/Hub
What a disgrace
Next Week We Launch Search at Techrights
We're planning to launch it some time next week. Maybe Tuesday, maybe Thursday.
Talk by Richard Stallman Will be Live-streamed in Less Than 10 Hours
Happy hacking
"No Kings" in the Software World (GAFAM Should Not Exist, Either)
"No Kings" is a good slogan. Let's start by ridding ourselves of masters, not only those who reside in DC or visit DC
Every Morning
Bugs/edge cases combined with automation can spell disaster
Insane, Deliberately Dishonest, or Just Another Bigot?
very intellectually-dishonest human being
A Lot of Techrights is Built on Perl
Perl also runs the sister site
The Register MS Selling Slop for Microsoft (Vapourware, Ponzi Scheme, False Claims)
What will be left of The Register MS if it keeps repeating falsehoods and looking to profit from Ponzi schemes?
analytics.usa.gov Says Less Than 14% of Web Requests (to Government Sites) Come From Vista 11
Vista 11 was released more than 4 years ago!
People Who Attempt to Take Down Correct Information Need a Doctor a Day
“Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” ― George Orwell
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 20, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 20, 2025
Vista 11 is Sinking While Microsoft is PIPing (Mass Layoffs But Silent Layoffs)
We're witnessing a shift in platform dominance
Richard Stallman is Having a Good Week Already (Stallman Was Right About 'Clown Computing')
That alone is worth bringing up in his talk
When Prominent GNU/Linux Distros Are Run by Spies
What has Microsoft Canonical become?
More Publishers and Companies Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux", Not "Linux"
It's not to see InstallAware saying GNU/Linux this week
Google News is Now Promoting a Parasitic Slopfarm Called "findarticles.com", Where Plagiarism of "Linux" Articles is Rampant
Does Google even care about the slop epidemic? Google itself is a vendor of slop now (and it calls it "Gemini")
Gemini Links 20/10/2025: Pumpkin Carving, "Hey Hi", and Other Buzzwords
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News Promoting Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
What is the value of Google News if so many results in it are fake 'articles?
Our Uptime This Year Was Better Than AWS (Also a Lot Cheaper)
We never used "the cloud"
Amazon Web Shenanigans
An ongoing, experimental endeavour
Death of Elias Diem: FSFE mailing list archives hidden
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/10/2025: Louvre Museum Reveals Weakness, About 7 Million Protest US Turning Into Oligarchy/Monarchy
Links for the day
They Should Have Listened to Techrights Over a Month Earlier (Xubuntu Site Compromised)
we reported this issue about 40 days earlier and nobody did anything about it
Richard Stallman to Give Another Talk Today in Bavaria (Bavarian Academy of Science)
Tomorrow at 6 PM he speaks in Munich
Apple is the Company of Dictators and Worse
Apple is just another greedy corporation in search of sweatshops and even pedophiles (especially the high-profile ones)
Counting Unhatched Eggs Is Not Counting Chickens
Everything here will persist as normal
Barry Kauler Explains That Puppy Linux and EasyOS Exclude Systemd to Keep Things Simple
Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux is in the community's hands. He now focuses on EasyOS and more.
The "Infinite Bread"
The biblical story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 has software parallels
Half a Year After Brian Fagioli Got Kicked Out of BetaNews for Slop He's Still Doing LLM Slop and Slop Images Targeting 'Linux' (Plagiarising Original Works)
If the Web gets polluted or flooded by slopfarms such as these, and Slashdot then sends traffic so these slopfarms (Slashdot probably doesn't do this intentionally), then real writers with real knowledge of GNU/Linux will lose the spark for publishing
In Many Cases and in Many Different Ways, Technology Became Less Durable and Less Reliable Over Time
The "modern" things are more complex. And complexity is a foe or reliability and repair-ability.
Microsoft's LinkedIn is Losing Money, Traffic, and Hope; Now It Wants to Sell Its Users' Lifeblood (and Data)
Let this be a reminder of what social control media really is about
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 19, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 19, 2025
Campaign of FUD Against Framework Laptops and GNU/Linux (Using Microsoft's Attack on Linux, 'Secure Boot')
Ritual Defamation Cult has turned its attention over to Framework
Microsoft Lunduke: Freedom of Speech Means Spreading What I Have to Say and Banning People I Disagree With
4Chan is one he aims for and he is siccing 4Chan trolls at people he doesn't like
Liberation From 'The Feed'
They rank things based on the editor's choice/ideology (he or she knows the sponsors, hence the masters)
Microsoft's Killing of Vista 10 Seems to Have Resulted in More Articles About GNU/Linux (But Also FUD)
We not only saw a rise in traffic, we also saw a remarkable rise in the number of articles
Today (a Day Before Richard Stallman Talk at TUM) There's a Patent Propaganda Event at TUM
Perhaps an opportunity for Dr. Stallman to rebut this "invention to patent" nonsense/fantasy (conflating monopolies with innovation)
OpenSource or "Open Source" as a Brand is Dying, Let's Get Back to Talking About Software Freedom
Those of us who actually want to reform the industry and put users in control of their systems/devices will recognise that "Open Source" was selling a lie or got-co-opted by liars
19 Years in Numbers: Techrights' Anniversary Countdown and Retrospective
In 2019 we began improving our workflows and, accordingly/predictably, we became a lot more productive
Slop Turns People Off (LLMs Lack Intelligence, They're Just Plagiarism Powerhouses That Fail to Deliver Any Real, Measurable Value)
"More" (or "MOAR") isn't always better
IBM Red Hat Has Re-calibrated or Adjusted to Bubble Economics, False Promises, and Slop/Plagiarism
This won't end well
Fake Numbers, Fake Claims, Fake Economy, and Media Grifters That Prop Up Fraud
Grifters like The Register MS won't be looked upon kindly after the bubble implodes
For Some, the GNU Web Site is Not Accessible This Week
They seem to have gone into some kind of lock-down mode
Richard Stallman Back at the "Rudolf-Diesel" Hörsal "MW 2001" in About 40 Hours
He spoke there before; there's a very high seating capacity there
Symptoms of Upcoming Microsoft Layoffs in XBox
A crashing franchise
Psychiatrist confession: Germanwings crash & Debian toxic culture recognized before suicides
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 19/10/2025: Scentjacking 101, Slop Hype Boosters, and Steam Next Fest
Links for the day
Slopwatch: The Serial Slopper, LinuxSecurity, and Google News
Let's hope slopfarms die as soon as possible
Links 19/10/2025: Cambodia Scam Centres, Slop Hurting Wikipedia Traffic
Links for the day
As Economies Crumble Free as in Beer Will Matter, Not Just Free as in Freedom/Libre (Libertad)
French regions choosing to embrace Software Freedom
25 Years Ago, an Explanation of How Reducing Free Software to 'Apps' Would Interfere With Freedom Goals
there's nothing unreasonable about it
A List of 63 Known Gemini Clients (Software to Browse Geminispace Content With Gemini Protocol)
Not counting browser plugins for Web browsers
Gemini Links 19/10/2025: "Firma Odin Is Transforming" and Bot Attacks While "AFK"
Links for the day
US Government: 6.1% of Site Visitors Use GNU/Linux
GNU/Linux has a considerable share and it is growing
LLM Slop Could Not Rise to Prominence Without Media Complicity and Artificial Hype
Inane garbage disguised as "journalism"
Why the FSF No Longer Recommends Debian, as Explained by Richard Stallman This Month
some weeks ago
All the Latest Half Dozen Articles by Mehedi Hasan (UbuntuPIT) Only Admit at the End That He's Using LLM Slop
Disclosure is OK, but the practice of using slop is not
The 'Modern' Web of Fake Security and Easy Censorship of Whole Domains
Each year it gets worse
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 18, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 18, 2025