GNU News: What's New in GNU
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-19 19:50:29 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-19 19:50:29 UTC
Software Freedom
-
Tonight, Dr. Richard Stallman is presenting a talk titled A Free Digital Society. Dr. Stallman will address the many threats to freedom in our digital society. He'll focus on issues of digital surveillance that undermine the foundations of democracy, including massive surveillance, censorship, digital handcuffs, non-free software that controls users, and the ‘War on Sharing’.
-
In September 1983, the GNU Project was born. GNU was to be a new kind of operating system: the first one with an explicit ethical goal.
Perhaps a little background is needed. GNU stands for “GNU’s Not Unix.” Unix was an operating system (OS) that was in common use at the time, and the recursive acronym is a bit of programmers’ humour. The project emerged from the hacker culture at MIT, which had collapsed at the end of the 1970s when a technology company hired all but a few of the programmers.
Last week, I was writing about MediaGoblin when I was struck by a sudden realization: the project was not about code for its own sake. Instead it was about the sort of vision that seems to be disappearing recently from free and open source software (FOSS).
What makes MediaGoblin stand out is not just the idea of an all-in-one file-sharer, as convenient as that might be. Rather, the code is an explicit critique of centralized web services like Instagram, which require users to communicate through a single web site rather than directly with each other. As events of the past few years have proved, such centralization threatens privacy and makes surveillance all too easy.
FSF Internal
-
The Free Software Foundation, a Boston-based 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to protect freedoms critical to the computer-using public, seeks a Boston-based individual to be its full-time Web Developer.
The theme of "Free Software, Free Society" will be explored at the LibrePlanet 2014 conference, to be held in Cambridge, MA at the Stata Center at MIT on March 22 and 23, 2014, by the Free Software Foundation in collaboration with MIT's Student Information Processing Board.
GNU GPL
In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Roman Telezhinsky, the lead developer of Valentina, a free software pattern making program, which is licensed under the GNU GPL version 3 (or any later version).
The Free Software Foundation will be providing a half-day legal seminar titled "GPL Enforcement and Legal Ethics", taking place on Monday, March 24 at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. Anyone can register to attend the seminar, though it is aimed particularly at practicing lawyers and law students. For practicing lawyers in the US, continuing legal education (CLE) credits are expected to be available for many states.
Popular GNU Programs
-
The GNU Guix package manager / distribution system is still active in development and the developers have planned a road-map to reaching version 1.0.
-
As some other good news for GNU Hurd, around 79% of the Debian archive is now building for GNU Hurd, including the Xfce desktop and Firefox web-browser. Future work planned for this GNU project is Xen PVH support, working x86_64 support, language bindings for translators, read-ahead, HDD/Sound/USB DDE support, and having a full GNU system with Hurd.
-
That would be the oddly-named GIMP (acronym for: GNU Image Manipulation Program), an open source, high-end image editing and creation alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop and its now open-ended, monthly wallet-siphoning distribution mode for tasks like photo retouching, image editing and composition, and image authoring.
-
The split was the result of GIMP’s concern over policies at SourceForge, primarily SourceForge’s use of DevShare, an installer for Windows that bundles third party software offers with FOSS downloads. In addition, the GIMP folks had reservations about potentially deceptive “download here” buttons on ads being served by the likes of Google’s AdSense.
Out this Sunday is a major update to GNU ease.js, which relicenses this JavaScript framework to the GPLv3 and has several other changes. GNU ease.js helps the Free Software Foundation's case for the "importance of free JavaScript" on the web.
Compilers
-
For any students looking to get involved with this year's Google Summer of Code, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) has several interesting projects that are looking to be tackled.
While GCC 4.9 is running behind schedule compared to where GCC 4.8 was at this time last year, open-source developers banding together still might get out the GNU Compiler Collection 4.9 release in early April with its many new compiler features.
-
Samsung is still working towards bringing OpenACC support to GCC. We've seen Samsung developers working on OpenACC for GCC over the past several months -- along with other OpenACC initiatives out of CodeSourcery, etc -- and now there's some new OpenACC GCC Fortran patches.
-
This testing is quite simple and straightforward as it's intended to just complement the AMD A10-7850K compiler benchmarks of the previous days. The processor being used this time around was the Intel Core i5 4670 that is a true quad-core CPU with a 3.4GHz base frequency and 3.8GHz Turbo Frequency. Being a Haswell CPU, it supports SSE 4.2, AVX 2.0, and all of the other latest-generation Intel extensions.
-
Renato Golin of Linaro volleyed an interesting message to the GCC mailing list on Friday about "LLVM collaboration?" While controversial, he suggested LLVM and GCC developers begin collaborating due to an "unnecessary fence" between the competing compilers and decisions that need to be shared. He acknowledges while there's licensing differences (GPL vs. UIUC / BSD) there's differences between the compilers and their stacks that really shouldn't exist as it hinders the users and developers.
-
Most people know I'm a fan of RMS' writing about Free Software and I agree with most (but not all) of his beliefs about software freedom politics and strategy. I was delighted to read RMS' post about LLVM on the GCC mailing list on Friday. It's clear and concise, and, as usual, I agree with most (but not all) of it, and I encourage people to read it. Meanwhile, upon reading comments on LWN on this post, I felt the need to add a few points to the discussion.
-
Intel's Beignet open-source OpenCL implementation for their Linux graphics driver now switches to LLVM/Clang 3.5 as its preferred version.
Hardware
-
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the TAZ 3, the fifth model in the LulzBot line of 3D printers by Aleph Objects, Inc. The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy.
-
Lenovo's X230 is an "ultraportable business laptop" with 12.5-inch display, 2.96lb weight, and other modern features while boasting an Intel Core i5 series processor.
Privacy
-
As consumers living in a post-Edward Snowden world, we should remain aware of what cryptography applications are out there, and how we can utilize them to keep our information (and thus, ourselves) safer. This article is intended to discuss some of the more practical usages of cryptography in modern computing, including PGP/GPG encryption, encrypted chat programs such as Cryptocat, the anonymous Tor browser, and will touch on a major buzz item of 2013, Bitcoin.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- A Week After a Worldwide Windows Outage Microsoft is 'Bricking' Windows All On Its Own, Cannot Blame Others Anymore
- A look back at a week of lousy press coverage, Microsoft deceit, and lessons to be learned
-
- Links 26/07/2024: Tesco Cutbacks and Fake Patent Courts
- Links for the day
- Links 26/07/2024: Grimy Residue of the 'AI' Bubble and Tensions Around Alaska
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 26/07/2024: More Computers and Tilde Hosting
- Links for the day
- Links 26/07/2024: "AI" Hype Debunked and Elon Musk's "X" Already Spreads Political Disinformation
- Links for the day
- "Why you boss is insatiably horny for firing you and replacing you with software."
- Ask McDonalds how this "AI" nonsense with IBM worked out for them
- No Olympics
- We really need to focus on real news
- Nobody Holds the GNOME Foundation Accountable (Not Even IRS), It's Governed by Lawyers, Not Geeks, and Headed by a Shaman Crank
- GNOME is a deeply oppressive institutions that eats its own
- [Meme] The 'Modern' Web and 'Linux' Foundation Reinforcing Monopolies and Cementing centralisation
- They don't care about the users and issuing a few bytes with random characters costs them next to nothing. It gives them control over billions of human beings.
- 'Boiling the Frog' or How Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is Being Abandoned at Short Notice by Let's Encrypt
- This isn't a lack of foresight but planned obsolescence
- When the LLM Bubble Implodes Completely Microsoft Will be 'Finished'
- Excuses like, "it's not ready yet" or "we'll fix it" won't pass muster
- "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs"
- The lesson of this story is, if you do evil things, bad things will come your way. So don't do evil things.
- When Wikileaks Was Still Primarily a Wiki
- less than 14 years ago the international media based its war journalism on what Wikileaks had published
- The Free Software Foundation Speaks Out Against Microsoft
- the problem is bigger than Microsoft and in the long run - seeing Microsoft's demise - we'll need to emphasise Software Freedom
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 25, 2024
- IRC logs for Thursday, July 25, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Links 26/07/2024: E-mail on OpenBSD and Emacs Fun
- Links for the day
- Links 25/07/2024: Talks of Increased Pension Age and Biden Explains Dropping Out
- Links for the day
- Links 25/07/2024: Paul Watson, Kernel Bug, and Taskwarrior
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Microsoft's "Dinobabies" Not Amused
- a slur that comes from Microsoft's friends at IBM
- Flashback: Microsoft Enslaves Black People (Modern Slavery) for Profit, or Even for Losses (Still Sinking in Debt Due to LLMs' Failure)
- "Paid Kenyan Workers Less Than $2 Per Hour"
- From Lion to Lamb: Microsoft Fell From 100% to 13% in Somalia (Lowest Since 2017)
- If even one media outlet told you in 2010 that Microsoft would fall from 100% (of Web requests) to about 1 in 8 Web requests, you'd probably struggle to believe it
- Microsoft Windows Became Rare in Antarctica
- Antarctica's Web stats still near 0% for Windows
- Links 25/07/2024: YouTube's Financial Problem (Even After Mass Layoffs), Journalists Bemoan Bogus YouTube Takedown Demands
- Links for the day
- Gemini Now 70 Capsules Short of 4,000 and Let's Encrypt Sinks Below 100 (Capsules) as Self-Signed Leaps to 91%
- The "gopher with encryption" protocol is getting more widely used and more independent from GAFAM
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 24, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, July 24, 2024
- Techrights Statement on YouTube
- YouTube is a dying platform
- [Video] Julian Assange on the Right to Know
- Publishing facts is spun as "espionage" by the US government and "treason" by the Russian government, to give two notable examples
- Links 25/07/2024: Tesla's 45% Profit Drop, Humble Games Employees All Laid Off
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 25/07/2024: Losing Grip and collapseOS
- Links for the day
- LWN (Earlier This Week) is GAFAM Openwashing Amplified
- Such propaganda and openwashing make one wonder...
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) Blog: Microsoft Operatives Promoting Proprietary Software for Microsoft
- This is corruption
- Libre-SOC Insiders Explain How Libre-SOC and Funding for Libre-SOC (From NLNet) Got 'Hijacked' or Seized
- One worked alongside my colleagues and I in 2011
- Why We're Revealing the Ugly Story of What Happened at Libre-SOC
- Aside from the fact that some details are public already
- Removing the Lid Off of 'Cancel Culture' (in Tech) and Shutting It Down by Illuminating the Tactics and Key Perpetrators
- Corporate militants disguised as "good manners"
- FSF, Which Pioneered GNU/Linux Development, Needs 32 More New Members in 2.5 Days
- To meet the goal of a roughly month-long campaign
- Lupa Statistics, Based on Crawling Geminispace, Will Soon Exceed Scope of 4,000 Capsules
- Capsules or unique capsules or online capsules are in the thousands and growing
- Links 24/07/2024: Many New Attacks on Journalists, "Private Companies Own The Law"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 24/07/2024: Face à Gaïa, Emacs Timers for Weekly Event, Chromebook Survives Water Torture
- Links for the day
- Why Virtually All the Wikileaks Copycats, Forks, and Rivals Basically Perished
- Cryptome is like the "grandpa" of them all
- A Total Lack of Transparency: Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) Fails to Explain Why Over 60% of Users Are Gone (Since a Week Ago)
- IRC giants have fallen
- In the United Kingdom Google Search Rises to All-Time High, Microsoft Fell Nearly 1.5% Since the LLM Hype Began
- Microsoft is going to need actual products or it will gradually vanish from the market
- Trying to Put Out the Fire at Microsoft
- Microsoft is drowning in debt while laying off loads of staff, hoping it can turn things around
- GNU/Linux Growing at Vista 11's Expense
- it's tempting to deduce many people who got PCs with Vista 11 preinstalled are deleting it, only to replace it with GNU/Linux
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 23, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, July 23, 2024