Free/Open Source Software News: More Advocacy, Liberation, and Free Software on the Web
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-06 13:37:30 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-06 13:37:30 UTC
Advocacy
The APC Chris Nicol FLOSS Prize recognises initiatives that are making it easy for people to start using free/libre and open source software (FLOSS). The prize will be awarded to a person or group doing extraordinary work to make FLOSS accessible to ordinary computer users.
Imagine a world with fewer queues in banking and retail, and more self-service options. Imagine no longer relying on one cubical or terminal for service. Sounds unreal? This world is now a possibility in South Africa thanks to the partnership between LSD and Cashware.
Essentially, an open-source software or OSS is a kind of computer software which has its source code made available and licensed by virtue of such a license agreement which authorizes the copyright holder to study, modify and distribute the software to anyone, without any further charges and for any purpose whatsoever.
Open-sourcing
As part of the ROS team the engineers at Willow Garage wanted a low price point entry available for new programmers. The TurtleBot's SDK contains a collection of programs that range from basic to advanced. Instructions show how to set up the bot, operate with a keyboard, operate with a joystick, and fully utilize the Kinect camera data. There's also a cleverly titled section about maintenance called TurtleBot Care and Feeding.
Cisco may be a multi-billion entity that was built around a proprietary operating system, but if recent moves are any indication, a wave of open interoperability has been steadily reshaping how Cisco is bringing next-generation IT infrastructure to market.
A few months ago we wrote about Linksys Reviving The WRT54G Router In 802.11AC Form. Belkin, which owns Linksys, has begun releasing code for this new router -- the WRT1900AC -- but with this early code is still some glaring problems.
Misc.
XBMC, an open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media that is available for multiple platforms, has just reached version 13.0 Beta 3 and is now available for testing.
Events
Apache and Nginx
Two of the world's most widely deployed web servers have both recently been updated to fix security vulnerabilities.
With so many Apache Hadoop distributions on the market, what sets them apart? MapR is hoping that bringing feature-rich open source searching to its Big Data platform via integration with Elasticsearch will help draw users by making Big Data analytics and business intelligence faster and more comprehensive.
Mozilla
Mozilla and the Rust community are pleased to announce version 0.10 of the Rust compiler and tools. Rust is a systems programming language with a focus on safety, performance and concurrency.
If you've ever done any web development work, you are probably intimately familiar with the fact that what you build on the web may show up fine in one browser, yet be completely broken in another. It used to be that this problem simply meant testing sites and pages across popular desktop browsers, but in the age of mobile technology, you now have to test your creations across mobile devices, too.
While Mozilla has mostly been in the headlines this week for news related to contributions made by its new CEO Brendan Eich, another piece of meaningful news regarding the company is largely being ignored: Google Chrome has moved past Firefox to take second place in desktop browser market share, according to web traffic stats from Net Applications. In March, Chrome grabbed 17.5 percent of desktop brower traffic, while Firefox sat in third place with 17.2 percent. This is a first for Chrome, according to Net Applications' data, and is possibly driven by Google's extensive advertising for Chrome and Mozilla's new focus on Firefox OS and mobile technology.
The latest Mozilla Firefox nightly builds have begun enabling the generational garbage collector to better compete with Google's Chrome on performance grounds.
In an exciting collaboration with Mozilla and Google, Intel is bringing SIMD to JavaScript. This makes it possible to develop new classes of compute-intensive applications such as games and media processing—all in JavaScript—without the need to rely on any native plugins or non-portable native code. SIMD.JS can run anywhere JavaScript runs. It will, however, run a lot faster and more power efficiently on the platforms that support SIMD. This includes both the client platforms (browsers and hybrid mobile HTML5 apps) as well as servers that run JavaScript, for example through the Node.js V8 engine.
Thimble is actually a subset of Mozilla’s Webmaker project, which is aimed at teaching all kinds of web literacy and development skills.
Many, many people have noticed that if we had a way to reliably record program execution and replay it later, with the ability to debug the replay, we could largely tame the nondeterminism problem. This would also allow us to deliberately introduce nondeterminism so tests can explore more of the possible execution space, without impacting debuggability. Many record and replay systems have been built in pursuit of this vision. (I built one myself.) For various reasons these systems have not seen wide adoption. So, a few years ago we at Mozilla started a project to create a new record-and-replay tool that would overcome the obstacles blocking adoption. We call this tool rr.
We support the Mozilla community and the vital work they've done—and must keep doing—for the open Internet. EFF has been following the discussions around the choice of Brendan Eich as Mozilla’s CEO, including the announcement that he is stepping down.
As partners to Mozilla in campaigns that have included the fight against SOPA/PIPA, the StopWatching.US Coalition against mass surveillance, the effort to Encrypt the Web, the battle to prevent non-consensual online tracking, and ongoing work to make Firefox a more secure browser, we appreciate the frank and honest discussion that the community has undergone over this issue and respect the openness of the process. In that respect, as in many others, the difference between a closed and an open community is profound.
McAvoy clearly appreciates his ability to speak his mind without fear of retribution. But he also demands the termination of employment of a person that he disagrees with.
That sounds like hypocrisy, and intolerance, to me.
The worst of what I’m seeing is this – people who have steadfastly supported gay rights (and minority rights in general) but don’t like seeing how Eich is being treated are being called bigots and worse by their colleagues.
Chrome(ium)
Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop app beta is released for invite-only. Chrome Remote Desktop allows you to set up your computer for secure remote access. This includes setting up your computer so that you can access it later from another machine; or you can also use the app to let a friend remotely access your computer temporarily, perfect for times when you need help solving a computer problem.
Last April we introduced Blink as the new rendering engine for Chromium. Since then, the project has grown to include over 200 active contributors, and code complexity has been reduced significantly. We’ve also made encouraging progress on our top priority for 2014: mobile web performance.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Cannot Speak About IBM Wrongdoing or Jobs Being Sent Overseas (Lower Salaries)
- IBM has long attacked the media, the whistleblowers, and even online forums
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: The CIA-Funded Centre-Left in Portugal
- In the political turmoil which followed the fall of the old regime, the communists seemed to be acquiring a dominant position and there was a very real risk that Portugal could end up aligned with the Eastern Bloc if they were not stopped
- Yesterday Afternoon The Register MS Published a Fake Article That Says "AI" 31 Times Because It Got Paid to Do This
- What will happen when all those loans for slop (Ponzi scheme) stop and companies' marketing budgets - which include media bribes for hype campaigns - are no more?
- Extraordinary General Meeting of Staff Union of the European Patent Office Ahead of Intensifying Strikes
- We will, in the meantime, run a series about EPO corruption, which is now connected to corruption in Portugal and to corruption inside the EU
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: The Brotherhood of São Bento
- The Palácio São Bento – or São Bento Palace – is the seat of the Portuguese National Assembly in Lisbon
-
- Links 09/06/2026: "Smartphones Broke Dating" and "EU Open Source Strategy"
- Links for the day
- This Coming Friday
- Richard Stallman (RMS)
- Several Slopfarms That Target "Linux" Seem to Have Died
- Or perished severely
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 08, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, June 08, 2026
- Gemini Links 09/06/2026: Tanana River, Cassette Beasts, and Emacs
- Links for the day
- IBM's Quantum Bubble Already Deflating
- Shares down over $55 in a few days
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 101 Out of 200: Women Come to Realise They Don't Wish to Participate in Attacking Vulnerable Women
- It relates to another topic that we shall be covering in the coming weeks
- Links 08/06/2026: Proprietary Loaded With Security Holes, Armenia Defies Russia
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 08/06/2026: NetHack 5.0.0 and Slop as Cannibalism
- Links for the day
- Links 08/06/2026: "Rising Emissions, Depleting Water" Due to the Pyramid Scheme of Slop; "Canada Needs to Rebuild Public Telecoms"
- Links for the day
- Brett Wilson LLP Reported to Police for Trying to Throw Large Parcel Into Our Home
- This morning the campaign of intimidation...
- GAFAM Bots Are Not "Good Bots"
- There's nothing "Good" about Google
- Links 08/06/2026: Criticism of Microsoft Trying to Criminalise Pointing Out Bug Doors, TikTok Now "Climate-Denying Social Media App"
- Links for the day
- Slop Has no ROI, an Economy Built on False Assumptions of Slop is Doomed
- we're all going to suffer from this Ponzi scheme
- The Cyber Show Has "Exciting Guests Coming" and a Gemini Capsule
- "Site development is ongoing but now settling into a more stable form"
- GNU/Linux Measured at 10% in Liechtenstein This Month
- it seems like statCounter wrongly classified some GNU/Linux clients as Mac clients and is now issuing a correction
- Communicating With Freedom - Part III - Quibble Envisioned as a New and Easily Accessible Communications Platform Based on LibreJS
- the FSF really needs to become more active if not proactive in promoting those sorts of things
- Clownflare Says Majority of Web Traffic is Now Bots, But the Net is Another Story
- Bots are to Clownflare what lawsuits are to lawyers
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 07, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, June 07, 2026
- The Strikes at the European Patent Office Planned to Carry on for the Entire Year, Maybe Future Years as Well
- There's a cautionary tale somewhere
- Number of Patent Grants Has Plunged 23% Amid Strikes at the European Patent Office, Today There Are More Strikes (Strike Participation at Over 3,000, More Than Doubled Since Winter)
- There is a growing crisis at the European Patent Office
- E.E.E. Still Ongoing, the War on Copyleft/GPL Enables That
- It also imperils security.
- Gemini Links 07/06/2026: Lynx in the 'Modern' Web and 'Overcooked' (Plagiarised by LLM) Code
- Links for the day
- Links 07/06/2026: Java Needs Seawall, Egypt Blasted for Arbitrary Detention of Activists
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 100 Out of 200: Interlude and Outline of the First Half, 3+ Months That Got Us Death Threats Connected to Brett Wilson LLP (and Cyber Attacks That Are Difficult to Attribute)
- This week we plan to have a good time
- Banning Things Versus Teaching People the Reason/s to Shun/Boycott Those Things
- Prohibition has its limits
- Links 07/06/2026: NASA's Mars Maven Declared Dead, Telegram Founder Pavel Durov Bemoans Russia's Crackdown
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 06, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, June 06, 2026
- Gemini Links 07/06/2026: How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and "Six Days of Play"
- Links for the day