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05.21.12

Links 21/5/2012: Linux 3.4 Released, Dream Studio 12.04

Posted in News Roundup at 11:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Introducing PuppetDB: Put Your Data to Work

    PuppetDB is the next-generation open source storage service for Puppet-produced data. Today, this includes catalogs and facts, and will be extended in the near future. The initial release provides a drop-in replacement for both storeconfigs and inventory service.

    We’ve designed PuppetDB to empower Puppet deployments, and built it from the ground up with performance in mind. It’s built on technologies known for their performance, and is highly parallel, making full use of available resources. It also stores all of its data asynchronously, freeing up the master to go compile more catalogs. Beyond that, we’ve devoted copious time to benchmarking and optimizing the performance.

  • GlobaLeaks: The Open Source Whistleblower Software
  • Military Explores Expansion of Open Source Technology
  • Miso Project Offers Open Source Tools for Data Visualization
  • Bangalore India slum kids use open-source software to learn computer skills

    The centre, supported by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), has so far taught 40 students basic GNU/Linux skills along with opensource tools to provide image and graphics software. “We use free software to bring home the idea of equality and freedom. Besides teaching computer skills, we also touch upon the issues of caste and gender discrimination. Also, we emphasise that free software does not mean subsidy for the poor. It’s about freedom from copyright. The focus is on freedom and equality offered by the community software as compared to corporate ware,,” says Balaji Kutty, an IT professional and board member of SFLC who also teaches at the centre.

  • NERC, EPRI Release Open-Source Code To Analyze GICs

    The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) have developed a simulation tool for the electric industry to analyze geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) on their systems.

  • Open Source Spotlight – Yabi: Bringing drag-and-drop to supercomputers

    Supercomputers are powerful tools for scientists. They are also very expensive, so wasted time can mean a lot of wasted resources. But making the most efficient use of them is not the easiest proposition in the world; it’s not just a case of clicking a button to analyse a protein. However, fitting out the world of supercomputers with a user-friendly, web-based interface is the focus of an open source project based at Western Australia’s Murdoch University.

    Last year Murdoch publicly launched Yabi, a tool equipped with a web interface to make using supercomputers simpler.

    The computational physics community, as an example, may be very proficient in the intricacies of shell scripts and working with a command line, says Professor Matthew Bellgard, Director of Murdoch’s Centre for Comparative Genomics. “They’ve had a lot of experience in the past running their Fortran code using 4000 cores or 10,000 cores,” he says. However, “there are other domains where scientists don’t necessarily have that skill running command line code or porting their code from one supercomputer to another.”

  • Open Source Software Popularity Is Skyrocketing
  • The Morning Download: Open Source Software’s Coming-Out Party

    Good morning. Open source software is enjoying somewhat of a revival in business environments, although the revival is more about perception than reality. IBM‘s decision to swap out Oracle customer-account management software for similar software from SugarCRM was probably motivated at least in part by a desire to inflict some pain on rival Oracle, but also indicates an underlying confidence in the reliability, stability and scalability of open source software.

  • Winners Announced For International Space Apps Challenge

    While budgetary constraints and increasing commercial competition has clearly taken its toll on NASA, one area where the iconic government institution has unquestionably made headway is the implementation of open source.

  • Sigrok: open source framework for logic analysers

    While there are quite a few budget and even open source logic analyser platforms for recording and evaluating digital signals, each of them usually comes with a custom interface protocol and dedicated evaluation software of varying functionality. Usually, the software only works with one analyser family made by a specific company.

  • Open Source Spotlight: iSpy Connect
  • Open Source in the enterprise

    Open source software has come a long way. From the days when it was seen as a curiosity, to today’s scenario where some of the world’s biggest computer setups run atop Linux including Amazon and Google, it has been an interesting journey. According to IDC, Linux accounts for about 18-20% of the server market by revenues in any given quarter. That’s within striking distance of Unix, which had a market share of 20-22% in the second and third quarters of 2011. Of course, Windows ruled the roost with 45-50% in revenue terms.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice mentoring

      In fact it is about the difficulty to get started at the LibreOffice project, which is a quite bad thing, because we need supporters and contributors of any kind. In the past, the decade of OpenOffice.org, one thing what we missed were the developers (I was not involved at that time, but I heard it several times and I think it is true…). Now, at the LibreOffice project we have easyhacks (At least I assume this, because of THIS Google search). Loads of things have been done about that. Now, I would really want to show you 2 month old numbers from Italo Vignoli’s blog. On March the 15th, there were ~360 people contributing to LibreOffice and ~21 at Apache OpenOffice.

  • Education

    • The case for agile pedagogy

      Policy makers, industry and many teachers are eager that pupils should learn more about computing. This includes learning how to write computer programs, but also “computational thinking”, a transferable way of solving problems and exploring situations, which has wide applications across and beyond the curriculum. In short, as pupils learn to program computers and the principles of computer science they start to bring the unique insights of algorithms, abstraction and the like to other fields. The same is true for teachers – ideas from computing can dramatically change the way we think about our work, and one of these, agile development, is what I’d like to explore here.

      According to many A-level specifications, students are taught that software projects follow the “waterfall” methodology, starting with agreeing requirements, designing and implementing the software, testing it and then keeping things ticking over when it’s deployed to clients.

      In other words, the sort of approach that has characterised public sector IT projects like the NHS database. Hmm… This doesn’t sound that far removed from how we’ve designed curricula: a top down list of things “children should be taught”, schemes of work, implementation in the classroom, plenty of testing, and the “service pack” of INSET as and when needed.

    • UK science minister explains move to open source

  • Business

    • The Open Source Challenge in the Channel

      One of the ironies of the channel these days is that many of the data centers and network operations centers (NOCs) built by solution providers are based on open source technologies. Almost invariably, these platforms are being used to support commercial software and systems that have been deployed at any number of customer locations.

      That may sound a bit hypocritical. But in truth it just reflects an economic reality. Many solution providers have plenty of expertise available to them. What they are often short on is funding. When faced with the choice of throwing labor at a solution versus parting with cash to acquire commercial technologies, the decision is almost always to “sweat” the labor investment.

    • Open source Opsview polishes IT monitoring lens

      Opsview has around 19,900 customers using its free open source offering and a further 100 customers paying for all the bells and whistles as well as a support package in the shape of the Enterprise version.

    • The Serious Business of Open Source, Inc.

      Imagine what “Risk Factors” a hypothetical Open Source Incorporated would put into the regulatory filings that corporations file every year. The process could well provide insight into what the communities of Open Source should be prepared for.

    • Nuxeo growth shows increasing demand for open source solutions

      First a look at the numbers: Nuxeo reported global customer growth of 40 percent adding new customers that included Electronic Arts and InterContinental Hotel Group. It was North America where Nuxeo really took off, as North America became the company’s biggest market with revenue doubling there. Meanwhile, the community also grew. Nuxeo reported that the number of downloads tripled.

    • IBM Gets Behind Snort, Expands Anomaly Detection
    • Liferay Announces Strong Sales Growth in Europe

  • Funding

    • Great place to browse around

      Bocoup incubates Web startups, fosters open-source community [...] Web app and open-source consulting company that also provides space and funding for startups.

  • Project Releases

    • Lightspark 0.5.7 released

      A new ver­sion of Lightspark has been released yes­ter­day. You can give it a try by get­ting the source code from launch­pad. Ubuntu pack­ages should be avail­able shortly from our PPA

    • Cassandra 1.1 Brings Cache Tuning, Mixed Storage Support

      Apache has dished out another serving of Cassandra, the open source NoSQL database popular for handling big data. The improvements speak to a maturing NoSQL database that’s well-suited for big data deployments. This time around, Cassandra has improvements to its query language, and tuning improvements that will help companies trying to boost performance with a mixture of magnetic media and solid state drives (SSD). Its continued development helps maintain open-source dominance in the big data/NoSQL market.

    • OpenMAMA Project Delivers First Release of Middleware Messaging API

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Fighting for Freedom in Slovakia

      FSFE (Free Software Foundation Europe) is helping a Slovakian business fined for failing to use that other OS and IE for filing taxation information. It will be interesting to see whether or not the courts can order the Slovakian government to do IT the right way, with open standards for communication protocols and file formats.

    • Executive summary of the EURA case
    • OSI Supports Open Standards

      The Open Source Initiative agreed what made a standard open back in 2006 and today collaborated with the Free Software Foundation on a press statement about it.

Leftovers

  • Microsoft ejects DVD playback from Windows 8

    Digital media playback in Windows 8 has fallen casualty to the savage economics of the PC industry and changing tastes in consumer viewing.

    We knew Windows Media Center would be sold at extra cost in Windows 8, but Microsoft now says you won’t be able to play DVDs on Windows Media Player in Windows 8.

  • Hardware

    • Can Nvidia’s Kepler processor revolutionize virtual desktop hosting?

      In a BYOD world, this approach is compelling. By hosting the desktop, IT owns a virtualized generic hardware environment yet can supply that environment to a variety of hardware devices-smartphones, tablets, Linux PCs and even smart TVs, which could be used more readily for high-end, off-site conferences in rented facilities or as a cheaper alternative to more expensive conference room solutions.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Finance

    • Why Goldman Is Not a Simple Culprit in the Financial Crisis Report

      The Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee’s report on the financial crisis is an important document. It is an exhaustive look at certain main aspects of the financial crisis, a report which heavily criticizes Washington Mutual, the now-defunct Office of Thrift Supervision, the credit ratings agencies, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

    • A Sea of Robin Hoods Tell the G8, “It’s Time to Tax Wall Street!”

      Thousands of nurses from around the world descended upon Daley Plaza, in the heart of Chicago on May 18, to demand that the richest nations in the world put an end to austerity politics and start asking the people who collapsed the global economy to do more to “heal the world.”

  • Censorship

    • UK ISPs ordered to block Pirate Bay website

      The High Court said on Monday that Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media would have to block access to The Pirate Bay (TPB), following an earlier ruling in February over the role of the site in copyright infringement.

    • The Tor Project’s New Tool Aims To Map Out Internet Censorship

      For years, the non-profit Tor Project has offered Internet users the world’s most secure tool for dodging censorship and surveillance, used by tens of millions of people around the world. Now two of the project’s researchers aim to help users to not only bypass what they call the “filternet”–the choked, distorted and censored subset of the Internet–but to understand it and map it out, the better to eradicate its restrictions.

05.19.12

Links 19/5/2012: Mandriva Linux Freed, New Linux Mint RC

Posted in News Roundup at 10:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The Porteus Team: We consider ourselves a “Portable Linux Community”
  • Musings on the linux audio stack

    I spent some free time today getting caught up on the large backlog of phonon-gstreamer bugs. Towards the end, I started to have delusions of grandeur: Imagine a phonon-gstreamer codebase that doesn’t require supporting a zillion different audio frameworks, and instead belays that task to something that I don’t have to maintain.

  • Desktop

    • and, nor or

      Just read another “forget desktop Linux” piece by a writer trying to cover Free software on a sight ostensibly doing the same. This is exactly the sort of thing I wrote about in a recent blog entry, and it’s sad to see it continue.

    • Will Linux Ever Experience The Year Of The Desktop? [Opinion]
    • Linux Desktop Space is no Place to Concede

      The argument goes something to the affect that “since there is a movement towards enabling more devices at work and schools, the desktop no longer really matters.”

      I understand my colleague Andrea’s passion for mobile devices and social media, but her conclusions seem seriously flawed. The reason I am writing this article is to ensure people understand the great value of Linux on the Desktop.

    • GNU/Linux Has Taken Off

      In it Maria Korolov trots out a long list of “problems” with GNU/linux for large businesses. Here’s an example: “a typical organization will have one application for every 10 users, and, today, about half of those applications require the Windows operating system”

      That makes no sense at all. It means businesses, money-making organizations, are foolishly paying for far too many applications. The largest organizations on the planet are governments and as we saw in Munich, it is worthwhile to shed unnecessary applications and rationalize the rest.

    • Yeehaw! Munich Now Has 10K GNU/Linux Machines
    • Netbook Upgrade – SSD IN, Windows OUT

      I did some very simple timing of several different Linux distributions on this system before I changed the disk drive, and found that they all took about one minute from the GRUB menu to a ready.-to-use desktop. I repeated those tests with the SSD, and found that the average boot time had been cut to 30 seconds or less! The overall impression of using the system is faster with the SSD as well.

    • Prague in the Spring

      Clearly, GNU/Linux works for them. It’s just silly that some commentators here cling to the idea that nothing can be done without that other OS. There is clear evidence to the contrary.

  • Server

    • May 2012 Web Server Survey

      nginx saw its 9th consecutive month of increased market share, gaining 894k hostnames and increasing its share to 5.48%, more than double the value it held a year ago. Apache fared the worst this month, losing 17.5M hostnames. However, it remains far ahead of the competition with two out of every three hostnames being served using Apache.

  • Kernel Space

    • Inspired by Linux? Design a T-shirt

    • Graphics Stack

      • X.Org: “A Wasteland of Unreviewedness”

        After David Airlie brought up the new DDX driver API for the X.Org Server, a new discussion was born concerning the lack of patch review taking place for the X.Org Server.

        David Airlie commented on the developers’ mailing list about the lack of patch review for the new API patches, he wonders how he’s “going to get the next 50 patches in at this rate some time this year.” Alan Coopersmith then responded with how there seems to be a harder time overall in getting patch reviews done. Coopersmith says, “I’ve got no ideas how to fix this quickly, but we need to get it fixed.”

      • A New NVIDIA Linux Binary Driver Released
      • The New X.Org Server Driver API Is Coming

        The new driver API for the X.Org Server that would finally allow for the X.Org stack to better compete with modern desktop drivers on Windows and Mac OS X, may actually see the light of day, prior to the Wayland push.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Xfce 4 Desktop Customization

      The Xfce 4 desktop offers a vast array of customization options that will leave your desktop looking nothing like the default. Take advantage of all the excellent graphical user interfaces offered for all of your options, settings, and preferences.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Kdenlive 0.9 Released

        Video editing is one of the few areas where GNU/Linux is behind Windows and Macs. There are no professional grade video editing software for Linux. However, there are many honest attempts to bring quality video editing to the Linux platform. Kdenlive is one such project.

      • The road to KDE LightDM-0.2

        Dave Edmunson, one of the lead developers behind KDE LightDM recently published an UPDATE describing some of the features (and shortcomings) already part of the first KDE LightDM release, as well as explaining a bit of what´s coming along in the next few months for the 0.2 release. Dave explained how some KDM features are still missing in KDE LightDM-0.1, but in turn, some of the screenshots he´s sharing look very promising. Among others, the benefits of using LightDM is, as its name rightly points out, its relatively low weight when compared with GDM or KDM. On top of that, there are obvious gains in terms of looks and flexibility. To give an example, changing the login screen wallpaper and/or welcome image will be very simple. Along the same lines, things like having the login screen and KSplash incorporating the same wallpaper the user has in her/his desktop should be easier. Inconsistencies between login screen and KSplash in terms of resolution and things of the like should also be out of the way thanks to the common QML thread. Here´s a picture of the Login screen control module, as it looks today. Note these are early days for this piece of functionality, so chances it may not look exactly like this come future releases:

      • Browse your activities
      • Moving Kolab 2.4 forward to 2.4.1

        I’m pleased to announce our Kolab 2.4 product series can now be labeled 2.4.1!

      • Qt 5.0 Is Going To Like LLVMpipe, Wayland

    • GNOME Desktop

  • Distributions

    • Review: ROSA 2012 “Marathon”

      You may have heard of ROSA before, but you may not be sure where. Almost 9 months ago, I reviewed Mandriva 2011 “Hydrogen”, and that version of Mandriva was developed in conjunction with ROSA Labs, a Russian Linux development group. Since then, Mandriva seen quite a roller-coaster ride and is now essentially on life support. It is all but certain that there will be no new releases of a distribution with the name “Mandriva” (or “Mandrake” for that matter). One fork appeared over a year ago, and that is called Mageia; that aimed to replicate and build upon the traditional KDE desktop that Mandriva used before the year 2011. The other fork is ROSA, and it is essentially a continuation of the novel desktop introduced in Mandriva 2011 “Hydrogen”. It seems like ROSA will become the haven for all Mandriva users that had not already gone to Mageia.

    • Parted Magic gets optional firewall

      A new version of the Parted Magic open source, Linux-based, multi-platform partitioning tool has been released. Labelled “2012_05_14″, the update is based on the 3.3.6 Linux kernel and includes version 1.12.1 of X Server.

    • 4 Strange And Disturbing Linux Distros You Probably Won’t Be Installing

      Linux is the operating system of choice for those who decide to go their own way. The open source model means the building blocks are there for you if you decide that you need your very own operating system.

    • New Releases

      • Rocks Releases Mamb

        The latest version of Rocks cluster distribution – an open source toolkit for real and virtual clusters – has been released.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Kindergarden Linux

          Fast forward one day, it seems like trying Fedora 16 Live was a failure: he gets a wallpaper and a mouse cursor, nothing else. I am showing a random screenshot from the web, trying to understand if he has a normal GNOME Shell empty desktop or is a deeper problem and this drives me to a large explanation on what GNOME, Unity, KDE, Xfce, LXDE are (and a statement of my desktop preference). I am asked again about my phone number and ignore the question. Then he wants to give Ubuntu a try, I don’t have a problem with that but he has: the same empty desktop with no panel, no right-click menus, no nothing. If is not the display, then it may be video drivers (ATI), so I recommend either a newer Fedora (F17 RC1 is online) or VESA parameters for boot (me blaming AMD).

        • Fedora 17 won’t be released until 29 May

          The Fedora Project has pushed back the release of the Fedora 17 Linux distribution by a week, from 22 May to 29 May. The main reason is that the project wants to take care of four bugs classified as blockers in the current release candidates; if possible, the developers will also use the extra time to fix a dozen other problems.

        • Fedora 18 Approves Controversial Feature

    • Debian Family

      • Crunchbang Linux review

        In my continued look at out of the ordinary Linux distributions, I installed Crunchbang Linux. Crunchbang’s main version is a distribution based on Debian’s stable branch (known as “squeeze”). This review is based on the 32-bit version of Crunchbang Linux. At this time, Crunchbang offers a regular version and one with backports installed (for the new kernel, among other things). I chose to use the regular version, R20120207 “Statler”.

      • Linux Mint Debian Edition, With Mate

        The move from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 resulted in varied emotions with many people liking the much needed change and for many, lets just say that they felt devastated.

        The Linux Mint team, after waiting out the initial change with Mint 11, released Mint 12 with Gnome 3 and now they have their work cutout with the Gnome 2 fork MATE and the Cinnamon Shell.

      • XBMC Eden on Debian Wheezy

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Who is the biggest control freak of them all?

    Recently, it appears that the program offering paradigm is the virtual store front so to speak. Google’s play or Apples App store, to name the two most well known ones for mobile devices. Linux distributions have always had a form of application store where they are commonly known as repositories. In essence these ‘stores’ all work the same way. A single access point to all programs available for that operating system.

    Shall we play a game? Just imagine you have written the program to end all programs and want to get this program into an application store for XYZ operating system. Which one do you think is the hardest to get into?

    For your program to get into a Linux distribution it has to be already popular enough for someone to decide to do the work necessary so it can be included in the official repository. That someone can be you so I would say it is very easy for your program be become part of an official distribution.

    I think we can discount windows for this exercise as it does not have an application store as such. Although there are rumours that they are working towards creating one.

  • Need a resume boost? Get involved with an open source project

    There are a lot of excellent reasons to get involved with an open source project. You can learn a new language, improve your existing skills, be challenged by a community that is at the top of their field or even get better at managing complex distributed projects. There are also dozens of ways to participate. Open up a project’s bug tracker and find an issue that needs to be fixed. Write a useful new extension or plugin. Even if you don’t code, just about every open source project out there could use more testing, more documentation and tutorials and help handling the load on their support forums and mailing lists. If you are a heavy user of open source software it feels great to give something back to the community that has contributed so much.

  • An Open Source Arsenal for Photographers

    There has never been a better time to be interested in digital photography. Not only do inexpensive digital cameras offer great high-resolution photos, but they come with very advanced feature sets. Over the years on OStatic, we’ve also covered a huge number of open source applications that can make editing, organizing and adding effects to digital photos much easier. If you’re under the impression that you must have Photoshop to be a top-notch photo editor, think again. The open source applications that are available are beyond robust. Here is our updated collection of great tools for the digital

  • Open-source messaging at (nearly) the speed of light
  • OpenFlow Protocol 1.3.0 Approved

    The OpenFlow open source protocol for software defined networking (SDN) took a big step forward today with the approval of the OpenFlow 1.3.0 specification.

  • Penguicon–Would you like some sci-fi in your open source?

    In the metaphorical space between the two worlds, there were opportunities to play with Lego bricks, try a Chaos Machine, listen to nerd comedy, and talk zombies. You could learn about Camp Luminous, which arguably teaches open source principles, or learn to build a TARDIS from open plans.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

    • Uptime: NASA to cut involvement in OpenStack

      The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is going to stop active participation in the open-source infrastructure cloud project OpenStack – something the agency’s employees were deeply involved in creating.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • A Tale of Two Suites: Do We Still Need OpenOffice.org?

      “I wouldn’t count OO out just yet simply because of ONE reason… the license,” said Slashdot blogger hairyfeet. “It’s common knowledge that NOBODY in business will go near GPL after the V3 debacle. Apache on the other hand is MUCH more business-friendly, and the Apache server is used all across the business landscape, so I can see businesses getting behind OO for that reason alone.”

    • Lotus Symphony realigns with Apache OpenOffice

      Donald Harbinson, Program Director for Open Standards/Open Source at IBM, noted the official beginning of the transition on the [ooo-devel] mailing list on Tuesday.

      “A few minutes ago, I submitted the IBM Software Grant Agreement and Corporate Contributor License Agreement for IBM Lotus Symphony contribution. This action means infra can begin to prepare to receive the ‘Contribution’ into svn when they’re ready,” Harbinson wrote.

      The move was hardly unexpected, since IBM announced last January that the last release of Symphony, 3.0.1, would be the final one for IBM’s version of the OpenOffice.org suite.

    • Apache OpenOffice™ 3.4 Blows Past 1M Downloads
    • Thoughts on the certification

      On the 7th of May 2012 The Document Foundation has announced its first certification program. This certification is aimed at professionals who are interested in having their skillset certified in order to provide professional services to their customers. The program is currently being rolled out, in fact the first official certification meeting will take place at the LinuxTag next week. I would like to explain what we are trying to achieve in a bit more details by shedding some light on the reasons such a program came into existence.

    • IBM contributes Symphony to Apache OpenOffice

      IBM has begun the process of contributing code from Symphony, its office automation suite, to the Apache OpenOffice project, saying: “This ends the Symphony fork here with Apache OpenOffice”. Earlier in the year, the company announced its intention to make the contribution, as it plans to move customers to Apache OpenOffice. Historically, Symphony has been based on a combination of Eclipse Rich Client Platform and OpenOffice.org code that was acquired when the OpenOffice.org code was under a dual-licence which allowed IBM to use the code and not release its changes.

  • Funding

    • Need cash? NLnet advances open source technology by funding new projects

      In April 1982, exactly 30 years ago, the European Internet was launched by the Dutch researcher Teus Hagen, at a European Unix User Group conference in Paris. EUnet was the very first European Internet backbone. NLnet Foundation subsequently took the lead of this initiative, and not only helped shape the European Internet, but was fundamental in establishing the currently biggest Internet exchange on the planet, and also built out a market leadership. In September 1997, so 15 years ago, it was acquired by UUnet, now Verizon. All money was put in a fund with the sole purpose to make the Internet better.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • WD 0019/2012 for open and collaborative government

      A few Members of the European Parliament started a Written Declaration for open and collaborative government. Gianni Pittella, Rodi Kratsa-Tsagaropoulou, Marisa Matias, Katarína Neveďalová, Marietje Schaake. Written Declarations are documents which could get co-signed by other Members of Parliament. They get adopted when they reach a majority. Written Declarations could be perceived as petitions within the European Parliament and civil society groups often pressure MEPs to sign a Written Declaration that suits their interests. Here it would be rather difficult to get them to endorse the document WD 0019/2012. The reason is simple: instead of “unrestricted” they drafted “current”. That single phrase makes the declaration appear like a Trojan horse.

  • Licensing

    • What’s next after GPL and Apache?

      At the end of April, I wrote about the idea that usage of the GNU General Public License (GPL) is declining and concluded that although new, commercially initiated open source projects were indeed tending to adopt other licenses, the use of the GPL itself is still growing — especially among projects in its core community of GNU platform development. This article explores why commercial projects pick particular open source licenses and what might happen in the future.

  • Programming

    • LLVM For Code Decompiling?

      Asked on the developers’ mailing list last week was whether LLVM could be used for a decompiler, which an independent developer is working to construct.

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • Food Stamp Use Picks Up Again, In Los Angeles County

      After a winter lull, food stamp participation in Los Angeles County picked up again in March, to rise to a new all time high of 1,036,078 persons. Other economic data points to weakness in the nation’s largest state economy, as well. Indeed, falling tax collections are largely behind the recent budget deficit blowout of 16 billion dollars. And to think: many thought the years of California’s “budget crisis” were behind us. | see: Los Angeles County SNAP Users vs. Price of Oil 2007-2012.

    • Goldman, Merrill E-Mails Show Naked Shorting, Filing Says

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Merrill Lynch & Co. employees discussed helping naked short-sales by market-maker clients in e-mails the banks sought to keep secret, including one in which a Merrill official told another to ignore compliance rules, Overstock.com Inc. (OSTK) said in a court filing.

    • Accidentally Released – and Incredibly Embarrassing – Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in ‘Naked Short Selling’

      It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes God smiles on us. Last week, he smiled on investigative reporters everywhere, when the lawyers for Goldman, Sachs slipped on one whopper of a legal banana peel, inadvertently delivering some of the bank’s darker secrets into the hands of the public.

    • The Real Volcker Rule: No Gambling with the Public’s Money

      Pundits and Wall Street reforming politicians are crowing: Wowie! Jamie D has fought for weak regulations, especially a weak Volcker rule, but now Wall Street’s goose is cooked! We’re going to get a strong Volcker rule!

  • Privacy

    • UK government staff caught snooping on citizen data

      What a surprise: the U.K. government was forced to reveal under Freedom of Information laws more than 1,000 civil servants have ’snooped’ on British citizens’ private data.

      Don’t worry about hackers illegally accessing government systems. It turns out government workers and civil servants who are trusted with private citizen data are more likely to access your data illegally.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • BitTorrent not always piracy, says Wil Wheaton

        Geek TV star uses Ubuntu 12.04 download as example of legal BitTorrent use.

        Wheaton, actor on Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Big Bang Theory, and Eureka, is deep into the geek life and has been blogging for years. He may be the most prominent geek advocate in Hollywood, which he says gets him in trouble when he argues in favor of network neutrality and against ill-considered piracy crackdowns, like ignoring legal uses of BitTorrent.

        Using his download of Ubuntu 12.04 as an example, Wheaton argues that BitTorrent saves time and resources. The direct download would take an hour, but the torrent feed did the job in six minutes. Piracy legislation that would shut down or hobble BitTorrent protocol traffic would not stop file sharing, but would ruin a good protocol.

      • ACTA

        • Time To Realize That The Obama Administration Doesn’t Even Have The Authority To Commit The US To ACTA Or TPP

          There is a major problem with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that has little to do with IP or the internet: how does international law get made—by the President alone, or with Congress’s involvement? ACTA’s key problem in the United States is a Constitutional question that turns on the separation of powers. The President, or an office of the executive branch like USTR, can negotiate treaties that fall within presidential powers. But for topics that fall within Congressional powers, like IP law, the Constitution requires that Congress be involved in the process.

          The most obvious and difficult way to involve Congress is through Article II of the Constitution. Under Article II, a treaty negotiated by the executive branch is presented to the Senate for ratification. The process is notoriously difficult, because it requires two-thirds of the Senate to approve. So USTR, almost understandably, wants to avoid the Article II process if at all possible.

05.17.12

Links 17/5/2012: “Bio Computer” Runs Linux, Raspberry Pi Grows

Posted in News Roundup at 8:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Rise of Open Source

    Given time and the efforts of some very bright and altruistic people, an open source solution can be highly competitive. The good news for Sugar and its customers is that they have been down the curve with their open source solution. As open source rises in prominence, established players face painful changes, but for new entrants like Sugar, there is little or no transition.

  • FuseSource Launches New Open-Source Integration, Messaging Platforms

    FuseSource advanced its “Integration Everywhere” strategy with Fuse ESB Enterprise 7.0 and Fuse MQ Enterprise 7.0, two new open-source integration and messaging platforms announced at its CamelOne 2012 conference.

  • Apache Isn’t Just About HTTP Anymore

    For many, the name Apache is synonymous with the most successful open source project of all time – the Apache HTTP Web Server. The Apache Web Server has dominated the web server landscape for the majority of the Internet Era, even as rivals (open source and otherwise) have attempted to make in-roads.

  • Apache celebrates quarter of growth

    The Apache Software Foundation has declared the first quarter of 2012 a quarter of “unprecedented growth” – it now has 104 current top-level projects (TLP) and 51 projects in the incubator, the largest number for either count. Jim Jagielski, the ASF’s president, said the “success can be attributed to Apache’s longstanding commitment to providing exceptional Open Source products, each with a stable codebase and an active community”.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

    • Marten Mickos: Eucalyptus Opens Up Under Agile Model

      As part of our ongoing focus on open source cloud, we talked with Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos about the commoditization of hypervisors, what’s driving his company’s growth and its plans to release Eucalyptus 3.1 soon, marking the company’s shift to a much more open development model. The interview is presented in two parts. Yesterday’s post covered the open cloud, the role of APIs and where open source cloud computing is headed.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GIMP 2.8 Review – was it worth the three year wait?

      On announcing the release of GIMP 2.8 the developers claimed that the update introduced ‘important changes to the user interface’. Is this the case or are there still issues to be found? 2.8 is available on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, making it widely available and it is of course still completely free and open source. The new release has been in development for three years, meaning GIMP 2.8 boasts 36 notable improvements to it’s interface and a number of updates beneath the surface supporting these. At times I have avoided using GIMP because it was cumbersome and disorganised, so I am interested to find out if my opinion will change with the new release.

  • Programming

05.16.12

Links 16/5/2012: 125,000 GNU/Linux Machines for Pakistani Students, Android 4.0 Rollouts

Posted in News Roundup at 6:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Pixar’s Toy Story 2 was Nearly Lost because of a Linux Command

    In ‘The Movie Vanishes’ short animation film by Pixar, Oren Jacob and Galyn Susman tell how a big part of Toy Story 2 was almost deleted because of an accidental Linux command ‘rm’ and poor backup system.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Virginia Firm Sells Gun Targets Resembling Trayvon Martin

      An online gun retailer has been criticized for promoting an advertisement for shooting targets that resemble 17-year old shooting victim Trayvon Martin. The target depicted a hooded figure holding skittles and tea with crosshairs on his chest. Martin was reportedly holding skittles and tea when he was shot dead — in the chest — by George Zimmerman in Florida in February 2012. The horrific shooting of the unarmed youth led to a national conversation about the NRA-crafted Stand Your Ground/Shoot to Kill law and the role the American Legislative Exchange Council played in spreading the Florida law across the nation.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • LISTEN: Occupy Wall Street Gets an Album and Everyone Is On It
    • Gupta seeks calls thrown out of U.S. insider trial

      NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta, the most prominent corporate figure indicted in a U.S. crackdown on insider trading, has asked a judge to throw out more than two dozen phone conversations that the government has sought to present as evidence at his trial.

    • Goldman Traders Tried to Manipulate Derivatives Market in ’07, Report Says

      Company documents show traders led by Michael J. Swenson sought to encourage a “short squeeze” by putting artificially low prices on derivatives that would gain in value as mortgage securities fell, according to the report yesterday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The idea, abandoned after market conditions worsened, was to drive holders of such credit-default swaps to sell and help Goldman Sachs traders buy at reduced prices, according to the report.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • CMD Special Report: New Documents Confirm Koch Was on ALEC Crime Task Force Led by NRA

      ALEC announced it was dropping that task force in the wake of the controversy over the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin and so-called “Stand Your Ground” (SYG) laws. However, the co-leader of that task force, Rep. Jerry Madden (R-TX), revealed ALEC’s announcement to be a PR maneuver when he reassured The Christian Post that his task force’s work would continue through other ALEC task forces.

  • Censorship

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • US Supremes hammer final nail into Psystar coffin

        The long and sordid Psystar saga creaked to its anti-climactic close on Monday: the US Supreme Court has refused to hear the hackintosher’s request to review an appeals court’s September 2011 decision not to overturn a December 2009 permanent injunction preventing the Florida company from selling Mac OS X–based clones.

      • Music labels force pioneering MP3tunes into bankruptcy

        MP3tunes, a music locker service that has spent years locked in litigation with major record labels, announced last week that it was closing up shop. The startup scored a partial victory in court last year, helping to establish the legality of cloud music services in the process. But founder Michael Robertson says that “four and a half years of legal torment” forced his company to file for bankruptcy on April 27.

      • Who Needs SOPA When Courts Will Pretend SOPA Already Exists?

        Back in November, we wrote about one of a series of cases we had seen where trademark holders were going to court with a list of domain names that they insisted were selling counterfeit goods and getting the courts to issue injunctions that appeared to be quite similar to what SOPA would have allowed had it passed. That is, basically upon request, a trademark holder was able to get domain registrars to kill domain names, while forcing search engines and social networks to put in place blockades barring such sites from being listed. It appears that more trademark holders are taking notice. Jeff Roberts has the story of (regular IP extremist) Louis Vuitton trying the same thing.

      • IP-Address Can’t Even Identify a State, BitTorrent Judge Rules

        The mass-BitTorrent lawsuits that are sweeping the United States are in a heap of trouble. After a Florida judge ruled that an IP-address is not a person, a Californian colleague has gone even further in protecting the First Amendment rights of BitTorrent users. The judge in question points out that geolocation tools are far from accurate and that it’s therefore uncertain that his court has jurisdiction over cases involving alleged BitTorrent pirates. As a result, 15 of these mass-BitTorrent lawsuits were dismissed.

      • MCA, the DMCA, and stifled collaboration

        Earlier this month, the world lost a music pioneer when Adam Yauch, a.k.a “MCA” of the Beastie Boys, succumbed to cancer at the age of 47. A founding member of the Beastie Boys, Yauch expanded upon his success in the music industry to exert his considerable influence and contributions outside music. He had a strong interest in film, which resulted in him directing several of the Boys’ music videos and in 2008 led to him founding Oscilloscope Studios, which produces and promotes independent films. In the 1990s, Yauch adopted Buddhism and began getting involved socially and politically in a variety of charities and activism.

      • ACTA

05.15.12

Links 15/5/2012: Linux 3.4 is Near, Mandriva to Have More Releases

Posted in News Roundup at 9:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open-source media player VLC tops a billion downloads

    Open-source staple VLC has reached over a billion downloads, the VideoLAN Organization announced Sunday.

  • Open source software: It’s more than just free stuff

    Free software. In many ways it is an unfortunate term to describe what most people today know as open source software. Although the term is intended to convey the idea of freedom, it is often misunderstood as meaning ‘free of cost’. And while most open software is indeed available free of charge, there are still costs associated with implementing any software in a business. Open source software’s real value is not that it is cheaper than other alternatives, though that is more often than not the reality, it is that it offers a set of values that proprietary does not.

  • The next generation of open source software procurement models

    One year ago, the new Swedish framework agreement for the procurement of open source became active. Five suppliers were contracted to provide software and services. Central government, the public educational sector, all twenty county councils, and 225 out of the 290 Swedish municipalities are participating. They call off mini competitions for contracts the suppliers then have to battle for. This model differs from the recommendations made in the European ‘Guideline on public procurement of Open Source Software’, aiming to overcome current barriers and increase the use of open source.

  • Open source enables high-volume searches

    Twitter, Facebook, the Library of Congress — all of these institutions have mind-numbing amounts of structured and unstructured data that must be indexed and searched quickly. In Twitter’s case, that’s about 300 million new pieces of information to index every day.

  • OpenMAMA Project Delivers First Release of Middleware Messaging API

    The Linux Foundation announced that the OpenMAMA project has announced version 2.1 of the technology–the first release of open-source Middleware Agnostic Messaging API, or MAMA.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox’s four release channels explained

        By now, it should be easy to pick a browser. Most of you probably settled on a favorite ages ago, and it’s going to take some seriously cool new features — or a whole lot of crashing — to make you switch at this point. But even if you’re in love with your default you might be wondering if you’re running the right channel.

      • Is Mozilla Punting on Web Apps for Linux?

        While Mozilla is a leading light in the open source community, every so often I’m reminded that the same isn’t always true in the Linux community.

  • Databases

    • Looking at the PostGIS 2.0 Release

      The PostGIS database project made its long-awaited 2.0.0 release in April, marking the culmination of more than two years of development. PostGIS is an industrial-strength geographical database that serves as the storage system for a wide range of geo-data processing systems, from map servers to analysis tools.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice – Enhance desktop productivity

      LibreOffice is a comprehensive, professional-quality productivity suite that you can download and install for free. Works on all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Suse, etc.

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Talend updates data tools to 5.1.0

        Talend has updated all the applications that run on its Open Studio unified platform to version 5.1.0. Talend’s Open Studio is an Eclipse-based environment that hosts the company’s Data Integration, Big Data, Data Quality, MDM (Master Data Management) and ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) products. The system allows a user to, using the Data Integration as an example, use a GUI to define processes that can extract data from the web, databases, files or other resources, process that data, and feed it on to other systems. The resulting definition can then be compiled into a production application.

      • SugarCRM 6.5 Adds Just a Touch of Sweetener

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • PulseAudio 2.0 makes better use of modern hardware features

      The recently released PulseAudio 2.0 offers improved support for the jack detection feature that is available in modern sound hardware. If a user is running Linux kernels from version 3.3 and connects, for example, a second set of stereo speakers, the audio framework will detect this and offer separate volume controls along with other features. The PulseAudio developers plan to add further improvements in the future, for example to simplify the configuration of multi-channel environments.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open source adoption on the rise in the French government

      In the statement, presidential candidate François Hollande also expressed his support for open source software. He agrees with Sarkozy that open source and open standards should be cultivated, especially in government and small and medium enterprises. Hollande is also strongly opposed to software patents and said that he “will ensure that the implementation of the Community patent is not an opportunity to legitimize software patents, mathematical methods and business methods.” President Sarkozy, on the other hand, is in favour of software patents.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Is open hardware creating a more open world?

        Just as retro ideas from a bygone era can inspire modern fashion, film, and TV trends, today’s researchers are being empowered by the revival of an innovative technology concept from the past: open-source hardware.

  • Programming

Leftovers

05.14.12

Links 14/5/2012: Linux Kernel 3.3.5, Wine 1.5.4

Posted in News Roundup at 6:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • AT4AM will become open source

    Some of my colleagues were keen on broader access to AT4AM, the amendment template software of the European Parliament. It is used by Members of the European parliament to draft amendments to legal text.

  • the age of pragmatists

    In the process of achieving world domination, the philosophizing was largely factored out of the community. I mentioned a few individuals in the “founding philosophers” entry, and I think it is interesting to examine what happened with them.

  • Free and Open-Source Software bring an Open-Community

    It’s often associated that open-source is referred to Linux and FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software). But as equally as important is the community. And what I want to touch base on is not only the open-source community, but how “open” the development community is as opposed to the development community of Microsoft Windows. And particularly at a corporate and managerial level.

  • Nepal and the impact of open source

    Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world with many gender, educational, and digital divides. Yet it is gradually being transformed by open source and digital technology. There’s little question that as Nepal seeks to help its citizens become a part of the global digital economy, it faces a series of challenges: political instability, remote physical access, poor infrastructure, and rural poverty. In April 2012, the World Economic Forum released a report that identified Nepal as one of the least networked countries in the world, at the bottom of world rankings.

  • Open source makes you bolder

    I put on my open source hat and asked myself these question:

    1. Do I have the skills and know how to put on a good explanatory talk about Twitter?
    2. Do I know how to record such a talk to video?
    3. Do I know how to edit that video and upload it to the web?

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

        I’ve been using Google Chrome for Linux since it was first made available. I use Gmail, Google Docs (now Drive), Google Plus, Google Adsense, Google Analytics, Google Music, and many more. I am the original owner of an original CR-48 Chromebook, having received mine way back in Dec. 2010. I promote Google services at work and have worked hard to point my business’ compass towards their entire suite of offerings. I use a Samsung Nexus S with an official build of Android 4.04 and I’m only interested in official devices moving forward.

    • Mozilla

      • Getting snappy – performance optimizations in Firefox 13

        Back in the fall of 2011, we took a targeted look at Firefox responsiveness issues. We identified a number of short term projects that together could achieve significant responsiveness improvements in day-to-day Firefox usage. Project Snappy kicked off at the end of the year with the goal of improving Firefox responsiveness.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Busy weekend with Mageia, LibreOffice, and Liberté

      After an intense week, I decided to forget about work this weekend and have some time for my hobby, software testing. So, I downloaded Mageia 2 RC, LibreOffice 3.4.5, and a Linux distro that I had never heard of: Liberté 2012.1.

  • CMS

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD Achieved A Lot In Q1’2012

      For the first three months of the 2012 calendar year, the FreeBSD project achieved a lot when it came to advancing their open operating system. Here’s some of the interesting highlights from their quarterly status report.

      The FreeBSD Q1’2012 quarterly status report can be read in full here, while below are some of the most interesting tid-bits.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Picture-editing made easy

      Gimpshop is based on Gimp, but looks like Photoshop, and those who are used to working in Photoshop can use Gimpshop.

      I knew that though Gimp and Gimpshop were excellent free programs, there were some features he offered his customers that were not available in Gimpshop. He said he would change normal pictures to sepia or black and white or add vintage effects.

    • Richard M. Stallman, free software leader falls ill at conference

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • History of open source in government

      It is difficult to imagine the Federal government moving in one well-coordinated direction on any matter, and so it has been with the adoption of open source software. Some agencies were early adopters, especially the academic and research communities. As it did in universities, open source adoption in the US government originated in research settings, where sharing and collaboration were already part of the culture of pedagogy. In this way, the government had been using and creating open source software even before it was called “open source.” Other agencies and departments have been more conservative, for a variety of reasons, and are only just now bringing open source software into their operations. With this in mind, the history of open source in the US government is best understood as a series of individual stories that have collectively led to the pervasive adoption of open source we see today.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Kansas City explores open government, civic life, and innovation

      The exploration of open government and civic participation in Kansas City has already begun. This weekend, a new chapter begins. A chapter that will include open source, open data, citizen engagement, a Bike Walk hackathon, and more. In fact, it might materialize into several chapters that could start with rapid-fire lighting talks and end with dueling mayors who are innovating beyond borders. And what would a CityCamp be without an unconference? That’s a whole chapter by itself.

    • Sharing the open source journey with Kansas City

  • Standards/Consortia

    • HTML5 for Audio Applications

      Recently, “cloud”-based music services, from big names like Amazon, Google and Apple, have been getting attention in the press. These services allow you to store your music on a corporate server and access it through your own Internet-connected device anytime you like. It’s easy to see the appeal of these services. This is the kind of thing the Internet is for, right?

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform

      Two years ago, when he signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, President Barack Obama bragged that he’d dealt a crushing blow to the extravagant financial corruption that had caused the global economic crash in 2008. “These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history,” the president told an adoring crowd in downtown D.C. on July 21st, 2010. “In history.”

    • Why Bank Equity Is Not Expensive

      Since the 2008 market crash, banking interests and economists have clashed over how much of their operations banks should fund with equity as opposed to debt. Bankers and others often say that, “equity is expensive.” By contrast, a recent paper, coauthored by three faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, argues that this conventional wisdom is incorrect, and that, “Quite simply, bank equity is not expensive from a social perspective, and high leverage is not required in order for banks to perform all their socially valuable functions.”

  • Privacy

    • FBI: We need wiretap-ready Web sites – now

      CNET learns the FBI is quietly pushing its plan to force surveillance backdoors on social networks, VoIP, and Web e-mail providers, and that the bureau is asking Internet companies not to oppose a law making those backdoors mandatory.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • ACTA

        • Velasco: ACTA only for WTO members

          During the recent Civil Liberties Committee meeting (8 may) Pedro Velasco-Martins (Commission DG Trade) claimed that ACTA only targets WTO members as participating nations. I do not read that from the text of the agreement where it says prospecting nations. I do not see any provision which says that only WTO members are eligible to join.

05.13.12

Links 13/5/2012: Xfce 4.10, KDE 4.8.3, GNOME 3.5.1, GIMP 2.8

Posted in News Roundup at 11:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Nagios Vs. Icinga: the real story of one of the most heated forks in free software

    In March 14, 1999 Ethan Galstad released the first version of Nagios. Then, nearly exactly 10 years later (May 2009), Icinga (a fork of Nagios) was born. What happened there? Why a fork? In this article, I will shed some light about what made the Icinga developers decide to fork (although they still send patches to Nagios). In this article, I will talk to both Ethan Galstad himself, and Michael Lübben (one of the founding Icinga team members and Nagios addon developer). I will quote Michael and Ethan in the article. You get to read their points of view here.

  • Guidelines for Starting Your Very Own Open Source Project
  • Forrester: Hire software developers who take part in open source projects

    Analyst firm Forrester has encouraged businesses to recruit software developers who take part in open source projects, as it shows they are keeping their skills current.

  • Open source has become mainstream but still drives innovation

    At that time, most open source vendors were trying to replicate what proprietary vendors were doing, or what they had failed to do. The value proposition was simple: vendors would say they were like X, but more open, more extensible, and less expensive. Take a few of the successes of the late 2000s and who they were compared to: MySQL (Oracle), JBoss (WebSphere), Jaspersoft (BusinessObjects), Talend (Informatica), SugarCRM (Siebel).

    By and large, these vendors were successful. The first “billion dollar baby” of open source was MySQL, when Sun bought the company for $1 billion. At that time, Techcrunch headline was: “Sun Picks Up MySQL For $1 Billion; Open Source Is A Legitimate Business Model.” And indeed, 2008 marked a turning point for open source: more and more enterprise deployments; acquisitions, like in the “real” corporate world; more and more funding. The 451 Group tracks the history of VC funding in open source – the graph in this post shows that investment in 2008 was at an all-time high, which would only be matched again in 2011.

  • Inktank launches to change the face of open-source storage

    The lead developers behind open-source storage system Ceph have launched a company, called Inktank, to commercialize the software. The company describes Ceph as a “fully open source, distributed object store, network block device, and POSIX-compatible distributed file system designed for reliability, performance, and scalability.” It’s uniqueness comes in part because Ceph does all these things within a unified platform.

  • Open source enables high-volume searches

    Twitter, Facebook, the Library of Congress — all of these institutions have mind-numbing amounts of structured and unstructured data that must be indexed and searched quickly. In Twitter’s case, that’s about 300 million new pieces of information to index every day.

  • Open Source: Homeschool Computing

    Many parents in recent years have chosen to homeschool their children. The reasons for this vary, but most include some measure of the understanding that to truly pass on one’s values to one’s children one needs to be the primary source of information for that child. To place one’s child in a school, public or private, is to give up at least part of one’s responsibility to and for that child. There is usually also a desire to have more control over what that immature mind is experiencing as it grows. Some life events should be shielded from a growing mind until that mind is mature enough to handle such events in the context of the desired values imparted by the parents.

  • GNU Octave for the Life Scientist: An Interview with biochemist and author Heino Prinz

    I have studied Physics in Bonn, did my PhD in Biochemistry at a Max-Planck Institute in Göttingen and got my habilitation (In Germany and Austria you need such a licence to teach) at Innsbruck University in the Pharmacology department. I worked most of the time at the Max-Planck-Institute for molecular physiology in Dortmund. It always was somewhat strange, being a physicist working in biochemistry, chemistry and pharmacology. For a physicist, an equation or a reaction scheme is easy, because it is logical and precise. For a chemist, reaction schemes often seem to be incomprehensible and equations may lead to immediate paralysis when used in lectures. In contrast, chemists can perform complex chemical reactions which are admired (not really conceived) by physicists. I have spent most of my scientific life trying to help life scientists to bridge that gap.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Why Big Sites Run Drupal

      For the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA), the decision to dump its aging content management system (CMS) was easy. Running 65 state government websites on two different versions of proprietary software — Vignette 6 and 7, one of which is no longer supported — had become cumbersome and costly. And moving all sites to Vignette 8 was too much of a “force fit,” said state CTO Steve Nichols.

    • WordPress is suddenly big business

      All Things Digital reported last week week that the company behind WordPress could generate almost $50 million in revenue this year.

      If you blog at all, you know WordPress is a big deal, but fewer people are aware that there is a company behind the platform called Automattic. The public face of Automattic and WordPress is Matt Mullenweg.

      Recently we published a story that WordPress was the platform of choice on 48 of the world’s top 100 blogs. According to Mullenweg’s “about” page on the Automattic site, it accounts for 15 percent of the world’s websites.

  • Business

    • Open Source Ceph Storage Filesystem Goes Commercial

      When open source software gets used in production grade environments, commercial support businesses tend to show up. That’s exactly what is now happening with the open source Ceph distributed storage filesystem.

      Ceph is now backed by Inktank, a commercial venture led by Sage Weil, founder of Ceph. The company had originally incorporated under the name Ceph Inc, but it decided to take a different route to help preserve the integrity of the open source project.

    • Open Source Business: How to Support A Family of 5 By Running An Open Source Project

      Lately, I’ve been recording music in my spare time. Since I try to use as much Free and Open Source software as possible, I found the free digital audio workstation Ardour. When I went to download the software, I was asked for a donation before I could download it. Intriguing!

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Survey data: nginx poised to become number 2 web server

        If current trends hold, then sometime late this summer, Microsoft’s Internet Information Services will fall to the number three web server position in global domains, behind two open source web server platforms: Apache and nginx.

      • Pentaho 4.5 Visualizes Big Data Analytics
      • Oh Certified Asterisk, Where Do You Come From?

        A couple of days ago, Malcolm Davenport posted here about Certified Asterisk, a new series of Open Source Asterisk releases being produced by Digium. Since that post went out, there’s been some discussion (almost confusion) in the Asterisk community about exactly where the Certified Asterisk releases are coming from, and what they contain. In order to try to help describe how this whole process works, I’ve created this page on the Asterisk Wiki which includes a diagram showing how all the current development and releases branches relate to each other, where tags (and releases) are made, and most importantly, how the Certified Asterisk branches are produced.

      • IBM ditches Siebel for SugarCRM

        Technology giant IBM is replacing CRM vendor Siebel and replacing its CRM systems with cloud-based SaaS provider SugarCRM.

        According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, SugarCRM is set to snap up the contract to manage sales, marketing and customer relationships for Big Blue. The contract sees Oracle-owned 67,000 Siebel seats swapped out for the open-source vendor.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • MIT and Harvard Team Up on Open Source-Driven Online Education

      The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University have teamed up to deliver online learning to millions of people around the world, through their new edX initiative. “Through this partnership, the institutions aim to extend their collective reach to build a global community of online learners and to improve education for everyone,” the edX site reports. (If you’re familiar with MITx, it is now a part of edX.)

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Support for ODF from the Hungarian government

      The Hungarian government has committed to invest just over a million pounds (370 million HUF) in the development of applications that use the open document format (ODF), according to a report on the European Union’s Joinup web site. Two organisations will benefit from the funding: the Department of Software Engineering at the University of Szeged and the open source development company, Multiráció. In December of last year, the Hungarian government announced that from April 2012 all official documents would need to be prepared in internationally recognised open-standards-based formats.

    • The conflict between video on the web and open standards

      Few web video standards are truly open or free, and the major players have no interest in pushing them, says Richard Hillesley…

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • America’s Mad Cow Crisis

      Americans might remember that when the first mad cow was confirmed in the United States in December, 2003, it was major news. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been petitioned for years by lawyers from farm and consumer groups I worked with to stop the cannibal feeding practices that transmit this horrible, always fatal, human and animal dementia. When the first cow was found in Washington state, the government said it would stop such feeding, and the media went away. But once the cameras were off and the reporters were gone nothing substantial changed.

    • Syngenta Celebrates Earth Day by Ladling on the Pesticides

      Herbicide manufacturer Syngenta had an interesting way of celebrating Earth Day this year, touting the joys of pesticides.

    • Syngenta Hired Guns Attack New Documentary

      As a new film highlights water contamination throughout the U.S. Midwest from Syngenta’s flagship herbicide atrazine, the world’s largest pesticide company has mounted a PR counter-attack downplaying the human and environmental health risks of a chemical linked to birth defects, low birth weight and certain cancers. Atrazine was banned in the EU in 2003, leaving the U.S. market as one of Syngenta’s most profitable and vigorously guarded markets.

  • Security

    • Buyer’s Guide to Full Disk Encryption

      When a corporate laptop goes missing, do you worry about the risk of a data breach? There is good reason for concern: According to recent research by Symantec, 34 percent of data breaches are the result of lost or stolen devices such as laptops.

      The good news is that this is a preventable issue. A Full Disk Encryption (FDE) solution can ensure that sensitive information isn’t exposed in the event that one of your organization’s laptops is lost or stolen.

    • PHP patch quick but inadequate

      The updates to PHP versions 5.3.12 and 5.4.2 released on Thursday do not fully resolve the vulnerability that was accidentally disclosed on Reddit, according to the discoverer of the flaw. The bug in the way CGI and PHP interact with each other leads to a situation where attackers can execute code on affected servers. The issue remained undiscovered for eight years.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • ‘Cornucopians in Space’ Deliver a Dangerously Misguided Message

      In some sense, TED is the techno-innovators’ version of the faith expressed by neo-liberal economics, in which the market solves nearly all of its own problems. The enduring posture at TED, therefore, is one that acknowledges serious world problems, ranging from war to famine, water and food availability, but which nearly always concludes that amazing and ingenious people – geniuses – are working to solve the problem. The Great Man theory of history would find each TED conference a comfortable place to be.

  • Finance

    • The Inflation’s In The Poverty
    • American Houses and the Oil Denominator
    • The Washington Post Continues Its Love Affair With NAFTA and Disdain for Facts

      The Washington Post was a strong supporter of NAFTA at the time the deal was approved. It continues to be a strong defender of the pact nearly two decades later. It has repeatedly shown itself willing to make up facts or just ignore them to push its pro-NAFTA line.

    • Weaker US 1st Q GDP

      To avoid social discontent and, in addition to stimulate the economy, China has embarked on a (serious?) policy of building cheap housing for the urban poor. A total of 5mn homes are expected to be built this year, with goal of reaching 36mn by 2015. However, the financing for this proposed rapid build out is questionable. The Government has increased central funding for low income housing by +23% to 212 Yuan this year, though the expected bill for the 36mn homes comes in at Yuan 5tr !!!. Local Governments, however, are not keen on spending on social housing. In addition, corruption has, in the past, meant that affordable homes have been sold to relatives/friends etc, etc – estimated at near 80% !!!! (Source GK Dragonomics) and authorities classify certain building programmes as social housing, when they are clearly not. As a result, I remain totally sceptical of this programme;

    • Money won’t decide the next president. But it may decide the next Congress.

      President Obama’s reelection campaign is likely to have more money than any presidential campaign in history. Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign, when you factor in the super PACs supporting him, could have even more money than that.

    • Muppets Protest at Goldman Sachs
    • Mirabile Dictu! Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein Makes Case for Breaking Up Big Banks

      Goldman seems to be making a renewed effort at PR in the wake of the letter by derivatives staffer Greg Smith accusing the firm of caring only about profits and treating customers as stuffees (“muppets” was revealed to be the new term of art). That observation probably came as no surprise to anyone save Goldman staffers, most of whom probably thought they had conned their clients into believing otherwise, and a few like Smith who believed the party line.

    • Goldman Sachs pays £4.1m tax on £1.9bn profit

      The London arm of Goldman Sachs paid only £4.1m in corporation tax to the Treasury last year despite making pre-tax profits of £1.92bn, annual accounts have revealed.

      Goldman Sachs International (GSI) had a corporation tax bill of £422.3m but it deferred £418.2m – or more than 99 per cent of the amount – that it had to pay immediately in “current tax”. The Wall Street giant, presided over by Lloyd Blankfein, was able to postpone payment because of “timing differences”, according to the accounts.

    • Frontline’s Astonishing Whitewash of the Crisis

      Several of my savviest readers wrote expressing disappointment and consternation with the Frontline series on the crisis, “Money, Power, and Wall Street.” The first two parts of the four part series have been released, and it’s probably safe to say that this program is far enough along to be beyond redemption.

    • Goldman Sachs Closes Canadian Dark Pool Seven Months After Open

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) (GS) closed Sigma X Canada today, shutting down the dark pool for equities seven months after starting it.

      The stock trading venue stopped taking orders, according to a statement from the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada. Since all orders expire daily on Sigma X Canada, none will be open after it closes, the agency said.

    • Goldman’s O’Neill tipped to join Bank governor race

      In theory the post of next Governor of the Bank of England won’t even be advertised for several months.

      In reality, the scheming and jostling for position are already in full flow. A new name in the frame today is Jim O’Neill, the affable Goldman Sachs economist now chairing the bank’s asset management division.

    • Goldman Looks to Hire Social Media Strategist

      Goldman Sachs may dominate financial markets, but there is one frontier it has not yet conquered: social media.

      So the Wall Street firm that many on the Internet love to hate plans to hire a “social media community manager,” according to a posting on its Web site. The position involves overseeing the firm’s online communities and developing a “positive online presence.”

    • Memo to Schneiderman Mortgage Task Force: When You are in a Hole, Quit Digging

      So we have yet to be completed incremental staffing of a grand total of 15? 65 people pursuing to the biggest consumer fraud in American history, when the savings & loan crisis had 1000 FBI agents tasked to it?

      The worst is the insulting five financial analysts. Tell me how “financial analysts” are supposed to get up to speed on securitization. There aren’t that many people who are experts who are willing to educate people going against the banks, and I’d bet big money that the Feds won’t be able to hire anyone of that caliber (they’d make more doing expert witness gigs).

    • Goldman Sachs Wins Dismissal of Some Claims in CIFG Suit

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) (GS) won dismissal of some claims in a lawsuit brought by CIFG Assurance North America Inc. over $275 million in residential mortgage-backed securities.

      The insurer sued Goldman Sachs in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan in August, accusing the investment bank of making misrepresentations in connection with the securitization of a portfolio of 6,204 mortgage loans.

    • Lack of Trust – Caused by Institutional Corruption – Is Killing the Economy

      Perhaps because we don’t trust our government, our big corporations or our other institutions to do anything very helpful for the country. Indeed, we don’t trust our government, big corporations and other institutions to even allow a fair playing field where we have a chance of competing fairly to get ahead on our own initiative.

    • Wrangling over anti-bribery law rages on, with top firms facing investigation

      The U.S. anti-bribery law that Wal-Mart may have violated in Mexico has ensnared leading companies from virtually every sector of the economy as federal prosecutors increasingly crack down on a wide range of transgressions, from improper accounting to giving foreign officials computers and bags of cash.

    • Councilmembers discuss ways to get out of bond debt deal with Goldman Sachs

      The City of Oakland should find a way to get out of its interest rate swap agreement with Goldman Sachs, a deal that costs the city $4 million annually, according to a city staff report. The problem before the city council now is figuring out the best way to do that without costing the city more money.

    • Want to stop banks gambling on food prices? Try closing the casino

      Recent price spikes in global food commodities – most notably the bubbles of 2008 and 2010-11 – have exposed a fundamental fault of economic analysis: although speculation in the world’s food supply has long been suspected, no one has been able to prove it. The world’s most precious resources may have been transformed into a casino for high rollers such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and Deutsche Bank, but it’s nearly impossible to figure out who is betting how much.

  • Censorship

    • German Ministry Advises Developing Countries Not To Sign ACTA

      Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) advises developing countries against signing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, BMZ official Frank Schmiedchen said during a meeting of the Committee of Petitions of the German Parliament yesterday.

      The committee discussed a petition signed by over 60,000 German citizens calling for a stop to the ratification of ACTA by the German Parliament.

  • Privacy

    • Privacy concerns over popular ShowIP Firefox add-on

      A popular Firefox add-on appears to have started leaking private information about every website that users visit to a third-party server, including sensitive data which could identify individuals or reduce their security.

  • Civil Rights

    • Press Freedom Day – the world looks to Azerbaijan

      Today, 3 May, is United Nations World Press Freedom Day. For me this is a chance to remember the fundamental rights, including to self-expression, that are safeguarded for all of us in the European Union – whether you’re a journalist, blogger or ordinary citizen.

      And a chance to remember those people around the world who don’t have those protections, and are often restricted in what they can say or investigate.

      In places without human rights safeguards, the right to express oneself is all the more important. People who struggle for democracy must have a voice. People like Eynulla Fatullayev: Azerbaijani journalist, human rights activist and winner of the 2012 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. He dared to speak up to defend freedom of expression — and was for a time imprisoned for having done so. I salute his brave work.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • How and How NOT to Re-License your Work for Free Culture

        The last week has been terrific for “Lunatics”. We’ve cleared the licenses on almost all of the music — and certainly the most important pieces. However, for a moment, I want to focus on the little problem with the one minute of music we probably won’t get to use, and the right and wrong way to relicense your art if you are ever in that situation.

      • Dutch Judge Who Ordered Pirate Bay Links Censored Found To Be Corrupt
      • Programming languages not copyrightable, rules highest EU court

        The European Court of Justice ruled this morning that the functionality of a computer program and the programming language it is written in cannot be protected by copyright.

        Europe’s highest court made the decision in relation to a case brought by SAS Institute against World Programming Limited (WPL), effectively leaving the door open for software companies to “reverse engineer” programs without fear of infringing copyright.

      • What’s at stake in Oracle v. Google

        Traditionally, application programming interfaces (APIs) have been presumed to be non-copyrightable, because unlike other elements of a software, which involve creativity, APIs are typically comprised of facts that enable one specific task: how does my software program talk to your software program and vice versa?

      • TLWIR 36: Why Hollywood MUST Embrace Free Software Concepts To Survive

        Google’s ultra high speed Internet project aims to bring Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri Internet speeds 100 times the current U.S. average. This has Hollywood petrified. Will users with gigabit connections pirate enough movies to decimate the movie industry’s revenue? Will piracy crush Hollywood in the way that it crushed the music industry? Not if Hollywood is smart: they need to CAREFULLY study how the Linux kernel is developed, and how Free Software is developed in general.

      • ACTA

05.12.12

Links 12/5/2012: Dell Linux Laptops, OLPC Supported by Australia

Posted in News Roundup at 2:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • What on earth is Dracut?

    Dracut is a new system to generate, in the same way for all Gnu/Linux distributions, the special programs and files that make Linux boot.

  • Linux-libre

    I came across the GNU/Linux-libre almost by accident and have enjoyed taking Trisquel and Parabola gnulinux for a test drive. I found both communities friendly and helpful.

  • OSHackers – Find a Linux lover near you!

    OSHackers is a website that aims to count GNU/Linux users and place them geographically using their Linux distribution as the marker. You can visit OSHackers and put yourself on the map, and you can search for people that use Linux around your area.

  • The Biggest Problem For A Linux PC Vendor

    Optimus has already long been causing issues for those not after Linux pre-loads but installing Linux by themselves on laptops with an integrated Intel GPU and discrete NVIDIA GPU. AMD’s technology is also in a similar sour spot, but at least it’s less popular than NVIDIA’s hybrid technology.

  • Innovate or Imitate? Where Linux Lags, Where Linux Leads
  • Announcing printerd

    For the last few weeks I’ve been working on an experimental new print spooler called printerd. It was designed in collaboration with Richard Hughes and it aims to be a modern print spooler for Linux.

  • Desktop

  • Server

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • 5 Reasons Why You Should Update Your Kernel Often [Linux]
    • Control Centre: The systemd Linux init system

      A variety of distributions now let systemd, rather than sysvinit, take care of bringing the system up. The newest of the three big init system promises to speed up booting and requires no explicit system service dependency configuration; as a side-effect, it also eliminates some distribution-specific peculiarities.

    • Linux Hardware Support Myths and Legends

      Linux is compatible with more hardware than any other OS bar none. That certainly includes Windows. Try installing Windows 7 on some random laptop from scratch and see how much is missing or unsupported without third party drivers. My experience doing Linux installs for my customers is that a lot of off the shelf hardware “just works” and the rest needs proprietary drivers downloaded to make it work, just like Windows. There is, indeed, some hardware that doesn’t work with Linux and years ago that was a real issue. The fact is that more and more manufacturers are supporting Linux well and other drivers have been adequately reverse engineered.

    • Top 3 Websites To Check Whether Your Hardware Is Supported By Linux
    • Kernel Log: Coming in 3.4 (Part 3) – Graphics drivers

      Linux 3.4 includes a whole host of changes to drivers for AMD, Intel and NVIDIA graphics chips. The new kernel, expected to be released later this month, also contains a new USB DisplayLink driver and lays the foundations for better support for hybrid graphics technologies such as NVIDIA’s Optimus.

    • Graphics Stack

      • A Look At Why Linux Graphics Drivers Have Issues

        Here’s an interesting look at the state of the Ubuntu bug count as it concerns Linux graphics driver issues.

      • Why Opensource Xorg/Gallium drivers suck on linux desktop
      • Compiz, Merging, Forking – Other UDS-Q Notes

        Here’s some other interesting notes from the Ubuntu 12.10 Developer Summit this week in Oakland.

        - The Compiz compositing window manager will move from using OpenGL 2.x to using OpenGL ES. The porting of Compiz to OpenGL ES (GLES) was originally done by Linaro and will now be used within Ubuntu. While designed for the benefit of mobile users, the Linux desktop graphics drivers — including those using Mesa/Gallium3D — do support OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0. This change in moving from GL to GLES for Unity’s compositing window manager may initially cause some pain with broken plug-ins, etc. Notes here.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • My first video editing experience with KDEnlive
      • The Overhead of KDE Software

        When Calligra 2.4 was released there was a flurry of interest resulting in a number of articles in the press and blog posts. Some of these were regular reviews of higher and lower quality. One of them, which I think was one of the better ones, was this one by Påvel (in Swedish). In the review he says that Calligra has a good foundation, he likes it but there are obvious problems with it. I find that an honest and true assessment, especially since it is obvious that he has really tried it and been bitten by some bugs. (Some of these bugs are already fixed in 2.4.2, most of the rest will be gone in 2.5.)

      • [Sneak Peek] Vivaldi Content Store Shows Ankles For The Cinematograph

        Our good friends over at opentablets.org have posted a video from aseigo’s blog demoing the beginnings of the Make-Play-Live content store. No word yet on whether that name is official, but it does drape itself quite dramatically across the application’s login screen.

      • partner network, 8gb storage, applications

        Today is a day in which I find myself passing through many doorway as all sorts of milestones for our little project are coming up at once.

        As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, we’ll be shipping the Vivaldi tablet computer with 1GB of RAM .. and today I can tell you even more good news: we’ve doubled the internal storage to 8GB as well. We’ll be settling on the USA pricing shortly as well, and I think people will be pleasantly surprised with where that lands.

      • KDE Plasma Netbook Revisited

        With Unity, Cinnamon, and Gnome 3 getting all the buzz, it’s easy to overlook other interesting projects that attempt to rethink the traditional desktop metaphor. Case in point, the KDE Plasma Netbook interface. Despite its moniker, the KDE’s alternative interface is not limited to netbooks, although it’s designed for devices with small screens. KDE’s alternative interface has been around for a while, but I only recently started using it as a primary environment on my trusty ASUS Eee PC 1005HA netbook, and I grew fond of it for a number of reasons.

      • KDE Commit-Digest for 22nd April 2012
      • KDE Commit-Digest for 29th April 2012
      • LaKademy 2012 ‒ Artwork, Localization, Promotion, Development

        LaKademy brought together 19 Latin American participants, including developers, translators, designers and promoters. The full report has more information about major LaKademy outcomes related to artwork, localization, promotion, and developing.

      • Akademy Community Keynote: Agustín Benito Bethencourt (toscalix)

        Agustín Benito Bethencourt (aka “toscalix”) recently joined the KDE e.V. Board of Directors. He will be presenting the KDE Community Keynote at Akademy 2012 in Tallinn.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Make GNOME Shell Your Own: 10 GNOME Shell Extensions to Install

        GNOME Shell has been criticized for lacking many familiar features found in GNOME 2, but you can add them yourself with extensions. If you’ve installed GNOME Shell and didn’t like it, don’t write it off until you try some extensions.

        If you’re using Ubuntu, check out our guide to installing GNOME Shell and getting started. GNOME Shell is the default desktop on Fedora and should be available in most distribution’s package repositories.

      • Ubuntu Forks Gnome Control Center

        Ubuntu systems team has forked Gnome Control Center as Ubuntu Control Center which will be used in Ubuntu from 12.10 onwards.

        Bilal Akhtar, a young Ubuntu developer writes, “Gnome-contacts will be installed by default, clutter will be on the CD, totem will be updated to the latest version, and Ubuntu 12.10 should ship with a near-complete GNOME 3.6 stack (sans Shell, of course, and control-center).”

  • Distributions

    • The Eternal Distro

      Distro is short for distribution which in the software world mainly means Linux and BSD these days.

      Now, as good as the existing distros are (I use a bunch of different versions of Fedora Linux including fc1, f10 and f14, and also Vector Linux Classic and OpenBSD) they all have one irritating problem in that their software repositories disappear. OpenBSD 4.7 disappeared recently and Fedora Core 1 disappeared ages ago.

    • Rosa Marathon 2012lts
    • Best distributions for off-line use

      Internet is the the “Alpha and Omega” of our daily experience with computers, dominating, enriching and engulfing everything we do. This is the case with almost everyone around the world, but somewhere out there, there are computers that are not connected to the internet for some reason that we will not analyse in this article. What would be the ideal GNU/Linux distribution for such systems? Are there any linux distributions that can cover almost every need of an off-line user? Yes there are!

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 2 RC Released, Final Delayed

        The release candidate for Mageia 2 was released earlier today along with the note that the final release date had been changed. The changes are hard to see in the release notes, but perhaps prospective users might want to pay more attention to the errata list.

      • Dear Community – II
      • Mandriva: A new appeal to the community

        In a corteous and somewhat longer-than-usual post, Jean Manuel Croset has communicated with the Mandriva community again to inform some details of the situation (always mentioning that he is unable to disclose as much information as he would like) and to throw a new date on the table. This time, it is the third week of May, the moment in which the company will unveil its roadmap.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Strengthens Asia-Pacific Operations with the Expansion of Two R&D Centers in India
      • Red Hat, Dell announce OEM partnership

        The announcement Tuesday of a new partnership between Dell and Red Hat could mark a further expansion of open-source software use in the enterprise.

        OEM customers looking to Dell for custom products will now have additional open-source options. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss join SUSE as standard choices for Dell OEM.

      • Why I Bought Red Hat

        For a long time, corporate IT was managed by IT professionals. Such management had a lot of drawbacks. IT professionals are not easy people to get along with, they have strong opinions, talk to other people like children who don’t understand simple things. Unfortunately, they are usually right. Their strong opinions are based on knowledge and experience. And other people really don’t understand how IT works.

      • Red Hat CEO James Whitehurst Sells Shares for $6.8M – cbl

        CEO and President James Whitehurst sold Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) shares for $6.78 million, according to an SEC filing.

      • Something to Watch With Red Hat

        It had $209 billion of assets on its balance sheet, and $128 billion of that was in the form of goodwill and other intangible assets. Goodwill is simply the difference between the price paid for a company during an acquisition and the net assets of the acquired company. The $128 billion of goodwill in this case was created when AOL and Time Warner merged in 2000.

      • Red Hat to debut OpenShift PaaS solutions for on-premise enterprise use soon

        As it prepares for battle against VMware on the cloud front, Red Hat announced today that it will launch later this year its fee-based PaaS service with support and will begin shipping this summer integrated PaaS solutions that enterprises can deploy on premise that give its developers freedom to innovate while allowing IT to manage how apps are developed and deployed

      • Fedora

        • Grub 2 theme for Fedora 17

          Fedora 17′s grub2 screen won’t be the ugly black and white thing you saw in Fedora 16. The reason for the ugliness in Fedora 16′s grub splash is that it was the first release we used grub2 and there were some missing files that prevented the theme from working at all. We punted on it because grub’s splash is not shown by default and we had higher-priority issues to work on for Fedora 16.

        • It’s back! Fedora Reloaded Podcast

          This week Dave Le Sage, Suz, and I discuss Fedora 17, the upcoming release of the Free and Open Source Llinux computer operating system Fedora.

        • Fedora Project is naming names

          The Fedora Project is still trying to clarify its process of naming major releases, a process that has been met with calls for revision within the Fedora community.

          To address the problem, Fedora Advisory Board member Toshio Kuratomi is working to build a new naming process that will avoid some of the pitfalls of the most-recent naming concerns.

    • Debian Family

      • The Debian Administrator’s Handbook is available

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 12.04 vs. Windows 8: Five points of comparison
          • Ubuntu 12.10 Working To Play A Sound Theme

            Discussed on Monday during the Ubuntu 12.10 Developer Summit were the plans to introduce a new sound theme to the Quantal Quetzel.

            Through a community-driven submission process, they’ve narrowed down the sound theme they’re looking for but are still trying to make it sound “more human and less robotic.” With Ubuntu 12.10 they’re also looking at the ability to customize sound themes and briefly discussed at UDS-Q was the ability to have a LightDM start-up sound.

          • Ubuntu releases open hardware VGA Switch

            As part of his keynote at the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS), Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced the Ubuntu project’s first open hardware device. The Canonical created VGA Switch (VGAS-01) allows the disconnection of a VGA display from a system with the push of a button.

          • Reports from Ubuntu Developer Summit Highlight Major Momentum

            This week the Ubuntu Developer Summit is going on in Oakland, California, and Mark Shuttleworth and others have been filing some interesting reports coming out of the conference. According to Shuttleworth, today will be “Cloud Day” at the meeting, with speakers including Richard Kaufmann, CTO of HP Cloud, Randy Bias of Cloud Scaling, and Mark Collier of Rackspace. Perhaps the most interesting points coming out of the summit so far, though, have to do with new market share claims for Ubuntu.

          • Mark Shuttleworth Explains HUD for Ubuntu 12.10

            Mark Shuttleworth, father of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, proudly announced earlier yesterday, May 7th, at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Oakland, USA, the goals for the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 operating system.

          • My Ubuntu 12.04 Tweaks
          • First Post Release Unity Update Brings Massive Fixes to Ubuntu 12.04

            Ubuntu 12.04 has already received first post release Unity update and its only second week since final Ubuntu 12.04 was released.

            This release, specifically Unity 5.12 brings numerous fixes and optimizations including improved HUD and multi-monitor support, compiz fixes, dash improvements, music/video lens fixes and many more.

          • Install Latest Gimp On Ubuntu
          • Ubuntu 12.10 To Target Linux 3.5 Kernel, Maybe 3.6
          • Why a Developer Laptop?

            At the Ubuntu Developer Summit this week, Dell announced an effort they’re calling Project Sputnik. The basic idea was Dell’s latest and greatest XPS hardware pre-provisioned with developer infrastructure: a developer laptop, in other words. As Barton George discussed, this was in part – full disclosure – an idea of mine. One of the questions we’re fielding from the media following this announcement is why? What’s the point of a developer laptop? I cannot speak for Dell on their motivations or the project logistics, but there are two primary reasons I believe a developer laptop program broadly makes sense.

          • Dell readies Ubuntu Linux laptop for developers
          • New Dell Ubuntu ultrabooks a step in the right direction for Linux support
          • Ubuntu Friendly Wasn’t So Friendly After All

            Ubuntu Friendly — the Canonical-spawned initiative for the community to try to provide information on computer hardware that’s “friendly” to run Ubuntu Linux — is not being actively maintained.

            Just months after it launched, Canonical QA engineers are more or less letting Ubuntu Friendly stand still and wanting to hand the work off to others. Ubuntu Friendly basically came down to a hardware database that listed computer systems and their components known to be compatible with Ubuntu. Ubuntu Friendly never really took off as a community success and evidently have too much on their table to maintain, so a session on Tuesday was held where they were kicking around some ideas or how to make it a success. They want to “hand the project to better hands.”

          • Ubuntu Friendly Wasn’t So Friendly After All

            In a UDS session for Gnome 3 stack in Ubuntu 12.10, Canonical discussed about future plans of Unity interface.

          • UDS: He did NOT say that . . . did he?

            For reasons mentioned in yesterday’s blog item, I’m not at the Ubuntu Developers Summit in Oakland. Oh, I could go up there and attend — it’s only 80 miles from the cozy confines of the Felton redwoods — but I value my life and I’d like to keep it, thank you very much.

          • Ubuntu Still Trying To Lock Down Third-Party Debs

            In the name of security, Ubuntu developers are looking at ways to lock-down or verify the way third-party Debian packages are handled on Ubuntu Linux.

          • Precise Pangolin: Ubuntu Grows Up

            Precise Pangolin is a big step up in many regards. The new Ubuntu OS is friendlier with legacy hardware. It’s peppier and more responsive. I find it is far less sluggish on my older gear. It flies on my newest hardware. However, while its Unity interface has been improved somewhat, it’s still too limited and too confining, at least for some experienced Linux users.

          • EA Games and Ubuntu

            LINUX VENDOR Canonical has pulled out all the stops with Ubuntu 12.04 to get enterprises to give its Linux operating system a go, and on the whole it succeeds, even if some features might put off traditional users.

            Canonical’s Ubuntu 12.04 is known as Precise Pangolin and it is the firm’s fourth long term support (LTS) release with extended support for both desktop and server distributions for five years. As part of Canonical’s push into the enterprise, Ubuntu 12.04 rolls up the big changes seen in the four Ubuntu releases since Ubuntu 10.04 rather than introducing new ones, and the result is an operating system that feels more complete than other recent Ubuntu Linux releases.

          • Ubuntu 12.10 May Get Wayland as a Tech Preview

            In a UDS session today, Canonical discussed plans to implement Wayland Tech Preview in Quantal.

          • The X.Org Plans For Ubuntu 12.10

            - When it comes to the kernel side, as mentioned already, for Ubuntu 12.10 they are looking at shipping with the Linux 3.5 kernel or possibly Linux 3.6 depending upon the features and schedule.

            - They’re undecided whether to ship X.Org Server 1.12 or 1.13 in Ubuntu 12.10. X.Org Server 1.13 should be out in early September and will feature more input improvements, GLX_ARB_create_context support, and various other enhancements. Shipping xorg-server 1.13 comes down to there being NVIDIA/AMD binary blob support in time, whether the 1.13 changes end up being too invasive (namely if Airlie’s DDX driver rework is merged), and their bug count.

          • Ubuntu 12.04

            Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) is out. By now there are a zillion reviews of it already, but I wanted to take a little more time to use it before writing one of my own. Before I get into this review, I want to be clear that I’m not going to be reviewing Unity. By now most people know what it is, and either like it or don’t. There really isn’t any point in complaining about it any more. If you hate it then do not use Ubuntu, just find another distro.

          • Ubuntu TV Is A Popular Topic This Week

            Last year plans began to surface for Ubuntu TV — a version of the popular Linux distribution intended to be deployed by television manufacturers — and during the Ubuntu Developer Summit this week there was much talk about the Ubuntu TV plans.

            Back in January at CES I checked out the interesting Ubuntu TV prototype, which did use a modified version of Unity and was looking interesting. Ubuntu TV though has yet to ship.

          • Mark Shuttleworth, Open-Source Software’s Sugar Daddy

            Ten years ago, just ahead of a trip into space, Mark Shuttleworth took out an insurance policy on his reproductive future. “I put a couple swimmers on ice,” he says. “There was going to be a gamma ray source about a foot from my balls under my seat on the Soyuz. So I made a deposit in a secret location before I flew.”

          • The new Business Desktop Remix is out now

            Today, we released the latest version of the Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix, based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

            Most businesses deploying Ubuntu on corporate desktops perform a similar set of tasks – from removing consumer-focused applications and integrating with existing infrastructure, to installing commercial software for application virtualisation.

          • Ubuntu 12.10 To Further Binary Blob Handling

            While things are coming to a close in Oakland at the last day of UDS-Q, there was an interesting session that concerns the future of third-party driver installation on Ubuntu 12.10 and future releases.

          • Ubuntu Plans For A Future With Upstart

            If you were hoping that Ubuntu 12.10 would mark the switch from Upstart to systemd for its init daemon, there was no surprise announcement and the Ubuntu developers are continuing to push for the advancement of Upstart.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • 13 surprises from Kubuntu 12.04
            • Kubuntu Likely To Retain Name Despite New Sponsor
            • Xubuntu 12.04 REVIEW

              Most of the machines I use are laptops or tablets, but I also have a desktop that I use for recording my music. On that desktop, though, I have two different hard drives split in three (roughly 250GB) partitions, something that allows me to have different distros installed on it. Since late 2010, that machine had Ubuntu 10.10, PCLinuxOS KDE and Ubuntu Studio 9.04 spread across those three partions available. It was about time I went for a change, for a number of reasons, including the fact that Ubuntu 10.10 recently went out of support (needless to say, so did Ubuntu Studio 9.04). On top of that, PCLinuxOS had been stuck on KDE SC 4.6.5 for about a year, so I wanted a fresh update on all my partitions to get fully supported distros and up to date applications and features.

            • A GNOME Flavor Of Ubuntu – “GNOME-buntu”

              Thanks to growing user-interest, it looks like there is going to be a GNOME Shell flavor of Ubuntu to satisfy those who aren’t fond of the direction of Canonical’s Unity desktop.

            • Ubuntu 12.10 Won’t Have Btrfs Filesystem

              Canonical announced at the Ubuntu Developer Summit for Ubuntu 12.10, that they plan to stay with the good ol’ EXT4 filesystem for the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) distribution.

            • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS: The morning after

              Following the official release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin), I took the plunge and upgraded my main work PC from Ubuntu 11.10. Up until the release I had been running the 12.04 beta on a second machine. Although I can switch to GNOME 2 (Classic) quite happily on this system, for some reason — yet to be resolved — I can’t do this on my work PC. So I decided it was time to scrutinise the latest version of Unity running on the latest version of the OS. Some of the observations that follow relate to new features and some to features already present in Ubuntu 11.10 and earlier versions.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • OLPC Gets Backing in Australia

        For years, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative drew major headlines even as promises made by the initiative’s organizers were routinely missed. The original idea behind OLPC was to create $100 computers that could arrive in the hands of poor kids all around the world. Too bad that $100 price point was never achieved, and other problems arose.

Free Software/Open Source

  • What Would I Tell Developers About Using Open Source Software?
  • Do robots need a Linux or a Mac OS to thrive?

    Willow Garage sets its open-source software free to attract software developers and help make robots commonplace, but detractors say giving the software away is bad for business.

  • Nvidia contributes CUDA compiler to open source

    Nvidia Corp. said Wednesday (May 9) that LLVM, a popular open source compiler, now supports Nvida GPUs.

  • Web Browsers

  • Open Source Suites

    • Open Ballot: Should Apache abandon OpenOffice?

      In 2010, Libre Office, a new fork of OpenOffice was created. The main goal was to return control of the premiere free office suite to the community and creating new processes that would reinvigorate its development. By all accounts, it succeeded. Developers are getting behind the project, as are companies, and it seems that there’s something of a feature gap opening up between the two projects.

    • Apache Releases OpenOffice 3.4

      Today the Apache OpenOffice Project announced the availability of their inaugural release of Apache OpenOffice, version 3.4. Apache obtained the rights and code to OpenOffice last year and have now ‘vetted” and built “a solid and stable codebase, with significant improvement and enhancements over other variants.” But some are wondering if anyone cares?

    • Apache OpenOffice – Interview with Jürgen Schmidt

      Last week I spoke briefly with Jürgen Schmidt about the Apache OpenOffice 3.4 release, and he was able to give us a little insight into what was involved in getting this release out, and what’s coming in future versions. (Official Release Announcement)

    • When is a release not a release?

      Sixteen months after its last release. OpenOffice.org has released version 3.4, its first as an Apache Incubator project. The release was covered matter of factly by The H (http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Apache-OpenOffice-3-4-0-debuts-1570353.html), and with a dash of skepticism by Brian Proffitt (http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Apache-OpenOffice-3-4-0-debuts-1570353.html). A week ago, it was even trash-talked by LibreOffice developer Michael Meeks (http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2012-04-26-ooo-comparison.html), whose eagerness to discredit it was just a bit too obvious.

    • Open Source Suites Highly Active

      While the news about the ongoing Oracle-Google trial in the US has been holding my attention, there have been a sequence of news releases about desktop productivity showing up over the last few weeks. It’s all too good to miss, so here are summaries in the order the news broke:

      * First, Calligra Suite is starting to look interesting. They have released version 2.4.1 of Calligra Suite, and it’s a fine step forward. With its roots in the K Desktop Environment (KDE) it’s only realistically available for GNU/Linux at present, but there’s an experimental Windows build and talk of a future mac build. The user interface is clear and appealing and there’s support for the important Open Document Format (ODF) file format. It’s available online. The project has also announced it’s Google Summer of Code student activities, which will add useful new capabilities when they are ready.

    • Calligra Suite, the Promising Not-An-Office Suite

      Once upon a time there was KOffice, all full of unrealized potential. And then it was forked as Calligra Suite. The first release of Calligra was on April 11, 2012. Is this a contender, or another niche productivity suite?

      It’s a tough row to hoe, building an office suite. The applications are complex, even without thinking about interoperability. Microsoft Office is the tail that has long wagged the office suite dog, with all of its flaws and lard and barriers to interoperability and portable data. If an office suite doesn’t have MS Office compatibility it’s going to appeal to a limited audience. But times change, and now the Open Document Format (ODF) is nearly universal, which (theoretically) means that we can open our files in any application that supports ODF. And thus even the most stubborn titan of lock-in must eventually succumb, and now even MS Office claims ODF support.

    • Open source suites go beyond Microsoft Office

      Open source desktop productivity suites are experiencing an injection of enthusiasm, as recent burst of news releases confirms

    • Apache OpenOffice Downloads

      Here the issue. What makes a document? The physical form? The logical frame? Sheer convention? So, too, the “office” document. A generation has come to expect of a suite those things that are found in the prevailing application. But that assemblage is, however useful, nevertheless rather arbitrary. It was also spawned by the desires of white-collar workers in large corporations, not by the needs and desires of those outside of the corporate walls. Times have changed. Today, and even more so, tomorrow, virtually all people will have access to some form of a computer, and they will be wanting to create, edit, distribute their works. The number of those coming to this 21st century table is not small, it’s in the billions.

    • Apache OpenOffice turns to SourceForge for Distribution
    • Apache OpenOffice.org 3.4: Download it Now!

  • CMS

    • Winner Takes All: WordPress vs Drupal vs Joomla!

      When it comes to CMSs, WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal are the three leading names today. All three are open source software, and are free to use and customise. Each has its own community and user base, as well as a well-maintained repository of themes/templates and plugins/extensions. And all three have their pros and cons.

  • Business

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • To GNU or Not to GNU? That Is the Question

      There’s no denying the incendiary nature of the topic of desktop Linux, which tends to gets rehashed in heated detail every so often both on these pages and beyond.

      What some may not remember, however, is that there’s another recurring Linux subject that can be equally controversial. It hasn’t appeared in some time, but apparently some slow fires have been burning all along, because they just flared up anew.

    • Richard Stallman Cancels Event, Rushed to Hospital

      Reports state that Stallman was admitted to the hospital, but has since been discharged. Reports from Spain say Stallman was most likely suffering from symptoms of high blood pressure. The short note on www.fsf.org states that “he did not have a heart attack, as has been reported in some places.”

  • Standards/Consortia

    • OSI Supports Open Standards

      Nearly a decade after that original discussion at OSI – which itself was in the context of fairly established thinking – the UK Government seems to think this is still an open, undecided question. Why is that? It appears to be because industry bodies with a deep interest in protecting their existing, proprietary interests in the UK Government have lobbied that Government to re-open the issue. Moreover, during a change of leadership the responsible individuals in the Government decided to give those incumbents a second chance.

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