free software | Steve Woods

Freeze for Debian 8

07/11/2014 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

Debian 8, codenamed Jessie, will be the next stable release of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system.

The Debian release team has frozen the current software status of Jessie, German IT news site heise reports. From now on the developers will only include important bug fixes in the distribution.

Jonathan Wiltshire of Debian’s release team has announced that the current software status of Debian Jessie (version 8 of the operating system) has been frozen according to plan. The only changes that are now possible are only bug fixes for critical errors and major bug fixes for program packages that do not form the core of the Debian distribution.

At present the developers have counted over 300 release-critical bugs for Jessie, but there is still no definite deadline for the release of Jessie as Debian’s next stable release, although this will probably be in the next few months.

Your correspondent has been using Debian Jessie on his laptop for over one year now and it’s been very stable and reliable, even though it was still in the testing phase and not really intended for use in a production environment.

Cloud & Open Source event in Brighton (Hove actually!)

31/10/2014 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

Omnis Systems in Brighton is organising an event – Open Source, the Cloud and your Business – at Sussex County Cricket Club, Hove, BN3 3AN (map) on Tuesday 18th November.

banner for event

Many organisations in the private, public, voluntary and community sectors are now starting to look seriously or are in part using “the Cloud” and Open Source technology. However, there is still some as to the business benefits that can be realised by using these tools.

Those who worry are not alone. Very often even IT resellers and consultants find it difficult to understand if they are offering the best solutions to their customers as they have limited visibility on what is available apart from the offerings from their standard vendors.

This seminar will be examining what Cloud and Open source technology actually are, how public and private sector organisations are using them and what business opportunities they offer. The seminar will also explore a few of the common myths that surround those technologies and get into some real life case studies on how organisations can benefit.

Time	Description	Speakers
09:00 / 09:30	Registration & event presentation
09:30 / 10:00	Cloud, Open Source or both? Understanding what “Cloud” really is. The definition, the services, the good, the bad and the ugly. There are very useful aspects of the Cloud to consider but there are also some issues that have security, economical and ethical impacts you may have not considered.	Paolo Vecchi Omnis Systems
10:00 / 10:30	How you could help the Public Sector in being more efficient by offering your services through G-Cloud and how we can help you getting there faster.	Chris Farthing Advice Cloud
10:30 / 11:00	Providing “Cloud” services since before it was cool. Moving bits for UK businesses.	Joe Kerr FastNet
11:00 / 11:30	Coffee break & time for networking/questions
11:30 / 12:00	Securing your Cloud identity with Single Sign-On and strong authentication	Giuseppe Paternò SecurePass
12:00 / 12:30	Local government representative from London talking about their experience with Open Source and Open Alliances that could be formed between organisations to share code and experiences (Awaiting confirmation and full speech description)	TBA
12:30 / 13:30	Lunch break and networking
13:30 / 14:00	Technology Choices for Business Strategy Businesses compete fiercely in an ever faster changing market. Public bodies too must deliver better for less. Their strategic response is to focus on users, iterate products, drive down costs, design for easy change, share knowledge and experience, and widen access to more kinds of suppliers and innovation. Find out how your technology choices can support business aims. Tariq Rashid, speaking in a personal capacity, previously leading on open source for the Cabinet Office.	Tariq Rashid
14:00 / 14:30	Open what? Does Open Source matter to my business? It may matter as, like it or not, you are using a lot of it but your suppliers don’t want to tell you. We will also look at examples of how IT resellers let down their customers by selling them the wrong solutions for the job and how Councils spend (badly?) our money… … and at a few tools, including Collax V-Cube & Business Server, that businesses can adopt to consolidate their IT infrastructure, simplify its management and reduce costs.	Paolo Vecchi Omnis Systems
14:30 / 15:00	Zarafa Communication Platform a safer & cost-effective way to communicate Zarafa has always been the best drop-in replacement for Microsoft Exchange but now is taking its ambitions further. With the inclusion of telephony, video conferencing, file & document sharing and many other features Zarafa is now ready to take on Office365 and GoogleApps. What’s the point? You can control your data & your privacy, integrate your applications and at the same time spend even less than by using general purpose Cloud applications. Zarafa Communication Platform can be installed on Linux distributions like RedHat, Ubuntu and Debian. In this presentation it will be shown running on Univention Corporate Server which allows you to manage your Linux based infrastructure using a professionally designed web interface.	Marco Welter Zarafa
15:00 / 15:30	LibreOffice-from-Collabora provides an enterprise hardened and supported build of the world’s most popular Open Source ‘Office’ software LibreOffice. Large Corporate and Public Sector organisations now have a secure and long term supported alternative to proprietary Office software.	Tim Eyles Collabora
15:30 / 16:00	Coffee break, networking, QA
16:00 / 16:30	Reducing costs and complexity. Open Source based solutions for Windows and Linux desktop virtualisation	Mike Trevor Cutter Project
16:30 / 17:00	Entando, the most agile way to share informations and connect to the “Internet of Things”	Rinaldo Bonazzo Entando
17:00 / 17:30	How Linux and Open Source platforms allow us manage millions of emails and contacts on our mailing and CRM solutions	Andrew Mann Synchromedia
17:30 / 18:30	QA, networking, beers, wine.

Full and up-to-date details are available on the Omnis Systems website.

Target for signed PDFs in LibreOffice reached in 3 days

25/10/2014 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech
EU open source news site Joinup reports that the crowdfunding appeal launched by Wilhelm Tux for the incorporation of signed PDF functionality in LibreOffice (posts passim) has reached its target of CHF8,000 (about €10,000) in just three days.

To date 90 organisations, companies and individuals have contributed to the Wilhelm Tux crowdfunding campaign, including Swiss Post Solutions, a division of the Swiss Post Office (isn’t it great to see the public sector supporting free and open source? Ed.).

Once implemented, LibreOffice will be able to:
- Create PDF documents with legally accepted digital signatures accompanied by a timestamp;
- Conform to PDF/A signature standards;
- Use either Mozilla Firefox or Thunderbird to manage certificates using a simple interface.
Implementation of the project has been awarded to Collabora, an open source IT service provider, and the work is expected to be completed by April 2015.

Collabora, which is based in Cambridge, has issued a statement in connection with the Wilhelm Tux crowdfunding campaign, which declares:

The success of their campaign shows that Swiss businesses want LibreOffice, want digital signing, and, given the opportunity, are happy to pay for it. It also demonstrates the freedom that the LibreOffice ecosystem provides to businesses. Independently of The Document Foundation who steward and steer LibreOffice development, and independently of the many businesses who have stakes in the future of the application, organisations of any size can organise the addition of new features. When their needs are shared, they need not even bear the exclusive burden of cost.

Work on adding digital signature functionality to this popular free and open source office suite was initially started in 2012, but then stagnated.
Hamburg’s Greens want to be rid of Microsoft

21/10/2014 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Politics, Tech

Hamburg’s Green want to wean the city council off its Microsoft dependency and are pointing to Munich city council’s use of Linux and free and open source software, German IT news website heise reports today.

On the occasion of the impending 2014 Open IT Summit Hamburg’s Greens demanded the liberation of the city council from dependency on Microsoft. For Green Party Hamburg Parliament member Farid Müller (pictured left) it’s a matter of examining “if and how Hamburg can disengage itself from the US giant Microsoft”. The city must become independent of Microsoft the monopolist. By doing so it could also save millions in licensing costs. In this context Müller refers to the LiMux project in Munich, where the city council’s use of Linux and free and open source software is currently under discussion.

The 2014 Open IT Summit, whose emphasis is on open source and data security, is taking place today (Tuesday) as an alternative event to the IT summit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel taking place in Hamburg. The range of topics extends from the Heartbleed bug via cloud computing up to a Microsoft exit strategy for Hamburg. a podium discussion will sound out whether a migration to free software is realistic for Hamburg.
Nominations open for Women in Open Source award

16/10/2014 Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Data, Open Source, Tech
Opensource.com reports that Linux purveyor Red Hat is now accepting nominations for the Women in Open Source Award. Created to highlight the achievements women making major contributions to an open source project, to the open source community or through the use of open source methodology, this award is the first of its kind.

The award celebrates all different kinds of contributions to open source, including:
- Code and programming;
- Quality assurance, bug triage and other quality-related contributions;
- Involvement in open hardware;
- System administration and infrastructure contributions;
- Design, artwork, user experience (UX) and marketing;
- Documentation, tutorials and other forms of communication;
- Translation and other internationalisation contributions;
- Open content;
- Community advocacy and management;
- Intellectual property advocacy and legal reform;
- Open source methodology.
Nominees can qualify for one of two tracks:
- Academic award: open to women enrolled in college or university; and
- Community award: open to all other women.
- $2,500 stipend, with a suggested use of supporting an open source project or efforts; and
- A feature article on Opensource.com.
The Women in Open Source Community Award winner will receive:
- Ticket, flight and hotel accommodation for the Red Hat Summit to be held in Boston, Massachusetts on 23rd-26th June 2015;
- $2,500 stipend, with a suggested use of supporting an open source project or efforts;
- A feature article on Opensource.com; and
- Speaking opportunity at a future Red Hat Women’s Leadership Community event.
Nominations are open until 21st November. Judges from Red Hat will whittle down the nominees to a subset of finalists for both the Academic and Community awards, from whom the public will decide the winners. The winners will be announced in June during an awards ceremony at the 2015 Red Hat Summit in Boston, Massachusetts.

Originally posted on Bristol Wireless.
Introducing the anonabox

15/10/2014 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

Crowdfunding site Kickstarter has announced that August Germar is currently raising funds for anonabox, a Tor hardware router that will re-route data through the Tor network for security and anonymity.

The anonabox is an open source internet networking device designed to run alongside a current home router or modem. Small enough to fit in a jacket or trouser pocket, the device directs all of a user’s internet traffic via wifi or an Ethernet cable to Tor, where his or her original IP address is hidden from prying eyes, an important privacy consideration since Edward Snowden revealed the scope of surveillance routinely carried out by the NSA in the USA and GCHQ in the UK.

August was originally seeking a total of $7,000 to take the project further, but has already raised 10 times that amount, according to Computerworld. At the time of writing the total had risen to $501,872 and the appeal for funds still had 27 days to run.

August has produced a small video to introduce the anonabox and how it works.

Kickstarter backers can reportedly secure an Anonabox for $45, a few dollars cheaper than what it will allegedly be sold for.

Reposted from Bristol Wireless.
Swiss raise funds for LibreOffice development

14/10/2014 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards

Wilhelm Tux, a Swiss organisation promoting the use of free software, has launched a fundraising campaign to improve LibreOffice, with the target of raising €8,000 to implement the signing of PDF documents in LibreOffice, German IT news site heise reported yesterday.

LibreOffice can already digitally sign ODF files, its native file format. However, it has no equivalent function as yet for PDF files; the relevant code is still regarded as experimental and not mature yet. Collabara, a software company specialising in free software, will use the money raised to bring the code up to the stage of production application.
New version of Sigil epub editor released

07/10/2014 Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source, Tech

In February this year John Schember announced the end of the Sigil free e-book editor on the Sigil project website due to time pressures. However, now there is a new release which is due to the contribution of developer Kevin Hendrick. In addition to some bug fixes and minor improvements, Sigil 0.8.0 mainly provides plug-in support.

Sigil screenshot. Click on image for full-sized version

Like its predecessor Sigil 0.8.0 is open source and licensed under the GNU GPLv3. Nevertheless, the plug-in system was written in a way that allows plug-ins to be released under any licence their author wants and must not necessarily be open source. Plug-ins are called upon with the aid of a plug-in launchers which is itself covered by a BSD licence. The plug-ins themselves remain independent and could also be used by other applications. The new plug-in API is similar to that of Calibre, so that some Calibre plug-ins can be used with only minor changes. John Schember’s blog provides comprehensive details of the release announcement.

The new version of Sigil is available for download on the project’s Github page as source code, as well as for Windows and Mac OS. For Linux distros, the current release is already available for Arch Linux in the community repository, whilst for Fedora it is in testing. There are also packages for Ubuntu in various unofficial Launchpad repositories.
Happy birthday TDF and LibreOffice

25/09/2014 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

On 28th September 2014 The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice productivity suite will both turn four. In that time LibreOffice has had eight major releases, close to 100 million downloads, attracted over 800 new developers, a large number of active volunteers in every corner of the planet and millions of desktops “migrating” from proprietary to free office suites.

LibreOffice is the fastest growing free software project of this decade: for 48 months in a row, it has been able to attract at least three new code contributors per month and an even higher number of volunteers active in localisation, quality assurance, marketing, communications and the development of local communities.

Earlier today (25th September) The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 4.3.2; this is the second minor release of the LibreOffice 4.3 family, further improving the quality of the most advanced and feature-rich free office suite for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. Further details of the release of LibreOffice 4.3.2 are available on The Document Foundation’s blog.
Under a week to go to SFD 2014

15/09/2014 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

It’s under a week to Software Freedom Day (SFD) 2014, which is being held this year on Saturday, 20th September.

SFD is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The organisers’ goal in this celebration is to educate the public all over the world about the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, government, in business and at home – in short, everywhere!

Software Freedom International a non-profit organisation, coordinates SFD at a global level, providing support, give-aways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organise the local SFD events to involve their own communities.

For anyone wishing to organise a local event, there’s a handy start guide on the SFD wiki, as well as promotional materials.

If you do organise an event, don’t forget to register your event and team so the event can be added to the 2014 events map.

Software Freedom Day was established in 2004 and first observed on 28th August of that year.

Reposted from Bristol Wireless.

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