free software

  • Happy 30th, GNU!

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    Today is the 30th birthday of the GNU Project, which instigated the whole move towards free and open source software and the wealth of GNU/Linux distributions and software currently available.

    GNU’s initial aim, as outlined by Richard Stallman, was to develop a Unix-like operating system, but one which contained no proprietary Unix code.

    GNU 30th anniversary logo

    Stallman’s original announcement is reproduced below.

    Free Unix!

    Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu’s Not Unix), and give it away free(1) to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed.

    To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including on-line and hardcopy documentation.

    GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix. We will make all improvements that are convenient, based on our experience with other operating systems. In particular, we plan to have longer filenames, file version numbers, a crashproof file system, filename completion perhaps, terminal-independent display support, and eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen. Both C and Lisp will be available as system programming languages. We will have network software based on MIT’s chaosnet protocol, far superior to UUCP. We may also have something compatible with UUCP.

    Who Am I?

    I am Richard Stallman, inventor of the original much-imitated EMACS editor, now at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. I have worked extensively on compilers, editors, debuggers, command interpreters, the Incompatible Timesharing System and the Lisp Machine operating system. I pioneered terminal-independent display support in ITS. In addition I have implemented one crashproof file system and two window systems for Lisp machines.

    Why I Must Write GNU

    I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. I cannot in good conscience sign a non-disclosure agreement or a software license agreement.

    So that I can continue to use computers without violating my principles, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.

    How You Can Contribute

    I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and money. I’m asking individuals for donations of programs and work.

    One computer manufacturer has already offered to provide a machine. But we could use more. One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run on them at an early date. The machine had better be able to operate in a residential area, and not require sophisticated cooling or power.

    Individual programmers can contribute by writing a compatible duplicate of some Unix utility and giving it to me. For most projects, such part-time distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the independently-written parts would not work together. But for the particular task of replacing Unix, this problem is absent. Most interface specifications are fixed by Unix compatibility. If each contribution works with the rest of Unix, it will probably work with the rest of GNU.

    If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few people full or part time. The salary won’t be high, but I’m looking for people for whom knowing they are helping humanity is as important as money. I view this as a way of enabling dedicated people to devote their full energies to working on GNU by sparing them the need to make a living in another way.

    For more information, contact me.

    Arpanet mail:
    RMS@MIT-MC.ARPA

    Usenet:
    …!mit-eddie!RMS@OZ
    …!mit-vax!RMS@OZ

    US Snail:
    Richard Stallman
    166 Prospect St
    Cambridge, MA 02139

  • GNOME 3.10 released

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    Yesterday the GNOME project announced the release of GNOME 3.10, the latest version this popular desktop for GNU/Linux.

    This latest release in the GNOME 3 series includes many new features, applications and bug fixes, as well as enhancements and updates to many existing applications.

    Introducing the release, Allan Day of the GNOME Design Team said, ‟GNOME 3.10 is a significant upgrade for our users and developers will benefit from new features in the application development platform. Our contributors did an incredible job and have created a really exciting release.“

    Highlights for GNOME 3.10 include:

    • Experimental Wayland support;
    • A reworked system status area, which gives a more focused overview of your system;
    • Three new applications (which are technology previews): Maps, Music and Software;
    • Three new additions to the core set of GNOME applications: Notes, Photos and Weather;
    • ‟Software“, which provides an easy way to browse and install applications;
    • New geo-location features, such as automatic time zones and world clocks;
    • The ability to set a custom image on the lock screen;
    • High-resolution display support.

    GNOME 3.10 screenshot

    For developers, there are new GTK widgets, a geo-location framework that will allow location-aware applications and the ability to define composite widgets using XML.

    As stated above, GNOME 3.10 also introduces initial Wayland support. This represents a major technological step forward for GNOME and will enable the project to fully adopt the next generation display and input technology in the future.

    Full details of the changes in the new 3.10 version of GNOME are set out in the release notes.

  • Bristol Wireless to provide tech training in November

    Steve WoodsBristol, Linux, Open Source, Tech

    This November Bristol Wireless is offering a week of training days in its lab at Windmill Hill City Farm, Bedminster, Bristol.

    One topic will be covered each day of the week of the 25-29 November and there are four places available for each topic.

    The course topic for each day is:

    • Monday 25th November: Hosting web services
    • Tuesday 26th November: Linux Vserver virtualisation environment
    • Wednesday 27th November: SQL database programming
    • Thursday 28th November: System administration
    • Friday 29th November: Administration using Puppet automation software

    Tuition will start each day at 10 am and end at 5 pm.

    The tutors for the week will be Bristol Wireless’ Ben Green and Julien Weston. Ben has well over 10 years’ experience as a systems administrator, whilst Julien has been an accomplished database engineer for a couple of decades.

    Bristol Wireless uses Debian GNU/Linux as its preferred operating system and the courses will be taught on Debian, although participants are welcome to bring their own laptops and preferred operating systems to the courses.

    Participants must have some experience of Linux systems, including at least some command line skills and should expect a fast pace of learning. Each participant will be given a virtual server to experiment with on the day with the required tools set up for the topic at hand.

    Cost will be £200 per day, which doesn’t include food or accommodation, although the on-site city farm café will be open and there are plenty of other eateries in the area.

    For more information please contact Ben Green at Bristol Wireless at training2013@bristolwireless.net or on 0117 325 0067.

    Reposted from Bristol Wireless.

  • Is there a backdoor in Linux?

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Politics, Tech

    image of Linus Torvalds
    Linus Torvalds ponders answering another awkward question
    At this year’s LinuxCon held in New Orleans, Linus Torvalds and fellow kernel developers were asked whether they’d been approached by US security services to put a backdoor in Linux, thus compromising the operating system’s security, The Register reports.

    Linus responded to the question by saying no whilst at the same time nodding his head, thus indicating that he had been approached. He then resumed by completely denying any approach had been made. This was followed by another developer saying that such things couldn’t be discussed. Linus’ reaction is reminiscent of the reserve Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, on the NSA‘s Prism programme because any mention of it could be “treason”.

    Rumours of backdoors and other forms of hidden access routes in operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and security protection products have been in circulation for years. These rumours have been given a fresh lease of life following the recent revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

    Linus’ and the other developers answers have not exactly cleared the air as to whether Linux is as secure an operating system as its users are likely to believe. As The Register article points out:

    Worried netizens have become far more paranoid about the possibility of backdoors in the technology they use and this paranoia extends to both closed-source and open-source software.

    However, it is pointed out by The Register that security service agents who are rebuffed by developers then tend to leave them alone.

    Finally, there’s one point to consider: in open source anyone with the requisite skill is free to examine the code, modify and adapt it. On that principle, wouldn’t it therefore be more difficult to hide vulnerabilities and backdoors in open source products than closed, proprietary software?

  • Argentina introduces Huayra Linux

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Politics, Tech

    The Argentine state has developed its own Linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux, Germany’s Heise reports. Huayra Linux (the word huayra is from Quechua and means wind) is part of the Conectar Igualdad programme, which is aimed at closing the digital divide in Argentina by equipping schools better. Three million netbooks were handed out to pupils and teachers under this programme between 2010 and 2012. Huayra Linux is an important building block for achieving this programme’s goals since it frees users from reliance on proprietary software suppliers, such as Microsoft.

    Huayra Linux logo

  • LibreOffice improves support for OOXML

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    the LibreOffice logoAccording to Heise, Suse and Lanedo have completed a project to improve the interoperability of the free and open source LibreOffice productivity suite with OOXML, the format used by Microsoft Office files. The requirements were jointly defined by several bodies, including Munich City Council, the Swiss Federal Court and the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and the project received total funding of €160,000.

    The improvements have been incorporated into LibreOffice versions 3.6, 4.0 and 4.1. The code is licensed under the LGPL and MPL 1.1 3, but may also be used under the Apache 2 licence, so it can also be incorporated into Apache OpenOffice.

  • Orca screen reader improves Braille functions

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    Orca logoOrca, the screen reader for the GNOME desktop used on Linux machines, is now at the Beta 2 stage for its forthcoming 3.10 release. According to Softpedia, the 3.10 Beta 2 release fixes the broken text attribute presentation for Gecko, the new sliders are now present in GNOME Shell, partially-implemented value interfaces with range of 0 to 1 are now handled and a workaround has been added for Delete and Backspace text changed events.

    Moreover, Braille functions are now performed only when Braille is enabled and object:active-descendant-changed has been added to events that may be part of an “event flood”.

    Finally the Polish and Slovenian translations have been updated in Orca 3.10 Beta 2.

    See the fairly basic change log for all changes since the last release.

  • Under 3 weeks to LibreOffice Conference

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    The LibreOffice Conference will officially open in less than three weeks at the University of Milan on Wednesday, 25th September, the blog of The Document Foundation reminds us. The opening session will be held in the historic Cà Granda building, while all technical sessions and tracks will be hosted by the Department of Computer Science.

    image of LibreOffice Mime type icons
    LibreOffice for all your office suite needs: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, database, drawing and formulas

    The conference is being sponsored by Canonical (the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ed.) and open source consultancy Collabora, whilst Google and CloudOn will be sponsoring the live ‘hackatons’ happening on Wednesday and Thursday evening and open source consultancy Lanedo sponsoring the food for the conference breaks.

    The conference will close on Friday, 27th September with the traditional Q&A session, where project members can question The Document Foundation’s board of directors.

    The conference tracks will cover the following:

    • Open Document Format (ODF);
    • LibreOffice Development;
    • Community Development;
    • Best Practice for Deployments and Migrations; and
    • Building a Business with LibreOffice.

    For the first time during a conference, there will be a chance of sitting together with LibreOffice developers to hack the code, or just discuss the next feature.

    “LibreOffice Conference comes to Italy at the right time, as during 2012 and 2013 there have been several migrations to LibreOffice in the public administrations at regional and local level,” says Italo Vignoli, a member of The Document Foundation’s board of directors and the leader of the conference team. “Meeting with the project members will encourage other public administrations and enterprises to undertake the migration to LibreOffice”.

    Conference sessions will be broadcast online, as well as being recorded and made available on the conference website.

  • Linux for Munich

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    Munich Linux CDMunich City Council has announced that a total of 2,000 Linux CDs featuring the Ubuntu 12.04 Long Term Support (LTS) distribution will be given away from next Monday in Munich’s public libraries according to the German technology news site Heise. The city’s Administration and Personnel Commission decided to take this step on 19th June 2013 because Microsoft is finally ending support for Windows XP on 8th April 2014 and will not be providing any more security patches for the operating system from that date onwards.

    Bavaria’s capital city thus wants to make sure first and foremost that computers which have been using Windows XP do not end up as electronic waste. Furthermore, Munich wants to be regarded as an “innovative expert in the open source sector”.

    Nevertheless, the council points out that it cannot provide any support at all for the chosen Linux distribution and that users should refer to for this to suppliers in the database of the local Chamber of Commerce & Industry (IHK) and ubuntuusers.de.

  • Canonical and Dell launching Ubuntu computers in 1,000+ shops in China

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    The Canonical blog reports that Dell and Canonical will be launching Dell machines running Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux operating system in more than 1,000 outlets in China in the next few weeks.

    Dell and Canonical will be jointly extending a range of Dell hardware pre-loaded with the Chinese language version of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS across a swathe of major Chinese cities. Sales in the original stores have proven so successful that the companies have agreed to expand to beyond 1,000 outlets.

    Ubuntu's Chinese store promotional materials
    Ubuntu’s Chinese store promotional materials

    This is the latest of a series of developing partnerships in China for Ubuntu. In March 2013 it was announced that the Chinese Ministry for Industry & Information Technology had selected Ubuntu as the basis for its reference architecture for operating systems (posts passim).

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