tech | Steve Woods

French open source market still dynamic

10/11/2022 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

The CNLL (France’s Free Software and Open Digital Enterprise Union), Numeum and Systematic Paris-Region commissioned MARKESS to carry out a study of the open source market in France and Europe (PDF), analysing the sector by identifying the main underlying trends since 2019 and anticipating future developments up to 2027.

At the heart of the most dynamic digital sectors, free and open source software is continuing its progress which started more than 20 years ago and currently accounts for a market of nearly €6bn. in France.

“Year after year, open source continues to grow, with a very encouraging outlook of almost 8% per year between 2022 and 2027. This strong growth shows the growing influence of open source on the digital economy in France and in Europe”, states Marc Palazon, chairman of Numeum.

This progress is long-term. After having grown fortyfold in less than 20 years, the turnover of the open source sector in France must is still expected to grow faster than that of the overall software and digital services market over the next 5 years. France is also confirming its European leadership, along with Germany and the UK.

For Philippe Montargès, chairman of Systematic Paris-Region’s Open Source Hub: “Open source is emerging as the quiet force of the digital sector. The growth of open source remains strong and has been for more than 20 years! France is reinforcing its European leadership with earnings of almost €6 bn. in 2022 and more than 60,000 direct jobs. These are two pieces of good news, especially since this lasting and positive dynamic is reflected in a strong increase in the penetration of free software into many innovative technologies and solutions (cybersecurity, cloud infrastructures, AI/Data, IoT, telecoms, SaaS, etc.) and extends widely throughout Europe.”

The study therefore confirms the overall dynamism of free software in Europe. Open source is becoming more and more European by being structured around companies, communities and user organisations that make it the core of their development strategies. The main reasons for adopting open source are still costs savings and the strategic leverage effect, but also increasingly the ease of collaboration and skills development. The support of the European Commission, which has been announced since the publication of the last study in 2019, has gone hand in hand with the implementation of national policies in many member states and contributes to the dynamism of the open source sector.

Furthermore, this growth is giving rise to a massive recruitment within the sector and the entire ecosystem which will have to train and recruit more than 26,000 new full-time equivalents (FTEs) between now and 2027, who will join and swell the ranks of the 64,000 employees currently developing and integrating open source solutions. The skills needed in free software are numerous and varied – developers, DevOps or marketing professionals, architects and consultants – as can be seen by browsing recruitment websites..

Beyond training, a real industrial policy must be defined and implemented in France and Europe to take full advantage of the contribution of free software to innovation, technological independence and a more ethical and responsible digital sector.

“Companies in the sector have long been calling for an industrial policy to make it an asset in a strategy to regain European digital sovereignty. Among the measures we expect: a proactive public sector purchasing policy; dedicated funding that takes economic models specific to free software into account; pro-competitive measures that limit the ability of dominants stakeholders to close down the market to the detriment of SMEs; more stringent open standards requirements and a dedicated training policy”, concludes CNLL Joint Chairman Stéfane Fermigier.
A good 404

09/11/2022 Steve WoodsOddities, Open Source, Tech

Those whose fingers get into a tangle will be familiar with the HTML 404 error code page, just one of a number of HHTP status codes, of which the 400 series deals with client errors.

A moment’s digital dyslexia this morning meant your ‘umble scribe was treated to Shropshire Council‘s 404 error page, as shown below.

Umbraco is the open source content management system (CMS) used by the council to manage its website.

Your correspondent particularly likes the final line: “This page is intentionally left ugly ;-)”.

Computer scientist Brett Victor has an artistic 404 page, which pays homage to surrealist artist René Magritte.

However, my favourite 404 page of all time assumes the persona of Marvin the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams’ Hithchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and can be seen here in all its glory.
Second YH4F launches

07/11/2022 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

Registration for for the second edition of “Youth Hacking 4 Freedom “, the Free Software Foundation Europe’s hacking competition for teenagers from all over Europe, has opened. The contest offers young people aged between 14 and 18 the opportunity to challenge themselves, meet like-minded people and win cash prizes of €4,096, €2048 and €1024.

Registration is open until 31 December, after which the six-month coding phase will start, ending at the end of June 2023.

YH4F aims to inspire young people by giving them the chance to hack on a software project in a fair and fun way while meeting other young developers from all around Europe. The winners will receive a cash prize and a two-day trip to Brussels with other hackers for the award ceremony.

The first edition of the competition was a huge success with broad participation and well-coded winning projects. Over a hundred people coming from 25 different countries registered and submitted 35 project at the end of a five-month coding phase. The six winning entries offered sign language transcription, a smart table robot, a personal assistant, a music tutorial, a file sharing program and a homework manager. All the programs are licensed under free software licences, thus granting everybody the right to use, understand, share and improve them.

Ekaterina, one of the winners of the first edition of the YH4F competition, states: “Taking part in this competition was personally a big step as before it I have never ever programmed something and I did not have knowledge to do so. During the project I learned a lot more about programming concepts, how can I implement the modules and generally the programming language Python“.

To be eligible to enter participants must be between 14 and 18 years old and live in a European country. The YH4F competition includes an introductory online event in which the FSFE team will present the competition and answer questions about it. Participants are free to use their imagination to the competition as any type of software can be coded as long as it is free software. The projects submitted can therefore be stand-alone programs written from scratch or a modification and combination of existing programs, in addition to which participants will be able to follow each other’s work and exchange ideas.

Projects will be submitted to the expert jury at the end of June 2023.
Germany – photographing illegal parking is lawful

04/11/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Privacy, Security, Tech

German newspaper <a href="https://www.welt.de/regionales/bayern/article241937155/Urteil-Buerger-duerfen-Falschparker-fuer-Anzeige-fotografieren.html".Die Welt states that it’s so obvious: people wanting to report an illegal parker just pull out their smartphone and then send the picture to the police. However, two men in Bavariahad trouble with the state’s data protection authorities. A court has now decided who acted corrected.

A Ferrari parked on the footway being booked in Munich.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Anyone who sends photos of illegal parkers as part of a report to the police does not normally violate data protection legislation. This emerged on Thursday from two landmark rulings published by the Ansbach Administrative Court. With these the court agreed with two men who corroborated their reports of parking infringements on footways and cycleways with photos. For using this they received a warning and a fine of €100 each from the Bavarian State Data Protection Office (LDA). Both objected and went to court with the support of Deutsche Umwelthilfe e.V. (DUH)

The administrative court combined the two procedures in a joint hearing because of the identical questions and ultimately ruled that the procedure involved lawful data processing. However, the actual statement of is not available. The verdicts are of fundamental significance from the legal point of view, but are still not absolute.

The DUH, which supported one of the two plaintiffs in a test case, welcomed the verdict. “Illegal parking is no trivial offence, but endangers people who are travelling by bike, wheeled walking frame, wheelchair or pram”, commented Jürgen Resch, its Federal director. “The authorities should not take action against civil society commitment, but rather take consistent measures against blocked footpaths and cycle paths, illegal parking in front of dropped kerbs or at junctions; and do so not just in Bavaria, but nationwide.»

The crux of the proceedings was the question of whether digital transmission of the photos constituted lawful data processing within the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation since there must be a legitimate interest in forwarding the image files. On the other hand, data transmission and processing must be necessary.

Accordingly, the parties to the proceedings before the court argued about whether the plaintiffs had to be personally affected by the parking violations and whether a written or telephone description of the facts including the vehicle registration number, was not sufficient. In addition, the LDA pointed out that other data such as other cars with registration plates and people can often be seen in the pictures. In reply, the plaintiffs stressed that the police had asked them to document the parking situation as accurately as possible with photos as evidence.

The LDA stated that once the judgment’s statement of grounds was available, it would examine whether the decision was an individual case or whether a reassessment of the use of photos in public places that was critical for data protection had been initiated. In addition, it wants to agree clear and uniform guidelines with the police regarding which information is required when reporting illegal parking and which communication channel should be used.
Chrome’s incognito mode is anything but – allegedly

01/11/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Open Source, Privacy, Security, Tech

Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser first introduced in 2008. Based largely on the open source Chromium browser, perhaps the best description for it is proprietary freeware.

French IT news website Le Monde Informatique reports that a federal judge in California is examining complaints against Google alleging that the company is tricking users into believing that their private life is protected when using the browser’s incognito mode. The lawsuit which was initiated before the North California District Court more than 2 years ago by 5 users is now awaiting a more recent petition from these plaintiff in a class action. One of the complaints concerns Chrome users with a Google account who accessed a non-Google website containing Google tracking or advertising code and who were browsing in incognito mode; a second covers all users of Safari, Edge and Internet Explorer with a Google account who accessed a non-Google website containing Google tracking or advertising code in private browsing mode. According to legal documents first disclosed by Bloomberg, Google employees joked about the browser’s incognito mode and the fact that it was not really private. They also took the company to task for not having done more to provide users with the privacy they though they were enjoying.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who presides over the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, will decide whether the tens of thousands of users of Chrome’s incognito mode can be grouped together to seek statutory damages of $100 to $1,000 per violation, which could potentially increase the fine to over $5 bn. The definition of the word incognito is to disguise or conceal one’s identity. The confidentiality settings of web browsers are intended to delete local traces of sites visited by a user, as well as web searches and information provided when filling in online forms. Simply put, private modes such as incognito are not supposed to track and record data from web searches and sites visited by users. Google is also facing proceedings linked to user confidentiality from the justice ministers and public prosecutors of several federal states including Texas, the District of Columbia and Washington. Earlier this month Google settled a lawsuit filed by the attorney general of Arizona for $85 mn. Initially filed in June 2020, the class action was asking for at least $5 bn., accusing Google of surreptitiously collecting data on what people were viewing online and where they were browsing despite using private browsing mode. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say they have a large number of internal Google emails proving that managers have known for years that private browsing mode does not do what it claims. When a user chooses to use this incognito mode, Google’s browser is supposed to delete browsing history and cookies automatically at the end of a session.

Data sold for advertising purposes in auctions

The plaintiffs, who are Google Account holders, alleged that the search engine collected their data, distributed it and sold it for targeted advertising through a real-time auction system (RTB). LThe plaintiffs allege that even in incognito mode, Google can see what sites Chrome users are visiting and collect data by means which include Analytics, digital fingerprinting techniques, concurrent applications and processes on a user’s device and AdManager. The latter is a Google service enabling businesses to distribute and create web, mobile and video advertising reports for a company.

According to one report, more than 70% of all website use one of more of Google’s services. More specifically, the plaintiffs allege that every time a user with private browsing mode active visits a website running Analytics or AdManager, the search giant’s software scripts on the site surreptitiously order the user’s browser to send a secret separate message to its servers in California. “Google learns exactly what content the user’s browser software was asking the website to display, and it also passes a header containing the URL information of what the user viewed and requested online. Device IP address, geolocation data and user ID are all tracked and logged by Google”, according to one report in the lawsuit. “Once collected, this mountain of data is analyzed to build digital records on millions of consumers, in some cases identifying us by name, gender, age, and medical conditions and political issues we researched online”, the lawsuit claims.

Truly private browsing results in loss of revenue

In March 2021, a California judge denied 82 motions by Google’s attorneys to end the lawsuit and ruled against the company, allowing it to proceed. In July that year the company was sentenced to pay almost one million dollars in legal fees and expenses as a penalty for not having disclosed evidence concerning the lawsuit in a timely manner.

This week a spokesperson for Google told the Washington Post it had been frank with users about what its incognito mode offers in terms of privacy and that the plaintiffs “deliberately misrepresented our statements”. Jack Gold, senior analyst at J. Gold Associates, said the company makes the majority of its revenue by tracking everyone and selling ad space. “If they’re really creating a completely private browsing experience, then the revenue stream is gone,” he said. “So, I suspect there is a ‘balancing act’ going on internally as to where the borders are around privacy vs. tracking. No company builds a free browser without being able to generate revenues somehow”. The plaintiffs in the case said they chose “private browsing mode” to prevent others from learning what they’re viewing on the internet. When it comes to using Google Chrome and other browsers, “let the user beware,” Gold said. “You have to trust the maker to take care of your privacy, but it’s not always in their best interest to do so”.
Free digital workshops for over 55s

26/10/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Tech

Starting this Friday, Eastside Community Trust is organising a series of digital skills workshops for the over-55s from 12.30 to 2.30 pm as part of the Eastside Connect project.

Eastside Connect is a peer-to-peer project that works with people over the age of 55, who live in Easton or Lawrence Hill. The project strives to harness the skills and experience both lived and knowledge base to enable participants to share and discuss their desires for what older people want to see and do in the area they live, either individually or collectively. We have a variety of activities, all asked for by those who attend such as “Cuppa to Connect” a time for tea and a natter, “Come dine with us” – a community meal and more recently “East Mingle” at Trinity Arts creating a way to connect through dance, music and discussion.

The sessions are free and there’s the added lure of free refreshments, so if you’re free on Friday, an apprentice or fully qualified pensioner come along with your device – be it laptop, tablet or mobile phone – and problems and the delightful Gary and your ‘umble scribe will provide loads of useful advice and try to sort them out for you! 😀
Introducing Ubuntu Pro beta

11/10/2022 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Security, Tech

Canonical is currently offering a public beta version of Ubuntu Pro, giving Ubuntu Linux users extended maintenance and security compliance for software packages ranging from the Node.js runtime to Python 2 and Rust. Security cover will be extended for average and high common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) for thousands of applications and toolchains including Ansible, Apache Tomcat, Apache Zookeeper, Docker, Drupal, Node.js, Puppet, Python 2, Rust and others.

A free thirty days trial is available for businesses. Ubuntu Pro is available for data centres and workstations. A free level is being offered for small-scale personal use (up to 5 machines).

Since the launch of Ubuntu LTS with 5 years support for the main operating system, businesses have asked the supplier to cover a larger area of the open source landscape under private commercial agreements. These benefits are now offered free of charge to anyone with a free personal subscription to Ubuntu Pro. This may also be combined with 24/7 enterprise level for the Ubuntu operating system.

Ubuntu Pro is available for all Long Term Support (LTS) versions of Ubuntu from version 16.04 LTS upwards. The standard Ubuntu Pro subscription covers security updates for all Ubuntu packages. In addition, Canonical’s Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure subscription has been renamed Ubuntu Pro (Infra-only) with no change in its price or range. The Infra-Only subscription covers the base operating system and the private cloud components required for large-scale and bare metal and excludes wider cover for applications. Subscribing to Ubuntu Pro costs US $25 dollars per year excl. tax for one workstation or US $500 dollars per year for a server. On public clouds Ubuntu Pro costs some 3.5% of the average cost of the underlying processing environment.
Amazon Workspaces offers Ubuntu virtual desktops

04/10/2022 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

The AWS blog writes that the company loves to give its customers choices: the choice of infrastructure to deploy their workloads, store their most important data, or the operating systems for their virtual desktops.

To this end it has started offering Ubuntu virtual desktops, based partly on the premise that “Ubuntu is the most widely used operating system among professional developers (66 percent Ubuntu, 61 percent Windows, and 57 percent macOS)”.

To date your correspondent has seen both Ubuntu’s Unity desktop – as shown above – and the lightweight Xfce desktop as an alternative.

It has been a quip of open source enthusiasts that next year will be the year of Linux on the desktop (instead of the Beast of Redmond’s ubiquitous operating system.

AWS is now demonstrating that 2022 is the year of the Linux desktop on someone else’s computer. 😀
EU open source repository now online

04/10/2022 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

The EU Commission has launched the code.europa.eu open source repository with over 100 projects to promote open software development, heise reports.

The EU Commission has started operations of its open source development platform code.europa.eu without much ado. The Director General for Informatics, Veronica Gaffey, announced the launch of the open source repository two weeks ago at an Open Forum Europe conference two weeks ago. The platform should facilitate “the collective development, exchange and reuse of solutions for European public services”.

In Gaffey’s words: “We created a central code repository, one which I can now announce publicly. You will find our software development platform at code.europa.eu. So, code.europa.eu facilitates the open development of software projects from the Commission as well as the other European Union institutions. We start today with just over 100 projects and 150 developers, but the OSPO is busily onboarding others.”. The focus is on projects by the Commission and other EU institutions, but also “in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and elsewhere in the EU”.

In December last year we got rid of an outdated, complicated, bureaucratic legal process that stopped us sharing open source. Now Commission projects that wish to share their software with others are free to do so,” Gaffey explained.

The European Public License (EUPL) 1.2 should be used as the main licence for new source code on the platform, according to EU open source news site Joinup. The EUPL has been adapted to European law and is compatible with version 2 of the more well-known GNU General Public License (GPL). Code added to existing projects will use the same license as previously, such as the Dynamic Discovery Client, which uses the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
Audacity 3.2 released

29/09/2022 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

When it comes to open source audio editing software, Audacity is the software package your ‘umble scribe has been using and recommending to others for over a decade and a half.

The latest minor point release for the software – to version 3.2 – nevertheless brings some major new features, including real-time effects. Furthermore, the package will now run natively on Apple’s Silicon Macs, according to German IT news website heise, whose headline rates it as ‘Genuine competition for commercial audio software‘.

Audacity was first released in 22 years ago and since then it has made major strides towards becoming a fully-fledged end-to-end production tool for everyone who works with audio, from multi-track recording and editing to podcast production, i.e. a complete digital audio workstation (DAW).

The new version press release states that the Audacity team has been working hard to empower audio creators with the following highlights of this release: real time editing capabilities, VST3 plugin support and sharing, the latter via Audacity’s new audio.com sister service.

For a full list of changes in Audacity 3.2, read the release notes.

Audacity is available for download for Linux, Mac and Windows and your correspondent is awaiting the new version’s arrival in the Debian GNU/Linux software repositories.

Data sold for advertising purposes in auctions

Truly private browsing results in loss of revenue

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