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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.
Brides to stay

10/11/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities

Judging by the home page of today’s Reach plc Daily Post/North Wales Live title, one could be led to believe that human trafficking and forced marriage are alive and well in Talybont north of Abermaw/Barmouth in Gwynedd.

However, it is only when one reads the article that it is revealed that brown envelopes of cash have been proffered, not marriageable women.

The front page has since been amended.
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. Although the original 404 page linked to from this post has now disappeared, Reddit has a full transcript of the text that used to appear on that page.
COP27 – a laugh from the past

07/11/2022 Steve WoodsMedia, Politics

The world’s top greenwashing event COP27 is currently taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.

To give an idea of the under-achievement of previous UN conferences on climate change, it’s worth pointing out that activist Greta Thunberg is boycotting the event, stating that it will be an opportunity for “greenwashing, lying and cheating“. Greta is famously critical of politicians as her “blah, blah, blah” speech showed.

Anyway, in anticipation of a lack of any serious commitments and outcomes from the world’s political elite allegedly having a conferenceshores of the Red Sea, here’s a reminder from the past, in the shape of Ronnie Barker’s Ministry of Pollution sketch from the second season of The Two Ronnies, first aired in 1972.
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.
Badly raised boys

06/11/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

Your ‘umble scribe likes to think he was properly brought up: polite, courteous, not swearing people, particularly women, and such like. As regards swearing, his sister has more than once revealed that when she and my late father were on a bus once, he admonished fellow passengers for swearing because women were present.

As regards swearing, step forward over-promoted former fireplace salesman “Sir” Gavin Alexander Williamson CBE MP, the dishonourable member for South Staffordshire who has been inexplicably elevated to cabinet rank (again!) as Minister of State without Portfolio, who appears to have been taught and abide by completely different standards of social conduct to those of your correspondent.

News has emerged over the weekend that Williamson sent ‘expletive-laden’ text messages to the then Conservative chief whip Wendy Morton all moaning about not being invited to attend the late queen’s funeral.

According to the messages published by today’s Sunday Times, Williamson accused Morton of exploiting the Queen’s death for political purposes, particularly as he was out of favour at the time with the English Empire’s shortest serving ever prime minister, one Elizabeth Mary Truss, now safely removed from high office and returned to the back benches.

The actual words quoted by the press reveal that Williamson has a fine command of monosyllabic swear words having their roots in Old English (which some still call Anglo-Saxon. Ed.), particularly ones beginning with f and s.

Not only did Williamson use foul language towards a woman, but this morning his cabinet colleague Oliver Dowden (also inexplicably honoured with a CBE like Williamson. Ed.)defended Williamson on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, claiming Williamson’s offensive text messages were sent ‘in the heat of the moment‘.

I blame both of their sets of parents.
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.
Heron on the Danny

01/11/2022 Steve WoodsBristol, Language

On a walk into town on Sunday in bright sunshine, you ‘umble scribe encountered a visitor to the River Frome in the inner city (where it’s also known at the Danny. Ed.) near the Peel Street bridge – a juvenile grey heron.

According to the RSPB, grey herons can be seen around any kind of water – garden ponds, lakes, rivers and even on estuaries.

The one pictured above was seen in close proximity to a stretch of the Danny frequented by a small shoal of roach, so perhaps it was after one (or more) of them.

In addition to fish, grey herons will also consume small birds such as ducklings, small mammals like voles and amphibians.
Celebrity?

01/11/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

The disgraced former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, one Matthew John David Hancock, has lost the Conservative Party whip for agreeing to take part in trash TV show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, The Guardian reports.

Tory chief whip Simon Hart is quoted as saying, “Following a conversation with Matt Hancock, I have considered the situation and believe this is a matter serious enough to warrant suspension of the whip with immediate effect”.

The dictionary definition of a celebrity is someone who is famous, especially in areas of entertainment such as films, music, writing, or sport. Unless politics has become a branch of the entertainment business, classifying Hancock as a celebrity is a tad far-fetched, even though politics has previously been described as show business for ugly people.

Your ‘umble scribe would contend that Hancock is no celebrity. However, what he does have is notoriety, particularly from his term of office as health secretary. In June 2021, after it was shown he had breached COVID-19 social distancing restrictions by kissing and embracing an aide, Gina Coladangelo, in his Whitehall office, Hancock resigned as Health Secretary, having been caught not only cheating on his wife, but also breaking his own social distancing rules. At the time Ms Coladangelo was a non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care. She was also an old college friend of Hancock’s from his time studying PPE at Exeter College, Oxford.

However, Ms Coladangelo’s appointment to the DHSC is not the only example of Hancock’s cronyism. There was the revelation of his ownership of shares in a family company used by the NHS, not to mention the award of an NHS contract to a neighbour. Furthermore, Hancock is the member of parliament for the West Suffolk constituency, which includes Newmarket, capital of the country’s horse-racing business. One of the reasons the pandemic took such a strong hold in the country was the delay in locking the country down, which allowed such superspreader events as the traditional March Cheltenham Festival to take place.

Of course, Hancock is not the first MP to be lured onto I’m A Celebrity. There was of course the notoriously useless Right Dishonourable Member for Mid-Bedfordshire, one Nadine Vanessa Dorries. Dorries also famously lost the whip for appearing on the show (where she famously ate ostrich anus in the bushtucker challenge. Ed.), apparently for committing the ultimate discourtesy of not informing the whips’ office of her absence from Halitosis Hall. However, this disciplinary action did not do much to dent her career prospects as she was subsequently and inexplicably elevated to the cabinet position of Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport by disgraced former alleged party-time prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Come the next election, will the good burghers of West Suffolk decide that Hancock belongs on a show entitled He’s A Calamity… Get Him Out Of Here!?

Update 5/11/22: Hancock’s decision to take part in the show and leave his constituents without parliamentary representation while he earns a fat fee – rumoured in the media to be £350-400K – in addition to his £84,144 p.a. salary as an MP has not gone down well with some constituents, The Guardian reports.
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”.

Data sold for advertising purposes in auctions

Truly private browsing results in loss of revenue

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