The Linux Foundation has recently released the video below to celebrate the world’s largest collaborative technology project.
People are being encouraged to upload their own videos, tagging them with #WeAreLinux and telling the Foundation why they’re Linux.
Because of its freedom, stability and reliability, I’m Linux. Are you? 🙂
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has announced a fundraising drive for GnuGPG, the world’s leading privacy tool.
GnuPG has an estimated base of more than 4 million active users around the world and attracts a thousand new users each day. It guards emails, files and programs from snooping and spying on Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux. This crucial program needs help to keep going in 2015 and beyond.
Continuing revelations about government spying have shown how little of our information is really safe. GnuPG is one of the few tools that can offer real protection. Edward Snowden used it to encrypt his communications with journalists. All companies and individuals running free software systems use it to protect their software against manipulation – sometimes without even knowing about it. Credit card data and back-ups are routinely encrypted using GnuPG and the program will continue be needed for many years in the future to restore that data.
GnuPG is available free of charge, but it costs money to develop and maintain. For more than a decade, g10code GmbH, the company owned and headed by GnuPG’s principal author Werner Koch, has been bearing the majority of these costs. The company is seeking €120,000 to carry on its work on GnuPG in 2015.
With this money, the company will:
Donors will be listed on the GnuPG website and in the next GnuPG release, unless they choose to remain anonymous.
You can donate directly to the GnuPG project through this page: https://gnupg.org/donate/.
Following on from news yesterday of the threat to the GNOME trademark from a series of applications for the same name by Groupon (posts passim), the latter has now withdrawn those applications and issued the following statement.
Groupon is a strong and consistent supporter of the open source community, and our developers are active contributors to a number of open source projects. We’ve been communicating with the Foundation for months to try to come to a mutually satisfactory resolution, including alternative branding options, and we’re happy to continue those conversations. Our relationship with the open source community is more important to us than a product name. And if we can’t come up with a mutually acceptable solution, we’ll be glad to look for another name.
UPDATE: After additional conversations with the open source community and the Gnome Foundation, we have decided to abandon our pending trademark applications for “Gnome”. We will choose a new name for our product going forward.
The GNOME Foundation is a non-profit organisation promoting the goals of the GNOME Project, helping it to create a free software computing platform for the general public that is designed to be elegant, efficient and easy to use.
The Foundation is currently facing a threat to its GNOME trademark from global deal-of-the-day website merchants Groupon, who have recently announced a product that’s also called Gnome. Groupon’s Gnome comes in the form of a tablet-based point-of-sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation.” It therefore has little to do with creating an elegant, efficient, easy to use free software platform for the general public, but more with liberating cash from the wallets and purses of the general public. The Groupon offering is shown on the left.
As a result of this threat from Groupon, the GNOME Foundation has released the following statement and appeal for funds.
“GNOME” has been a familiar name in software for the past 17 years, and a registered trademark since 2006. The GNOME project has been a staple desktop for GNU/Linux and BSD desktops. It was the default desktop for Sun Microsystems workstation class machines, continues to be the default desktop for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server distributions, and it is the default desktop of Fedora and Debian. SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service solution for the retail industry is based on GNOME. GNOME technology can be found in TVs, tablets, phones, consumer devices, and in common software everywhere.
Recently Groupon announced a product with the same product name as GNOME. Groupon’s product is a tablet based point of sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation.” The GNOME community was shocked that Groupon would use our mark for a product so closely related to the GNOME desktop and technology. It was almost inconceivable to us that Groupon, with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue, a full legal team and a huge engineering staff would not have heard of the GNOME project, found our trademark registration using a casual search, or even found our website, but we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications (the full list of applications they filed can be found here, here and here). To use the GNOME name for a proprietary software product that is antithetical to the fundamental ideas of the GNOME community, the free software community and the GNU project is outrageous. Please help us fight this huge company as they try to trade on our goodwill and hard earned reputation.
We want to show that our brand matters and that you care. Of the 28 trademark applications Groupon filed, we have to file formal proceedings to oppose 10 of them by December 3, 2014. Help us raise the funds to fight back and most of all call public attention to this terrible behavior by Groupon. Help us make sure that when people hear about GNOME software they learn about freedom and not proprietary software. Our counsel has advised us that we will need $80,000 to oppose the registration of the first set of 10 applications. If we are able to defend the mark without spending this amount, we will use the remaining funds to bolster and improve GNOME. Please help us raise the money to protect GNOME’s trademark and strengthen Free Software!
GNOME will gratefully accept donations to fight this trademark dispute to preserve free software.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Earlier this year, Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, the GNU project and man often described as the conscience of the free software movement, gave a talk to TEDxGeneva on an “Introduction to Free Software and the Liberation of Cyberspace”.
If you haven’t heard RMS talk before on free software and freedom in general, this is a good introduction to the man and his ideas.
Heise reports that the major change in version from 1.48 to the newly released version 2.0 of the Calibre e-book management software are not apparent in its interface or feature list. However, on the inside the developers have converted the code to the Qt 5 GUI library and thus eliminated quite a few errors which were due to the Qt 4 library previously used. In particular, errors in text display should therefore be a thing of the past. Nevertheless, Calibre 2.0 no longer supports Windows XP and OS X versions prior to 10.7 (Lion). Anyone using these dated operating systems would be better off sticking with Calibre 1.48.
However, the developers of version 2.0 have still added some new features. The software can now also synchronise e-books under OS X with MTP mobile devices (Android phones and tablets). There is a new Mark Books tool that can be used to mark books temporarily. The mark appears as a little pushpin icon next to the book and all marks are automatically cleared by restarting calibre. A detailed version history can be seen in the changelog.