free software | Steve Woods

Free software explained in under 3 minutes

08/04/2022 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

Your ‘umble scribe has long been an avid user of free and open source software. For a long time, read for over 2 decades.

Indeed, GNU/Linux (often simply termed Linux. Ed.) has been my operating system of choice for over 17 years.

But what exactly do the terms free software and open source actually mean? How does software bearing these labels differ in comparison to the proprietary software used by most people and organisations? And finally, why does any of this actually matter?

To answer these questions, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has recently produced the video embedded below. It takes under 3 minutes to watch and provides succinct answers to the questions posed above.
New Turkish LibreOffice guide

25/02/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

Yesterday the blog of The Document Foundation – the German non-profit organisation behind the free and open source LibreOffice suite – reported on the release of a Turkish language guide for the productivity software.

Image courtesy of The Document Foundation

The guide has been translated from the English Getting Started Guide by Ayhan Yalçinsoy, a member of The Document Foundation and Board of Directors deputy.

Ayhan comments:

I’ve been using LibreOffice since 2010. It makes me happy to support and contribute to this application that I use with pleasure. For this reason, I have been trying to contribute by translating the interface and help text since the day I started using it. I know that every contribution counts in the open source world.” says Ayhan. “I would like to thank Muhammet Kara for what he has done for LibreOffice here. I learned from him how I can contribute to LibreOffice apart from interface translation. I solved some easyhack issue with his support.
After all these contributions, we established a certification team. We started the translation work for the LibreOffice Getting Started Guide 6.2 about a year ago, but for some reasons we could not continue. This issue remained in my mind. Finally, with the encouragement of Muhammet Kara and the sponsorship of TUBITAK/ULAKBIM, I completed the translation of Getting Started Guide 7.2.

Ayhan is currently working on a Turkish guide for Calc, LibreOffice’s spreadsheet program and is also appealing for volunteers to help him with this task, as his ultimate aim is to make Turkish language guides for all of LibreOffice’s constituent applications.
NASA – Open MCT 2.0.0 has landed

23/02/2022 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech, Uncategorized
US space agency NASA is an extensive user of free and open source software (posts passim). Today German tech news site heise reports on the release of Open MCT 2.0.0.

With version 2.0.0 has released an update of the Open Mission Control Technologies open source framework. Open MCT was developed at California’s Ames Research Center and is used by NASA as a mission control framework for data virtualisation on desktop and mobile devices.

Image courtesy of NASA

NASA utilises Open MCT for analysing space missions and for planning and implementing experimental rover systems. Included in the latest release is a plug-in which enables adaptation of the framework to be used as an API from Angular to node.js, which is now supported. Critical bugs have also been fixed. Firstly, newly created items which shared a name with an existing object were not displayed in the tree structure. Furthermore, a faulty CSS selector prevented the correct mapping of plans in the timestrip display.

Additional changes include two bug fixes and seven Open MCT maintenance and testing problems, including a display error in which a grid remained visible when the inspector was closed and an error message that popped up during client-side URL redirection. The project is working on four aspects on the maintenance side: the event generator has been adapted from the Angular-based legacy API for node.js and re-implemented.

Besides its use for space missions with NASA Open MCT is an open source framework that could be adapted, according to the developers, for applications as varied as:
- Monitoring of IoT devices;
- Drones;
- CubeSats;
- Robotics;
- High altitude balloons;
- Electronic health monitoring;
- Computer and network performance monitoring;
- Enterprise data visualisation; and
- Process control monitoring.
More information on this latest release may be found on GitHub.
Google and Microsoft finance open source security campaign

04/02/2022 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Security, Tech

A new initiative by the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) should improve the security of open source applications, German news site heise reports. The campaign, called the Alpha-Omega Project, is the result of negotiations at the White House between representatives of technology companies, US authorities and non-profit organisations. The initial funding of $5 mn. is being financed jointly by Google and Microsoft.

Image courtesy of opensource.com

OpenSSF is organising the project in two parts – Alpha and Omega. In the Alpha section expert groups are analysing the security situation of the most-used open source applications to find and remedy vulnerabilities. This should train software operators and users in security awareness. In the Omega section a team of software developers is working on automated tests for over 10,000 distributed open source project to propose possible security measures to their user communities.

Open source projects and libraries are widely used in software development. The Log4Shell vulnerability in the widely-distributed Log4j Java library recently showed how critical an attack can be. Even after a month and a half it still remains unclear whether companies have survived the worst. Users and companies should therefore investigate their own systems for vulnerable instances of the Log4j library and install current patches.

More details of the Alpha-Omega Project can be found in the official announcement.
Digital Markets Act: Device Neutrality finally becomes a reality

17/12/2021 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

After many iterations and amendments, the European Parliament adopted the Digital Markets Act (DMA) by 642 votes in favour, 8 votes against and 46 abstentions, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) reports.

The Act introduced the principle of Device Neutrality. At the same time, the Parliament missed the chance to introduce strict interoperability requirements based on Open Standards.

The FSFE has urged EU legislators to safeguard Device Neutrality in the DMA. We regret the voting has not contemplated setting Open Standards as default to define interoperability. However, getting Device Neutrality in the legislation is the first step. The right for end users to use their own devices and operating systems is an important factor to guarantee the access of free software operating systems to dominant platforms. As a daily reality for many users, this option enlarges the audience for free software adoption.

Lucas Lasota, the FSFE’s Deputy Legal Co-ordinator, remarked as follows:

We strongly believe the digital markets will benefit by facilitating access to Free Software in devices. Device Neutrality translates in the DMA as stricter consent rules for pre-installed apps, safeguards against vendor lock-in and real-time data portability. Interoperability of services was also introduced, but not with the requirement to be based on Open Standards. This is a lost chance to leverage competition with accessible and non-discriminatory technical specifications. Open Standards are an important element for innovation by allowing market actors to innovate on top of technical specification standards and build their own services.

The FSFE has been working for two decades empowering people to control the technology in their devices. It will closely follow the implementation of the Act and continue its activities and initiatives to safeguard the interests of end users.
EU Commission wants to release its software as open source

08/12/2021 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

The European Commission announced today that it has adopted new rules on Open Source Software that will enable its software solutions to be publicly accessible whenever there are potential benefits for citizens, companies or other public services.

The Commission’s recent studyon the impact of Open Source Software and Hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy revealed that on average, investment in open source results in four times higher returns. The Commission services will be able to publish the software source code they own in much shorter time and with less paperwork.

One example of the benefits of releasing software as open source is eSignature, a set of free standards, tools and services that help both public and private sector organisations accelerate the creation and verification of electronic signatures that are legally valid in all EU Member States.

A second example is LEOS, (Legislation Editing Open Software), the software used across the Commission to draft legal texts. Originally written for the Commission, LEOS is now being developed in close collaboration with Germany, Spain and Greece.

Single repository

The Commission will make its software available as open source in one single repository to enable access and reuse. Before its release, each software package will be checked to avoid security or confidentiality-related risks, data protection problems or infringement of third party intellectual property rights.

The Commission already shares hundreds of software projects as open source, including software developed for the Connecting Europe Facility, Eurostat, the Interoperable Europe Programme (Interoperability solutions for public administrations, businesses and citizens programme, the former ISA² programme), and for the Joint Research Centre.

Commenting on the announcement, the EU’s Commissioner for Budget and Administration, Johannes Hahn, said:

Open source offers great advantages in a domain where the EU can have a leading role. The new rules will increase transparency and help the Commission, as well as citizens, companies and public services across Europe, benefit from open source software development. Pooling of efforts to improve the software and the co-creation of new features lowers costs for the society, as we also benefit from the improvements made by other developers. This can also enhance security as external and independent specialists check software for bugs and security flaws.
EUPL now a “legal licence” in France

06/12/2021 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

On 3rd December, French Décret no. 2021-1559 of 1st December 2021 was published in the Official Gazette, Joinup, the EU’s public sector news site reports.
This decree makes the European Union Public Licence (EUPL) a “Legal Licence” for use by public sector organisations in France.

Before the approval of this decree, French public sector organisations who wanted to use the EUPL had to justify it individually in a long administrative process. Since the EUPL is a reciprocal licence stating that derivatives of the covered software must likewise also be distributed under the EUPL, this represented an additional barrier for sharing and reusing software between European institutions, France and the rest of EU.

French public sector organisations are major users and developers of free/open source software. It is estimated that some 1,000 have published about 9,000 free and open source projects.

In addition to the EUPL, the decree mentioned above also adds the Eclipse Public Licence to the French “legal” list. The Eclipse Public Licence is a free and open source software licence most notably used for the Eclipse IDE and other projects by the Eclipse Foundation, an independent, Canada-based not-for-profit corporation that acts as a steward of the Eclipse open source software development community.
Ubuntu 21.10 released

16/10/2021 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

Two days ago, Canonical announced the release of Ubuntu Linux 21.10, codenamed Impish Indri.

Canonical’s CEO Mark Shuttleworth said of the release:

As open source becomes the new default, we aim to bring Ubuntu to all the corners of the enterprise and all the places developers want to innovate. From the biggest public clouds to the tiniest devices, from DGX servers to Windows WSL workstations, open source is the springboard for new ideas and Ubuntu makes that springboard safe, secure and consistent.

This latest Ubuntu release is a short-term one with nine months of support that precedes the next long-term support (LTS) version, Ubuntu 22.04.

The new release’s default desktop interface is GNOME 40, whilst there have also been some updates to the distribution’s default desktop programs, which now include the LibreOffice 7.2 office productivity suite, the Thunderbird 91 e-mail client, and the Firefox 92 web browser.

Ubuntu 21.10 is available for immediate download for 64-bit systems (32-bit support ceased some time ago. Ed.)
LibreOffice 2021 Conference details announced

03/09/2021 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech, Uncategorized

Italo Vignoli has posted details of the 2021 LibreOffice Conference (which will take place online. Ed.) on the Document Foundation’s blog.
This year’s LibreOffice Conference will open at noon CEST on 23rd September and will conclude at 5:30p.m. CEST on 25th September.

The conference schedule has been finalised and is now available. Of course, there may last minute changes until 12th September when the schedule will be frozen. Sometime after that date the schedule will also be available on Android mobiles
People attending the LibreOffice Conference via Jitsi are asked to register by filling in this form. Registration will enable the conference organisers to manage conference sessions in the best way and provide a better experience than in 2020 (when a couple of unwelcome “guests” tried to spoil the event). LibreOffice advocates and conference attendees can support the event by purchasing LibreOffice Conference merchandise from Freewear.
In addition to the Document Foundation blog, conference announcements will be posted on two Telegram groups – LibreOffice Virtual Conference Announcements (https://t.me/LibOcon) and LibreOffice Virtual Conference (https://t.me/liboconvirtual), as well as the dedicated LibreOffice Conference website.
Debian 11 bullseye released

16/08/2021 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

Your ‘umble scribe has been using Debian GNU/Linux for the best part of 15 years now.

Besides being a distribution in its own right, Debian is also used as the basis for many other Linux distros, such as the Ubuntu family and derivatives, as well as specialised distros like the security- and privacy-conscious Tails.

Furthermore, Debian stable version releases don't occur very often, only every 2-3 years (unlike the Ubuntu family, which is on a rigid twice-yearly release cycle. Ed.).

Consequently, a Debian stable version release is a major event and the latest release occurred on Friday, as announced in an email to the Debian Developer Announce mailing list

The start of the email reads as follows:

Hi,
On 14th August 2021 we released Debian 11 “bullseye”.
There are too many people who should be thanked for their work on getting us to this point to list them all individually, and we would be sure to miss some. Nevertheless, we would like to particularly thank the installer team, the buildd and ftp teams, the CD team, the publicity team, the webmasters, the Release Notes editors, porters and all the bug squashers, NMUers, package maintainers and translators who have contributed to making bullseye a great release of which we should all be proud.

The email goes on the state that first point release for bullseye will take place about one month after the initial release.

Testing will soon start for the next Debian stable release – Debian 12, codenamed bookworm.

Finally, it’s worth noting that bullseye comes with 5 years’ support and an additional 10,000 software packages, as noted by ZDNet.

Single repository

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