Free Software Melbourne

Michael Verrenkamp

The Paradoxes of Free Software

Why logic breaks down in light of the human condition

and a yak about the Gnews

20th August 2016

Hosting (of various kinds) provided by:

System Saviour Ben Sturmfels Electron Workshop

Gnews :: Free Culture

France Adds Source Code To List of Documents Covered by Freedom of Information Laws

• adds source code to the long list of government document types that must be released in certain circumstances
• Article

Linux Foundation helps launch the js foundation

• umbrella project and guiding force for various open-source utilities at the heart of the JavaScript ecosystem
• The JS Foundation is actually the jQuery Foundation, which was expanded
• Appium, Chassis, Dojo Toolkit, ESLint, Esprima, Globalize, Grunt, Interledger.js, Intern, Jed, JerryScript, jQuery, jQuery Mobile, jQuery UI, Lodash, Mocha, Moment, Node-RED, PEP, QUnit, RequireJS, Sizzle, and webpack
• Foundation: https://js.foundation/
• Article

The future of Gmane in question

• Gmane creator and maintainer Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen shut down the website
• Gmane has a new maintainer
• Article
• LWN

Googles Open Source Report Card

• our GitHub footprint includes over 84 organizations and 3,499 repositories
• 719,012 commits since 2011 -- 142,527 of which are from 2016
• Article
• Site

Gnews :: Licencing, Open Standards & DRM

Doctorow says fight against DRM laws is more important than his blog

• writing a lot less in order to focus on his digital activism work in fighting Digital Rights Management (DRM) laws alongside the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
• museums and libraries can "shape conversations about civic participation and cultural citizenship."
• employ lots of highly skilled archivists and that they should be taught some software engineering skills to help take their work into digital
• government surveillance is tightly linked with DRM laws
• security of corporate IT systems is weakened by many of the provisions in DRM laws
• Article

Decision by Tim Berners-Lee might have stopped DRM from creeping into web standards

• representatives of proponents of EME were unable to finish EME within the time allotted by the World Wide Web Consortium
• The Advisory Committee is divided over whether EME should be made part of Web standards and a very possible outcome could involve their rejection of the extension
• Article

Game developers say no to DRM: "hurts our customers"

• developers behind the hotly anticipated Shadow Warrior 2 have gone on record explaining why they didn't add DRM
• It's true that enticing people to pay for something they could take for free is a complicated and difficult job -- but what's even harder is convincing people to pay for a version that's worse than the free version
• Article

Gnews :: Security, Privacy & the law

lawsuits now can be served using twitter (in the US)

• U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler, resolving the impasse, found al-Ajmi has "an active Twitter account and continues to use it," offering the "method of service most likely to reach" him to satisfy the service of process requirement for the case to move forward
• Court documents

Suing Apple To Open the iPhone To Rival Browsing Engines

• French maker of open-source software Nexedi (Open Source ERP)
• newer technologies, like the WebM video standard and the WebRTC protocol for real-time communications, can't be made to work in an iOS browser
• Article

Hacker behind Linux Kernel’s Mass Trojan Infection Arrested in Florida

• charged with four counts of Intentional Transmission Causing Damage to a Protected Computer
• using the credentials of an individual associated with the Linux Kernel Organization
• used the malware he installed, to in turn install Trojan software
• Article

Linux kernel security

• Unsafe at any clock speed
• “For the cases where computers are not well protected in the hands of end-users who are not IT professionals, and who do not have any recourse to IT professional help, we need to design systems that proactively protect them,”
• "Worse, the average lifetime of a critical security bug in the Linux kernel, from introduction during a code commit to public discovery and having a patch issued, averages three years"
• but mobile devices are even worse: he was not calling out any particular vendor for poor security practices. As he put it, to audience chuckles, “they’re really all doing poorly."
• "The idea is to build in the protection technologies from the start, so that when a bug comes along, we don't really care."
• Article
• Cars crashing

Firefox Users Reach HTTPS Encryption Milestone

• HTTPS encryption was used for over half the pageloads served to Mozilla users
• 40% of page views were encrypted as of December 2015
• Tweet
• Article

There's Bugs In The Windows 10 Implementation of Bash

• if you chmod something properly, when you use ls -l the Bash would not show the correct permissions
• if you try to create a Folder in your Linux Home Directory by using the Windows GUI, it would be impossible to read and manage it
• running X on Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, reporting success running simpler programs
• Article

Skype For Linux Adds 'Experimental' Video Calls

• Disables Some Alpha Versions
• disabling some older versions of the Skype for Linux Alpha
• Announce

Gnews :: Open Hardware / Firmware

Udacity plan to build an Open Source Self-Driving Car

• give the world the ability to contribute code to a real self-driving car that will run on the road
• 2016 Lincoln MKZ, to be exact.
• installed sensors and parts: 2 Velodyne VLP-16 LiDARs, 1 Delphi radar, 3 Point Grey Blackfly cameras, an Xsens IMU, an ECU, a power distribution system, and more!
• configured ROS, wrote a lot of code ... now ready to build and refine an open source self-driving car
• first beta challenge: Design a mount for our cameras to attach to a GoPro mount! Deliverable: a 3d model
• second challenge involves a convolutional neural network
• Article

EFF: you have a right to know whats in your electronics

• Article

EFF to Printer manufacturers: Don't Hide DRM in a Security Update

• HP Promises to Restore Printers’ Functionality, But Questions Remain
• How will it inform people? and, how will it prevent this in the future?
• Petition
• Article

Ubuntu Linux 'Nextcloud Box' powered by Raspberry Pi

• Canonical and Western Digital (WDLabs) unveil an Ubuntu Core Linux-based cloud storage and 'Internet of Things' device called 'Nextcloud Box'
• You get: 1 TB hard drive from WDLabs, Nextcloud case with room for the drive and a compute board, microUSB charger, cables and adapters, a screw driver and screws, microSD card with Snappy Ubuntu Core as OS, Apache, MySQL and the latest Nextcloud 10 pre-installed and ready to go
• BYO Raspberry Pi
• Article

mint unveils mintbox mini pro desktop

• a "beautiful little computer that comes pre-loaded with Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon
• Buy now!: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3095
• Article

Physically-Secure 'ORWL' Computer Expands Its Open Source Policy

• "After feedback from some of you and more internal discussion, we've decided to open the schematics source files under CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0"
• " the benefit of being able to much more easily inspect the inner workings of ORWL far outweighs the minimal risk of infringement by a third party"
• "we're committing to opening the PCB layout sources once we've sold a total of 3,000 ORWL unit."
• Announce

Rasbian Pixel distro for the Pi

• Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight
• splash screen, stunning backgrounds, shut off WiFi and/or Bluetooth completely
• RealVNC, chromium & updates
• Article

Arduino Foundation formed after ... wait, you mean there wasn't an Arduino Foundation?

• announced they have settled their differences that had resulted in the creation of Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL. A new, unified Arduino Holding and Arduino Foundation will be created
• Article

Apple's networking team once quit over Open Compute Project

• Open hardware network switch, called the Wedge 100, is now available for purchase though Chinese contract manufacturer Edgecore
• it has created an entire ecosystem of companies that are, collectively, taking on Cisco
• when the Apple team asked to join OCP, Apple said 'no.' 'The whole team quit the same week,'
• founded a startup called SnapRoute
• Article

Gnews :: Releases

PowerShell is open sourced and is available on Linux

• Article
• Source
• Ubuntu 14.04 build

GitLab launches Issue Boards, an open-source task management tool that resembles Trello

• take in existing issues from teams’ repositories and drop them in automatically using the labels
• unlimited lists — each one representing a step in the development process — but just one board
• Article

Riot wants to be like Slack, but with the flexibility of an underlying open source platform

• Riot (formerly known as Vector while it was running in Beta)
• Riot is built on Matrix, an open standard for decentralized persistent communication.
• end-to-end encryption using Matrix’s Megolm, an advanced cryptographic ratchet
• Riot is currently free, and the basic service will probably remain so, but it has plans to offer paid additional hosted services like optional integrations and bigger storage options
• Article

Obama’s Facebook Messenger Bot Now Open Source

• the White House has decided to make the essential Drupal Module open-source and available to anyone
• “We are open-sourcing a Drupal module, complete with easy steps and boiler plate code. This will enable Drupal 8 developers to quickly launch a Facebook Messenger bot,”
• Blog
• Code
• Article

Firefox outsourcing its internals

• Project Mortar, an initiative to explore the possibility of deploying alternative technologies in Firefox to replace its internal implementations
• test two Chrome plugins
• reduce the complexity and long term maintenance cost of Firefox, and as part of our strategy to remove generic plugin support
• Article

Open365

• Article
• Site

Open MCT is a next-generation mission control framework

• developed at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley
• Site
• Code

Google releases Cartographer

• real-time simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) library in 2D and 3D with ROS support
• Robot platforms with ROS support:: Toyota HSR, TurtleBots, PR2, Revo LDS
• democratizing SLAM as a technology. Currently
• Cartographer is heavily focused on LIDAR SLAM
• Article

Red Hat open sources Ansible Galaxy

• the community hub for sharing Ansible Roles. Ansible Roles are pre-packaged, ready-to-run sysadmin tasks
• Open source communities are where innovation happens
• Article

Facebook open sources Zstandard compression algorithm and MyRocks storage engine

• lossless compression technology is aimed at replacing existing libraries like zlib
• MyRocks is currently being used by Facebook to improve the storage efficiency of its MySQL databases
• “It will be adopted more quickly as open source than had if was created as the proprietary technology of a single company.”
• Article

Gnews :: Distros, Desktops & Kernels

FreeBSD 11.0 Released

• including new architecture support, performance improvements, toolchain enhancements and support for contemporary wireless chipsets
• Announce
• Release notes

386bsd gets an update

• takes us back to the days when you could count every file in your Unix distribution and more importantly, read and understand all of your OS source code
• 386BSD is also the missing link between BSD and Linux
• GitHub
• Qemu instructions

wattOS R10 Linux Distribution

• low power IOT/desktop os
• Article

Ubuntu 16.10 and Unity 8 Desktop

• Mir, the display server that Unity 8 runs on) only plays nice with open-source Nvidia (nouveau) and open-source Intel GPU drivers
• a number of small improvements
• Unity 8
• Preview article
• Article

Fedora 25 Beta open source Linux distribution now available

• the long-awaited official debut of the Wayland display server
• GNOME 3.22 in pre-release, which offers multiple file renaming, a redesigned keyboard settings tool and additional user interface improvements
• Support for Rust
• kernel 4.8.1 & Wayland 1.12
• lots of other updates
• Announce
• Article

Parrot Security 3.2 “CyberSloop” Ethical Hacking OS

• Linux kernel 4.7.5.
• Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch (Debian Testing)
• MATE 1.16 desktop environment
• Announce
• Download

KDE Turns 20, Happy Birthday

• October 14
• Announcement

Linux upstages KDE by turning 25

• bigger and more professional than ever
• Article

Linux Kernel Development report 2016

• in 15 months, more than 3 million lines of code were added to the Linux kernel at a rate of 7.8 changes per hour
• New features include support for live patching of the kernel
• The “zero-day build and boot robot” testing system found nearly 400 bugs
• The category “none,” which represents volunteer developers who aren’t paid by any company, fell to the No. 3 (behind Intel & RedHat)
• Article
• Report

Kernel 4.8 released with Microsoft Surface 3 touchscreen support

• Raspberry Pi 3 SoC
• Plus, bonus blunder :p
• Article

Gnews :: The Good (maybe?), The Bad and The Ugly

Netflix's Meridian, an open source benchmark disguised as a original program

• actually a benchmark for encoding streamed video and the more people that see it the more information Netflix and others will gain
• originally filmed in 4k resolution at 60fps
• Netflix is also open-sourcing a set of tools tackling a common problem for studios and video services
• Article

RaspAnd has Android Marshmallow for your Raspberry Pi 3

• Arne Exton has made Android available on the Raspberry Pi 3, with conditional support for Raspberry Pi 2 Model B computers
• The catch? You have to purchase this new RaspAnd build for USD$9.00
• Article

Windows is the Most Open Platform There is, Says Satya Nadella

• no context
• Article