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GNU and FSF News for April 2008
The combination of BusyBox, GPL, and SFLC proves itself unbeatable once
again. The FSF has relaunched their website with a shiny new homepage.
They've also set up a new free software job database. We have reports on
rms speeches in Virginia and Berlin. Harald Welte and Groklaw win FSF
awards. Gold goes Gold. Do I even need to mention that more software
packages switched to GPLv3 this month? We have the latest news from the
Free Software Foundation Europe and the Free Software Foundation India.
We even have meta news this month; after more than a year of FSF news
reports here at Advogato, the FSF itself seems to be getting into the
swing of things by launching their own FSF newsletter.
Tech Fusion Outline: Organising the World's Knowledge.
With the introduction of the Internet, vast amounts of information
became available - and, rather than help people of the planet to become
useful in a globalised world, it has deluged them. Peeking through the
morass of software and hardware is the occasional light (hopefully not
an oncoming train). This article will outline those technologies.
briefly, for later expansion.
<p> <p> <p> <p> The "Executive Summary" is that for computer technology to be
useful, we
need modular portable hardware with wireless mesh networking as well as
standard internet access, and for the software applications to sit on
top of distributed and peer-to-peer technology.
<p> <p> <p> <p> None of the technology outlined here is new (in fact, some
of it has
existed for many decades): it's just not being brought together. It
should be pretty clear that in the current world climate, there is some
degree of urgency to making this "Tech Fusion" happen.
Dream java: HashSet from Sun, but likely BitSet from GNU
As the majority knows we now have two FOSS implementations of java
runtime library: OpenJDK from Sun
Microsystems and the
parallel GNU Classpath
project. There are various opinions on how this
situation will be resolved in the future. Hence there is a natural
interest to compare these two implementations.
About the future of the web.
The following questions were posed by someone on LinkedIn and I answer
them here. I think they are timely, interesting and important: "About
the future of the web: what do you miss, what do you hate? 1. What would
you like to change on the web? 2. What would you really want to keep? 3.
What are the technological chances for internet? 4. What are the threats?"
Shakes-BE-er's gogo ban
AUTOTOMY<p>
In danger, the holothurian splits itself in two:<br>
it offers one self to be devoured by the world<br>
and, in its second self, escapes.<p>
Violently it divides itself into a doom and a salvation,<br>
into a penalty and a recompense,<br>
into what was and what will be.<p>
GNU and FSF News for March 2008
The Free Software Foundation wants your help to end software patents and
boycott Trend Micro. The GNU Project is going to be participating in
Google's Summer of Code again this year. Rumor has it that Microsoft may
be planning a GNU Project killer with its own recursive acronym. For
the fourth time in its history, rms has passed Emacs on to new
maintainers. A new version of GCC is out. The Mozilla Foundation and
GNOME Foundation are in kahoots to bring you new and improved software.
GNU and FSF News for February 2008
Did the Free Software Foundation meet their 2007 pledge drive goal? Will
DefectiveByDesign try to stamp out DRM at the Boston Public Library?
Does Stallman like the OLPC Project enough to replace his thinkpad with
an XO? Will the SAMBA team finally get to see Microsoft's top-secret
networking protocols? Where's RMS this month? Is the micro vs monolithic
kernel debate back again? The answers to these and other mind-boggling
questions that are on everyone's mind can be found in this month's GNU
and FSF news summary.
GNU and FSF News for January 2008
Welcome to the new year and another monthly installment of news about the
Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project. This month we have news
from the FSF Europe, the latest numbers on GPLv3 conversions, the annual
Gfortran report from the GCC folks, a GLib development release, Stallman
commenting on the GNOME's alleged support of OOXML, GNU Hurd news, and more.
'The Pacific' - a third movement
( note: links are out of service until i figured out what caused this surge of net traffic with an
ave. 6423.50 kbits/s for the past 48 hours, )
<p> <p> 'The Pacific' ( a third
movement )<p>
Sparkle my scenery<br>
With Turquoise waterfall<br>
With beauty underneath<br>
The ever free<p>
<p> <p> <p> <p> <p> Tuck me in beneath the blue<br>
Beneath the pain,<br>
Beneath the rain<br>
Goodnight kiss for a child in time<br>
Swaying blade my lullaby<p>
<p> <p> <p> <p> <p> On the shore we sat and hoped<br>
Under the same pale moon<br>
Whose guiding light chose you,<br>
Chose you all<p>
GNU and FSF News for December 2007
Licenses are in the news everywhere this month. The SLFC takes on
Verizon for violating the GPL. The FSF releases the Affero GPL and a
handy new guide to the GPLv3. The FSF, Creative Commons, and the
Wikipedia Foundation
agree to make
the GDFL compatible with the CC BY-SA. GNOME is the other big newsmaker.
A new GNOME Journal, a D-Bus debugger, GUADEC video, GNOME Foundation
elections, and GNOME news about FOSDEM 2008. All the usual topics are
covered as well.
Running NetBeans on top of OpenJDK / IcedTea
NetBeans works perfectly on IcedTea, but the installer doesn't.
GNU and FSF News for November 2007
In this month's update, the FSF tries to block a patent-encumbered
standard from slipping through the IETF, the FSF Europe reports on the
latest court decisions in the Microsoft case, and the FSF India meets
with their government to coordinate the promotion of free software.
Meanwhile, the SFLC vs Monsoon GPL lawsuit has been
dismissed after Monsoon agreed to generous terms with the BusyBox
developers. GCC and the Hurd both
make incremental progress this month and there's a new GNOME roadmap
full of things you can look forward to in GNOME 2.22 and 2.24.
State of the Gato Address for 2007
One year ago, in October of 2006, Advogato was transferred into new
hands for its care and maintenance. As we come to the end of October
2007, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look at where we are
one year later. Many bugs have been fixed. A few new ones have cropped
up. Many of the requested features have been added but the ToDo
list is still dauntingly long. Account creation by spammers is down.
Account creation by real users is up. Overall, I think we've made a good
start at making Advogato relevant again but there's still much to do.
I'll try to lay out a general roadmap of the work to be done. And,
of course, this is an ideal time to chime in with more bug reports,
feature requests, and general comments you may have about what sucks and
what rocks on
Advogato.
My new job
Weeks ago I started a new path in my life, I joined Mandriva! I think
this is the biggest step I have done because is a great company to work
with and I'm doing what I like the most: programming. So, now I'm proud
and happy to say I'm a Mandriva developer.
<p> By the way: Mandriva 2008 is out, you just can download it and
try it as a live CD, after when you're really sure you can install it :-)
Miscategorization and Science
Apparently only students and office workers are using Linux. If one
peers at the current version of the vfolder menu spec from
freedesktop.org one discovers that all the problems of the previous
setup have been put back into the spec, while some entirely new problems
have been created. For example, all Science (including Mathematics) and
Engineering applications are horribly miscategorized. xdrawchem in
Education? Octave in Development? We might as well have OpenOffice in
Accessories and Firefox in Games.
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