● 09.26.14

● Links 26/9/2014: LibreOffice Celebrations, Betas of *buntu

Posted in News Roundup at 7:44 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Plasma 5 gets into our desktop guide as we also tell you how to put Linux on Android.

Desktop

• However, Samsung’s decision to end its Chromebook efforts in Europe could signal problems, especially with the holidays approaching. Chromebooks have been top holiday sellers. It will be worth watching whether other Chromebook providers adjust or end their European businesses as well.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Historically, I used to write a blog post for each episode of the audcast, Free as in Freedom that Karen Sandler and I released. However, since I currently do my work on FaiF exclusively as a volunteer, I often found it difficult to budget time for a blog post about each show.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

• AMD’s Alex Deucher sent in another Radeon drm-next patch series this week with some more last-minute tweaks for the Linux kernel’s next merge window.

• While AMD just released its first OpenCL 2.0 Linux driver, which is marked fglrx 14.41, the next driver that’s currently in testing is fglrx 14.50… This should be more interesting.

• Released yesterday was AMD’s first OpenCL 2.0 Catalyst driver but we also learned privately about what’s coming next in the pipeline with the fglrx 14.50 update. There’s Linux support for the Heterogeneous System Architecture coming in this driver along with VCE video encoding support for GCN GPUs — to match the open-source RadeonSI Gallium3D driver in its video encoding capabilities.

• With Intel Skylake Linux hardware enablement being worked on in steadfast by the Intel Open-Source Technology Center, earlier this month we saw the initial Skylake DRM kernel patches, earlier this week we saw the Skylake Mesa support patches, and then today we have the Intel X.Org driver getting patched for this next-generation hardware succeeding Broadwell.

• The GeForce GTX 980 is NVIDIA’s most advanced graphics card to date and is running brilliantly on Linux — assuming you’re okay with binary blobs.

• One week ago NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 970/980 graphics cards as their top-end, next-generation hardware built on their Maxwell architecture. Given the successes I’ve had with their mid-range but very power efficient GTX 750 series hardware that were the first on this new architecture, I’ve been incredibly anxious to see these high-end NVIDIA GeForce 900 series GPUs running on Linux… Fortunately, today the GTX 980 arrived.

• A new AMD Catalyst Linux graphics driver has been released today that finally delivers OpenCL 2.0 to Catalyst.

• Released today was AMD’s OpenCL 2.0 Catalyst driver for both Windows and Linux. The Linux distributions AMD is officially supporting for this driver are Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, but of course the other usual distributions should work to

Benchmarks

• Within this article from an updated Fedora 21 stack, I ran some Linux gaming tests under its stock X.Org Server 1.16 environment and then rebooted and logged into the GNOME on Wayland session. From there the Phoronix Test Suite ran and I used the variety of graphics tests at my disposal to push the limits of XWayland.

Applications

• The multi-platform BitTorrent client qBittorrent developed by Christophe Dumez has reached version 3.1.10 bringing many new features and other improvements.

• gdrive (not to be confused with Grive!) is a simple command line Google Drive client written in Go, available for Linux, Windows, FreeBSD and Mac OS X.

Instructionals/Technical

• Just like our first 5 command line tips for Raspberry Pi, all these tips and techniques work on the command prompt (when you first start your Raspberry Pi) and in the LXTerminal window (once you’ve logged in to your desktop by typing startx). That said, these tips will work on just about any Linux PC on Earth (and most of the ones in orbit too).

Games

• Making the rounds at the moment is the fact that Wasteland 2 is selling very well. Well that’s a shocker isn’t it!

• Reports from our caster Samsai are that it’s very good and I think he has a bit of an addiction to it brewing.

• I Can’t Escape: Darkness is a new horror game coming to Linux from US developers Fancy Fish Games. It is the follow-up to a game created at a game-jam called I Can’t Escape which can be checked out on Newgrounds although it kept saying I needed 3D Hardware Rendering you might have better luck than me.

• Skyforge a rather interesting looking free to play MMO has addressed questions relating to the possibility of a Linux port.

• Steam has become an indispensable part of every gamer’s life. With a version for every major platform, if you are a gamer, chances are you have a Steam account. The latest Update to the Steam client from Valve makes Steam a completely new experience. The new update is dubbed as the Discovery update, and just like the namesake, the new features does make for quite an interesting discovery of the Steam.

• Valve kept its word, and the entire collection of games developed by their own people is available for Linux. Now, Linux users can buy all the games from the catalog with a huge 75% price cut.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• Calligra 2.8.6, an integrated suite of applications for office, creative, and management needs, has been released and packs quite a few changes for numerous packages under its umbrella.

• Videos of all of the Akademy Talks are now available online to watch in your own time.

• You can access them from the Akademy schedule. Follow the schedule to the talks for the links to the videos and the slides.

• KDE Frameworks 5.2.0 Has been released to Utopic archive!

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• The GNOME development team has announced that the final version of its latest GNOME desktop environment, 3.14, has been released and all the new packages are now available for download.

• It looks like for GNOME 3.16 one of the early changes will be better keyboard support for switching tabs.

• Each time a new GNOME version is released, users point to the Ubuntu GNOME devs and blame them for not integrating the latest packages in the distribution. Also, each time, the Ubuntu GNOME developers have to explain why this is impossible.

• Even with only 19 responses the picture has started getting pretty informative and helpful, already. There is still quite a large error estimate on the result, my hand waves a relative error of around +/-16% on it. But with all that in mind, since I said I would publish the results in September, I may as well go ahead and do that

• The Ubuntu GNOME developers have released the second and final Beta version of the 14.10 branch, and they are getting closer to the stable version of the distribution.

• Xubuntu 14.10 Beta 2, the Linux distribution based on Ubuntu and using the Xfce desktop environment, has been released and is now ready for testing. The developers have prepared a surprise for users, in the form of a small visual change.

Distributions

• The best distro is $MY_DISTRO: Zealots come and zealots go, but they seem to always overstay their welcome in the FOSS realm. You would think that someone who has more than two IQ points to rub together would realize that perhaps his or her distro may not be best for someone else. Sadly, that’s not the case. It’s My Distro Uber Alles for them, and if you’re not using the distro they use, then you must be an idiot.

New Releases

• SparkyLinux 3.5 “Annagerman” MATE, Xfce and Base Openbox & JWM is out.

• SparkyLinux, a lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian and featuring custom MATE, Xfce Openbox, and JWM desktops, has reached version 3.5 and is now ready for download.

Arch Family

• Manjaro Linux 0.8.10 Ascella KDE Edition is the latest version of manjaro linux distribution with KDE desktop environment. Manjaro Linux is a lightweight, user-friendly, desktop-oriented Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. Key features include intuitive installation process, automatic hardware detection, stable rolling-release model, ability to install multiple kernels, special Bash scripts for managing graphics drivers and extensive desktop configurability.

Red Hat Family

• All Fedora/CentOS/RHEL patches that were in the DKMS build in Fedora/EPEL are now merged upstream; along with additional patches from Debian and Ubuntu.

• The federal government will spend more than $3 billion on cloud services this year, and cloud vendors have taken notice. Red Hat Inc. became the latest industry heavyweight to take aim at that opportunity on Tuesday with the introduction of a consultancy on-ramp aimed at paving the way for government agencies to pay as they go.

Fedora

• One application I came across while testing an installation of the main edition Fedora 21 alpha is DevAssistant.

• Last time I blogged about AppStream I announced that over 25% of applications in Fedora 21 were shipping the AppData files we needed. I’m pleased to say in the last two months we’ve gone up to 45% of applications in Fedora 22. This is thanks to a lot of work from Ryan and his friends, writing descriptions, taking screenshots and then including them in the fedora-appstream staging repo.

• Yes, you are reading correctly: I decided to buy a freacking Chromebook. I really needed a lightweight notebook with me for my daily hackings while waiting for my subway station, and this one seemed to be the best option available when comparing models and prices. To be fair, and before you throw me rocks, I visited the LibreBoot X60′s website for some time, because I was strongly considering buying one (even considering its weight); however, they did not have it in stock, and I did not want to wait anymore, so…

• Continuing in this week’s alpha coverage of Fedora 21 are some performance benchmarks comparing it to Fedora 20 and the recent openSUSE 13.2 beta.

• I’ve been very impressed by Fedora 21 in its alpha state and after running GNOME Wayland OpenGL gaming benchmarks with XWayland, I ran a simple performance comparison.

Debian Family

Derivatives

• Elive, a complete operating system for your computer, built on top of Debian GNU/Linux, has advanced to version 2.3.6 Beta and is available for download and testing.

• Tails, a Live operating system that is built with the sole purpose of keeping users safe and anonymous while going online, has been updated to version 1.1.2.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• The Linux kernel is one of the most important packages in a distribution, so everyone is paying attention to what the Ubuntu developers will decide to implemented. It’s been already established the branch of the kernel that will be used in Ubuntu 14.10, but it remains to be seen what specific version will be used.

• After Mozilla released the latest Firefox 32.0.3 Internet browser, the Ubuntu maintainers were quick to make the new version available to the supported OSes.

• Canonical released last week a new RTM branch for Ubuntu Touch, and now the developers have managed to push a new major update that brings more fixes, updated packages, and a nice, new keyboard.

• The official RTM of Ubuntu Touch has been recently release, and as Softpedia informs, it has already received its very first update. Let’s take a look at what the RTM brings and as well as what the first update consists in.

• Canonical only releases a single Beta version during the entire six-month development cycle, four weeks before the final version is made available. This has been the case for a while now, but not all flavors follow the same trend.

• The Ubuntu Edge smartphone campaign never reached its lofty $32m goal , but the more than $12m in pledges it received was record-breaking—and Canonical hasn’t given up. Ubuntu Touch for phones just hit “release to manufacturing” status. The first official version is done, bugfix’d, and ready to go. It’s coming on real phones, too, with the first phone with Ubuntu Touch shipping this December.

• Ubuntu Touch for phones is now at manufacturing status, a major milestone for many people who wondered if Ubuntu phones would ever become market realities. Several months ago, rumors swirled that the first Ubuntu phones were delayed and wouldn’t appear until 2015, if at all, but this week news broke that we’re likely to see phones by year’s end.

• A number of Ubuntu flavours – Kubuntu, Ubuntu Gnome, Xubuntu and the brand new Ubuntu Mate (yes, it’s official now) – this month participated in the first beta release of the next Ubuntu – 14.10, or Utopic Unicorn.

• The main Unity Desktop was absent, meaning what’s called the second beta (and is now available) is the first and only beta for the main Ubuntu 14.10.

• Adam Conrad on the behalf of the Ubuntu development community has announced the final beta release of the upcoming Ubuntu 14.10 “Utopic Unicorn” and its derivatives.

• Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn final beta was released today, this being the first and only milestone for Ubuntu Utopic (while for the Ubuntu flavors, this is Beta 2). Let’s take a look at what’s new.

Flavours and Variants

• Ubuntu MATE 14.10 Beta 2, a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that uses the MATE desktop environment, has been released and is now ready for testing.

• MATE is an open-source, lightweight, desktop environment started by the Arch Linux team and used a lot on Linux Mint systems, providing an experience similar to GNOME 2. This project created as an alternative for GNOME 3, which was not very appreciated by a lot of users.

• You’ll find all the updated hardware support in Ubuntu 14.04, but Elementary replaces GTK 3.10 with the more cutting edge GTK 3.12, which gets Elementary a nice combined window bar/title bar that saves a bit of space and looks great with the rest of Elementary’s very polished desktop theme.

• You’d be forgiven for thinking Elementary is based on GNOME Shell. It looks a bit like GNOME Shell, with a clock in the middle of the top bar, an Applications menu to the left and some indicator apps to the right. In Luna the top bar was black by default, which made it look even more like GNOME Shell.

• Kubuntu Developers have finally announced the release of second beta for 14.10 aka Utopic Unicorn. The beta shows the progress Kubuntu team has made towards the final release scheduled for October.

• Kubuntu 14.10 beta 2 is out now for testing by early adopters. This release comes with the stable Plasma 4 we know and love. It also adds another flavour – Kubuntu Plasma 5 Tech Preview. Try Kubuntu Plasma 5 to see the future of desktop software but expect some more bugs as we iron out the integration.

• The Kubuntu devs are a little late to the party, but they have finally published the details for the latest and final release in this development cycle. The 14.10 Beta 2 release is not very different from the previous one, with the exception of the implementation of KDE 4.14, which reached a stable stage in the meantime.

• Users will also be able to take advantage of a new Kubuntu release to get familiar with the latest Plasma 5 desktop that can be tested right now. It’s still far from a stable version, but the overall design won’t change much more than this.

Devices/Embedded

• Pi-Top, a Raspberry Pi Model B+ powered build-your-own-laptop kit, soon could enable users to learn computer programming, designing and 3D-printing skills.

• The Pi-Top team recently released details on its construction of a prototype computer in a Reddit post.

• The developers plan to use the model in a Kickstarter campaign to generate funding for the project. They printed the prototype in four parts with a Rostock Max V2 printer.

• Rikomagic launched a new TV box with a Rockchip RK3288 processor and Google Android software this summer. It’s called the MK902 II and I’ve got one sitting on my desk waiting for me to find the time to put it through the paces.

• Spreadtrum made news in February, when it joined Mozilla in announcing plans to release a chipset that would enable $25 Firefox OS smartphones. In August, Indian manufacturers Intex and Spice each announced Firefox OS phones based on the Spreadtrum chipset costing $33 (Intex Cloud FX) and $38 (Spice Fire One Mi-FX 1).

Phones

• India has suddenly become the hot ticket in the race to expand smartphones beyond saturated markets in the North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Following the late August introduction of Firefox OS phones from Intex and Spice selling for an unprecedented $35, Google announced the launch of its Nexus-like Android One smartphone program in India. This week, Jolla began selling its Sailfish OS based phone in India, and Samsung revealed plans for a November release of a Tizen phone in the country.

Ballnux

• The openSUSE board recently appointed Richard Brown as their chairman. The position became vacant after Vincent Untz decided to step down. Here is the interview with the chairman.

• Samsung Electronics have decided to move 500 Software Engineers out of their mobile phone development unit into other consumer electronics parts such as TVs, network, printer and its corporate software R&D divisions, according to various reports on the net.

• The Tizen Smartphone that is expected to launch in India this November has had a few of its details passed to Sammobile this morning. This budget Smartphone is aimed at developing markets and hopes to take on Android One, FireFox OS, Microsoft (Nokia) and potentially BlackBerry in the less crowded new budget Smartphone category, a potentially lucrative area that everyone wants to be king of.

Android

• This small guide assumes that you know how to create a public repository with git (or other version control system). Maybe some projects use other VCS, Subversion or whatever; the process would be similar although the commands will be different of course.

• If you don’t want to use any VCS, you can just download the corresponding file, translate it, and send it by email or to the BTS of the project, but the commands required are very easy and you’ll see soon that using git (or any VCS) is quite comfortable and less scary than what it seems.

• Arbor Solution has launched a rugged, Android-based “Gladius 5″ handheld with a quad-core SoC, 5.5-inch touchscreen, dual SIMs, NFC, and barcode scanning.

• Autumn is one of those games that stretches the term game a little bit. There isn’t a lot of interaction required, and it’s more about relaxing and watching what happens.

• It’s interesting to see more and more of these experimental games appear, but Autumn to me feels a little lifeless. Sure that’s part of the point, but it’s not really all that relaxing either apart from the nice music.

• Jams Music Player is an Android app for… playing music. It’s got a few nifty features including a 9-band equalizer, the ability to download album art from the internet, unofficial support for streaming music from Google Play Music, and a rather attractive user interface that seems inspired by Google’s new Android L Material design language.

• Android L is Google’s next big update to its mobile operating system. Much has been said in the media about Android L, and many users have been looking forward to it. Android Authority reports that Google might release Android L on November 1st.

• Just last week Paul O’ Brien mentioned a possible release date for the rumored HTC Nexus 9, October 16th. While he admitted the information came from an anonymous tipster, the Android developer is well respected and likely not to post up a date unless he has good reason to believe it. In short, his statement lended quite a bit of credence to the idea of a mid-October unveiling.

• Looking for more details on the matter? Thanks to two different sources familiar with Google’s plans, we have learned that the HTC Nexus 9 will be unveiled on either October 15th or the 16th. Additionally there is mention of new phone hardware (possibly the rumored Moto Nexus?) and the unveiling of “a new software initiative”, which likely refers to Android L’s final release.

Free Software/Open Source

• Self publishing a book has never been easier. There are numerous open source tools that you can use to create a book.

• Having published three ebooks, and being in the process of putting together another one, I’ve learned that after writing a book there are a few more things that you need to do before sharing your book with the world.

• Continuuity Inc., whose software makes it easier for developers to build applications that run on the big-data storage and analysis system Hadoop, has changed its name to Cask and will put its technology into open source.

• The Joint Staff currently uses Oracle and PeopleSoft for strategic planning software through a contract managed by a division of the Naval Sea Systems Command.

• The Joint Staff runs the software on the Joint Organization Server and a server covering the Office of Secretary of Defense.

• NAVSEA said in a contract notice it plans to issue a new contract to MYMIC LLC of Portsmouth, Virginia, for open source planning software to “reduce the high cost of licenses, technical support and custom modifications” with Oracle and PeopleSoft.

• The only solution is self-hosted, fully open source email services. Kolab is one such service and now ownCloud team is also working on offering mail to users.

• ownCloud is actually more aggressive and is working on a replacement for Google Map, called ownCloud Maps. It is built on Leaflet, using Open Street Map data says an ownCloud blog. The project has just started and you can test and contribute on GitHub.

• In the olden days the topic of software freedom was central to Linux and free/open source software. Software freedom needs to remain front and center. Remember Richard Stallman’s Four Freedoms?

• “Nobody should be restricted by the software they use. There are four freedoms that every user should have:

• the freedom to use the software for any purpose, the freedom to change the software to suit your needs, the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors, and the freedom to share the changes you make.”

• There is a way for open source to actually win. We simply have to put the power of choice and control back in the hands of the consumer. I say simply because it’s an easy thing to say, and an easy concept to understand, however we all know full well that implementation is much, much harder. We can start by not giving up on the Linux desktop. We can take the next step by investing in an open mobile platform that respects our privacy. Finally, we can continue building the free, open, and distributed Internet that the world needs.

• Benjamin Hindman, the co-founder of open-source cluster manager Mesos – which runs at large web properties including Twitter and Airbnb – has joined VC-backed Mesosphere. The startup was founded in 2013 to drive a paying business around the cluster manager he built as a student.

Events

• Historically, the computer industry has been impressed with big things. In the early decades, the mainframes and supercomputers were all the rage. Even as the technology began to shrink, big rollouts supplanted the big machines. And now you can find powerful technology which easily fits in the palm of your hand — but you’ve probably only heard of the brands which sell in huge numbers.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Firejail is a SUID sandbox program that reduces the risk of security breaches by restricting the running environment of untrusted applications. The core technology behind Firejail is Linux Namespaces, a virtualization technology available in Linux kernel. It allows a process and all its descendants to have their own private view of the globally shared kernel resources, such as the network stack, process table, mount table, IPC space.

• Much of the good stuff about Pale Moon is under the hood. Taken together, all of it contributes to a more efficient performance. For example, Pale Moon is optimized for modern processors such as SSE2. A lot of the built-in bloat of the Firefox code is removed. That gets rid of things like accessibility features and WebRTC. The social API code is disabled by default.

SaaS/Big Data

• The open-source OpenStack cloud platform only has major milestone releases every six months, but that doesn’t mean there are aren’t incremental updates. One of the leading vendors in the OpenStack community is privately-held Mirantis, which updated its OpenStack Distribution to version 5.1 this week.

• Rackspace has announced the release of its latest Rackspace Private Cloud offering, built on OpenStack and designed for enterprises. The platform now includes a 99.99 percent OpenStack API uptime guarantee, and is more scalable. Customers can deploy Rackspace Private Cloud in their own data centers, or have their deployments run at Rackspace or run in both locations. The Private Cloud platform also includes Rackspace’s “fanatical support.”

• When the open-source OpenStack cloud platform first got started back in 2010, there were only two components, with Rackspace bringing in the Swift storage project and NASA contributing the Nova compute piece. Over the last four years, OpenStack has expanded significantly beyond its initial two core contributors and two primary components. OpenStack now counts many of the world’s leading technology vendors—including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Cisco, Intel, Dell, VMware, AT&T and Comcast—among its many supporters.

• This is the third part in a series of three articles surveying automation projects within OpenStack, explaining what they do, how they do it, and where they stand in development readiness and field usage. Previously, in part one, I covered cloud deployment tools that enable you to install/update OpenStack cloud on bare metal. In part two, I covered workload deployment tools. Today, we’ll look at tools for day two operations.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The Document Foundation has announced that the final version of LibreOffice 4.3.2 is now available for download.

• LibreOffice 4.3.2 hits the marketplace just before the fourth anniversary of the project on Sunday, September 28, 2014. The community has been growing for the past 48 months, attracting at least three new developers per month plus a larger number of volunteers active in localization, QA and other areas such as marketing and development of local communities.

• The Document Foundation was formed back in 2010, when a team of OpenOffice developers forked the project and created LibreOffice. Since then while Oracle unloaded the OOo burden on The Apache Foundation and the project continued its decline, LibreOffice experienced a steep growth.

• The LibreOffice team has analyzed more than 9 million lines of code to find and fix 10,000-plus defects of all types, including some with the potential to impact security and many that affected stability and memory use. The team working through the Coverity results is led by Caolán McNamara of Red Hat and includes Stephan Bergmann, Noel Grandin, Norbert Thiebaud, Julien Nabet, and others.

• LibreOffice is thriving, and trying something bold

• As we are approaching the 4th anniversary of the LibreOffice project in just a few days, an old theme has been reappearing on the Internet: Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice should reunite. I would like to share my perceptions on this topic although I think it is not a really important one, at least as long as the LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice do not officially call for such a reunion. Before I start, let me remind everyone that what follows is my own opinion and neither the one of the Document Foundation, nor the one of the Democratic Party, the one of my Government, nor, at last, the one of Bob’s Shipping and Handling Company.

• In case you thought the OpenStack cloud computing race wasn’t crowded enough, Oracle has just made its Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux distribution generally available. Based on the OpenStack Icehouse release, it allows users to control Oracle Linux and Oracle VM through OpenStack in production environments. It can support any guest operating system (OS) that is supported with Oracle VM, including Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris, Microsoft Windows,and other Linux distributions.

• Nuage is also pitching the integration as a win for open source within the cloud and SDN ecosystems. “We’re pleased to work with Oracle on this Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux integration. It provides choice in an open cloud solution, optimized for enterprise workloads to mutual customers worldwide,” said Sunil Khandekar, CEO of Nuage Networks. “This is great news for the OpenStack community as we continue to show momentum with OpenStack in enterprise and cloud provider deployments.”

• The new Oracle Linux update is probably the last one in the series. This operating system is based on Red Hat and the company has just pushed out the last update for the RHEL 5x branch, which means that this is the end of the line for the Oracle version as well.

• Oracle Linux also comes with a series of features that make it very interesting, like zero-downtime kernel updates with the help of a tool called Ksplice that was originally developed for OpenSUSE, inclusion of the Oracle Database and Oracle Applications, and it’s used in all x86-based Oracle Engineered Systems.

Education

• Youth Digital just moved into their new offices, tucked away in a nondescript office park in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It’s a big step up from their humble beginnings, when company founder and director Justin Richards hauled a laptop to his students’ houses, tutoring them on web and graphic design. Their first office was barely more than a closet, and now they have an expansive space complete with conference rooms, recording studio space, and their own 3D printer.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The Free Software Foundation has issued their response to this week’s news of the “Shellshock” bug that affects Bash.

• A major security vulnerability has been discovered in the free software shell GNU Bash. The most serious issues have already been fixed, and a complete fix is well underway. GNU/Linux distributions are working quickly to release updated packages for their users. All Bash users should upgrade immediately, and audit the list of remote network services running on their systems.

• [...]

• Proprietary, (aka nonfree) software relies on an unjust development model that denies users the basic freedom to control their computers. When software’s code is kept hidden, it is vulnerable not only to bugs that go undetected, but to the easier deliberate addition and maintenance of malicious features. Companies can use the obscurity of their code to hide serious problems, and it has been documented that Microsoft provides intelligence agencies with information about security vulnerabilities before fixing them.

• Today in Linux news, The Document Foundation celebrates four years with the release of LibreOffice 4.3.2. Bash exploit “Shellshock” is making more headlines today as servers and devices are under attack. Bruce Byfield looks at the thankless job of community managers and Jack Germain test drives the Pale Moon Web browser. And finally today, Jack Wallen explains the difference between LibreOffice and OpenOffice.

• On Friday morning we went to the VAIP office and had a Fedora APAC ambassador meetup the whole day. The meetup was set up for APAC ambassadors to discuss critical tasks. EMEA has had a lot of similar meetups, but for APAC, it was the first to my knowledge. (It was at least the first in this year.)

• The Software Freedom Day was celebrated in the capital city last week at an event organised by Zyxware Technologies, a Thiruvananthapuram based IT services company, in association with the International Centre for Free & Open Source Software (ICFOSS) and the Free Software Users Group (FSUG-Tvm).

• The theme for the day was ‘Government Organisations and Free Software in Kerala’, in the light of the government order asking all departments to migrate to Free Software. At the event, experiences of government organisations who have successfully migrated to Free Software was showcased.

Project Releases

• hardlink 0.3 now features support for xattr support, contributed by Tom Keel at Intel. If this does not work correctly, please blame him.

Licensing

• The makers of the open-sourced emulation software program, RetroArch are the latest to say that video games accessories company Hyperkin is using its program in violation of the GPL license. RetroArch uses a development interface called “libretro” that allows for the “easy creation of emulators and games that can plug straight into this program called RetroArch.” It supports 15 different hardware platforms including Android.

Openness/Sharing

• That open source philosophy will benefit Stefannuti Stocks in the long run, because other companies may devise some improvements. Then, if the demand increases, the units could be built more cheaply in bulk rather than individually crafted.

Open Data

• There is definitely something different about the Code for America Summit this year. It’s still got the family feeling and warm welcome that I’ve come to expect each year, but the tone is a little more serious. The civic projects being worked on are having a bigger impact on society. The projects highlighted during the first day of the conference are saving people time and improving our experience with government. The tide is on the rise and so is the impact of open government and open data.

Open Access/Content

• It’s hardly a secret that the price of new college textbooks has risen 82% in the last decade, forcing students to find cheaper alternatives or forego course materials altogether.

• Rentals, buybacks and used textbooks are part of the solution, but they still involve textbooks from the three major publishers that control the market. Experts say the next disruptive force in the textbook market could cut out these “big three” altogether.

Programming

• Industry leaders say open source is the backbone of the software infrastructure required to fuel the API economy. At APIcon UK, Simon Phipps, president of the Open Source Initiative, explained why open source licensing will enable the API and Internet of Things economies to grow.

• A few days ago the Facebook developers working on the HipHop Virtual Machine — that serves as a faster implementation of PHP and it also serves as the basis of their Hack language — released HHVM 3.3.0.

Leftovers

Apple

• The all-new iPhones and Apple Watch can be easily avoided but there’s no escaping iOS 8

• Craig Hockenberry, one of the developers behind Twitterriffic, has written a blog post warning iOS users about in-app browsers, which he says are “considered harmful.” According to Hockenberry, and as outlined in a video, an in-app browser has the ability to record what’s being typed, even at a secure login screen.

• A platform upgrade always comes with its fair share of bugs, and per Apple Forums, one of the issues popping up with iOS 8 is slow Wi-Fi. But fear not, apparently there’s an easy fix.

• Apple is pitching iOS 8 as one of the most security-focused versions of its mobile platform to date. But there are still questions about just how effective those security measures really are — and how honest the company was with the promotional page it published earlier this month.

• Apple Inc broke its silence on complaints about bending iPhones, hours after withdrawing a glitch-ridden software update as the company struggles to restore momentum to the rollout of its latest phones.

• Today Apple released iOS 8.0.1, but the update was pulled due to complaints about dropped calls. The update caused some iOS users to lose their cellular service and it disabled the Touch ID fingerprint sensor on certain devices.

• Apple knew about an iCloud security flaw six months before it was utilized to hack celebrity accounts on the service, reports The Daily Dot. The company was notified of the exploit by independent security researcher Ibrahim Balic, who shared emails between himself and members of Apple’s product security team.

Security

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Between 4 and 20 August the Saudi Arabian government beheaded 19 people. Saudi Arabia, which has funded and armed ISIS from inception (initially with CIA support), is now bombing alongside the USA in Iraq and Syria.

• Forget the war technology porn regularly being broadcast by western media, with those spectacular photos of missiles erupting from ships into the night sky. Those missiles and bombs eviscerate and maim innocents as well as combatants, children as well as terrorists. The West always first denies, then regrets, “collateral damage”. The propaganda can be laughable. During the invasion of Iraq I remember a news propaganda item about how a cruise missile can enter a specific window, being followed by the next item – the US had apologised to Syria for two missiles aimed at Iraq which had hit Syria by accident.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Alan Reiner, core developer of Bitcoin Armory, a bitcoin wallet focused on security. Bitcoin Armory is licensed under the terms of GNU Affero General Public License version 3, or (at your option) any later version.

Finance

• It’s no secret that the Washington Post editorial page was quite alarmed by Venezuela’s shift to the left under former President Hugo Chavez. The Post–like the rest of elite US media (Extra!, 11/05)–was an unrelenting critic of Chavez’s policies.

• Some things haven’t changed.

• In a scathing editorial (9/20/14), the Post went after Chavez’s successor Nicolas Maduro, calling him an “economically illiterate former bus driver” because he “rejected the advice of pragmatists” and will continue to pursue policies that are ruining what was “once Latin America’s richest country.”

• Now, that’s a rotten thing to do–taking away large sums of money that you promised people for their retirement after years of service. Where could Bezos have gotten the idea that it was OK to act that way?

• Well, maybe he reads the paper he just bought.

• The Washington Post has a long tradition–in its news reports and its editorials–of calling on politicians to treat public employees and their pensions the way that Bezos is treating the Post’s.

• Professor Wolff joins host of RT America Thom Hartmann. Sweden has said good riddance to austerity. On Sunday – the country’s voters chose a group of left-wing and center-left parties -led by the Social Democrat party – to head a new government. In total – left wing parties won 43.7 percent of the vote and 159 seats in parliament. When all is said and done and the Social Democrats have formed a government – it will mark the end of Sweden’s short-lived experiment with austerity. In the eight years since outgoing prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s right-leaning Moderate Party took control of parliament – Sweden has seen huge tax cuts and a flurry of so-called “pro-market reforms” – a change that many in the country saw as a a betrayal of a decades-long tradition of social democracy. With Sunday’s elections – though – it looks like the Scandinavian Model is back in business – and will be for quite some time.

• An alliance of tea party activists and some misled progressive liberals has united to defeat affordable housing in the San Francisco Bay Area. In a concerted effort to protect property values and a perceived quality of life, the Koch Brothers’ libertarian think tanks have developed strategies, talking points, and tactics to repel any efforts to provide affordable housing.

• The Wall Street Journal editorial board defended the corporate bill mill American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in an editorial whitewashing the organization’s climate change denial and vindicating their one-sided attacks on renewable energy, without mentioning that the Journal’s parent company News Corp. is an ALEC member.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• A federal appellate court has shut down Judge Rudolph Randa’s decision halting the criminal probe into Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and allied groups, rejecting Randa’s interpretation of campaign finance law and declaring the investigation best resolved by state courts.

• The investigation remains halted by a state court decision from January, and the probe’s future now rests with Wisconsin appellate courts. However, some justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court could have a conflict of interest: the four-justice Republican majority was elected by millions in spending from the same groups under investigation in the coordination probe, calling into question whether they can be impartial.

Censorship

• The question before the Court is whether the owner of a trade mark can obtain an injunction – not against an alleged counterfeiter, or even against the owners and operators of the websites on which counterfeiters sell their items. The Court is instead being asked to grant an injunction against the internet service providers (ISPs), so that websites alleged to be infringing the trade marks are blocked to ISP subscribers.

• For the first time ISPs are being asked to block websites on the basis of alleged trade mark (rather than copyright) infringement. Whilst ORG takes no view on the merits of the trade mark claims in the current case, we believe the outcome of this case will have implications for future trade mark blocking applications, which could potentially threaten the legitimate interests of third parties.

Civil Rights

• Attorney General Eric Holder, who has addressed questions about drones, cybersecurity, marijuana legalization, and other issues during his time in the Obama administration, is stepping down. NPR first reported the news today, saying that Holder would leave as soon as the Senate confirmed a successor, which could happen as late as next year; the White House has since confirmed the news in a statement. Holder took office in 2009, appointed by President Barack Obama in his first term. NPR quotes a former official as saying that Holder wanted to leave before being committed to staying the rest of Obama’s second term; he’s already one of the longest-serving US attorneys general. This spring, he said he would stay “well into 2014,” but declined to be more specific.

• Fox News hyped fears that an influx of immigrants from the Middle East could pose a terrorism threat for the U.S., advocating for greater immigration from English-speaking countries. But Fox’s report parrots a study released by the anti-immigration group, the Center for Immigration Studies, and ignored the fact that the growth of Middle East immigrants in the U.S. was modest when compared to other regions.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has now spoken out strongly in favor of net neutrality in an interview with the Washington Post. The headline and much of the attention are going to his quip that what the big broadband providers are doing is a form of “bribery” in trying to set up toll booths to reach their users. And that is, indeed, the money quote, but it’s not the most interesting part of what he’s really saying. It’s in the context that he gets to that, where he’s countering the bogus arguments from folks who insist that we don’t need net neutrality rules because that would mess with “the free market.” That’s wrong for a whole number of reasons that we’ve discussed previously, but Berners-Lee points out that to have a free market, you do need some basic accepted rules, and that’s where some basic regulations are useful: regulations to keep the market free and open. And that’s true of most “free markets.”

• I was very pleased to meet Tom Wheeler, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Tom and I had a very fruitful exchange, particularly on “Net Neutrality”. We are on the same line about preventing blocking and throttling of Internet access; but it’s clear that our approach to specialised services is quite different; in Europe we have been clear that they must not slow down or hinder the quality of access to the open Internet. I was also struck that the FCC received almost four million comments on its own proposed net neutrality rules: and in a way that is unsurprising, as our own consultations and analyses for the Connected Continent proposal show just how important this topic is to citizens, businesses and governments alike.

Intellectual Monopolies

• We just wrote about an audio equipment manufacturer trying to argue that it was criminal for someone to resell their products. While this was obviously crazy, never underestimate the lengths that some companies will go through these days to try to block people from selling products they (thought they had) legally bought. And guess what tool they’re using to block you from actually owning the products you bought? Why copyright, of course. It’s yet another example of how copyright is often used to block property rights rather than to create them.

• Starting from Monday, September 29th, the nominees intended to constitute the future College of Claude Junker’s Commission, will face a full parliamentary hearing, in view of the definitive confirmation of their appointment. La Quadrature du Net invites any Members of the European Parliament to question the candidates on their views and positions on the protection of European citizens’ digital rights. In particular, the set of questions, that La Quadrature du Net provides, covers a broad range of issues that are essential to guarantee people’s rights to access a free and open Internet, as well as to protect their personal data. Most of the questions directly relate to the portfolio of Andrus Ansip, Vice-President for Digital Single Market. Other Commissioners designate, whose Directorate-General is competent for specific issues, are indicated below.

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