According to Ellak, a Greek open source advocacy organisation founded by 25 universities and research centres, Greek regional administrations should consider using open technologies, including free software and open data, when drafting their next regional management plans, EU open source public sector website Joinup reports. Last week Ellak sent a letter explaining the advantages of […]
The GNOME Foundation started the Free & Open Source Software Outreach Programme for Women, otherwise known as OPW, in 2010. Many other FOSS organisations joined the programme in the January-April 2013 round. Bits from Debian, the official blog of the Debian Project, announced earlier today that Debian will also be joining in the next round […]
According to its website, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where its member organisations, a full-time staff and the public work together to develop web standards, whose mission is to lead the Web to its full potential. These standards have so far been characterised by complete openness: all web standards are […]
Microsoft will be discontinuing its Windows/MSN Messenger service on 8th April and all current users will be switched to Skype. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is advising all Windows Messenger users to take this as an opportunity to embrace open standards such as XMMP (formerly known as Jabber) instead of switching to Skype. “Crucial […]
The email below has been posted today to the Hacktionlab mailing list. Hi All, I’m pleased to announce that the BarnCamp 2013 sign-up is now live and on-line: https://barncamp.org.uk/ More information about BarnCamp on that site and at: https://hacktionlab.org/barncamp/ You know what to do! 🙂
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) have awarded this year’s Document Freedom Germany Award to German newspaper taz.die tageszeitung (TAZ) in recognition of TAZ’s exemplary use of open standards. TAZ is receiving the Document Freedom award because it delivers its electronic paper to its subscribers in […]
Reuters reports that Hispalinux, which has some 8,000 members in Spain who either use or develop for the Linux operating system, has filed a formal complaint against Microsoft with the EU Commission’s office in Madrid. Hispalinux’s complaint states that Windows 8 contains an “obstruction mechanism” called UEFI Secure Boot (news passim) which makes it difficult […]
According to a report yesterday on German IT news website Heise, the Chinese Ministry for Industry & Information Technology has selected Ubuntu as the basis for its reference architecture for operating systems. The China Software and Integrated Chip Promotions Centre (CSIP), part of the Industry & IT Ministry, Ubuntu manufacturer Canonical and the Chinese National […]
A day’s training in editing and using Wikipedia in Oldham (reputed home of the country’s best black puddings. Ed.) has been announced by Wikimedia UK, the charity supporting the work of the US-based Wikimedia Foundation. The training day will be held on Saturday, 27th April from 10:00am to 4:00pm at Oldham Library, Greaves Street, Oldham, […]
We’ve received details of yet another meet-up in London for users of CiviCRM, the open source CRM for the voluntary sector, in London next week. The meet-up will be held on Wednesday 27th March between 5.30 pm and 8.30 pm. The venue will be Manta Ray Media Ltd., Finsbury Business Centre, 40 Bowling Green Lane, […]
The Python Software Foundation blog announced yesterday that an amicable settlement had been reached in the dispute over the Python trade mark in Europe (news passim) between the Foundation and PO Box Hosting Limited, which trades as Veber. The dispute centred around Veber’s use of the Python name for its cloud hosting services and its […]
Here’s something that’s bound to appeal to our friends at Bristol Hackspace and Dorkbot Bristol: 20th April has been announced as the date for Hardware Freedom Day 2013. Hardware Freedom Day (HFD) is an annual celebration of Open Hardware. Open Hardware Day was initiated in 2012 by the Digital Freedom Foundation, the organisation responsible for […]
The words free (as in freedom. Ed.) and open are quite commonly associated with academia and education: free thought, open access to knowledge and such like. Indeed, these concepts are actually embodied in the names of some academic institutions, such as the UK’s Open University and Germany’s Free University of Berlin. However, there are signs […]
A report on Joinup, the EU’s open source public sector news website, suggests that the government of Spain’s autonomous region of Galicia is considering a switch to open source office productivity tools. Galicia’s Agency for Technological Innovation and Agasol, the Galician Association for Free Software Enterprises, announced last week that they have started assessing the […]
Some years ago, computer retailer Dell made an abortive, half-hearted effort to offer a limited range of machines – one entry level desktop system and a couple of laptops – running Ubuntu Linux (news passim). It’s now back with another Ubuntu offering in the UK and Germany, according to a report in the H Online. […]
The LibreOffice project has been offered a project weekend from Friday 22nd March to Sunday 24th March at Dresden Technical University which will focus specifically on Impress, LibreOffice’s presentation tool (an open source alternative to death by PowerPoint. Ed.). The main aims of the weekend will be to: get into the code that is on […]
If you run a Linux system using the RPM-based package management system, you might like to give your system a security check following news from the Internet Storm Center (ISC) of a SSHD rootkit affecting such distributions. To quote from the ISC article: The rootkit is actually a trojanized library that links with SSHD and […]
The email below has been received from CiviCRMInfo for a meet-up in London next week. The venue is Gamesys, 10 Piccadilly, 4th Floor Reception, London, W1J 0DD (map) and the event will be held on Wednesday 27th February from 6.00 pm to 8.30 pm. Hi UK CiviCRM folks, I thought you might be interested in […]
The use of the term Python for free and open source software is at risk in the EU due to a Community trade mark application by a UK company, as is explained in the post below from the Python Software Foundation News blog. There is a company in the UK that is trying to trademark […]
The City of Munich has responded on its IT blog to a report commissioned from HP by Microsoft alleging that migrating to open source had cost the city millions of Euro more than opting for proprietary software. The following paragraphs are a translation of the relevant blog post. The City has only had a short […]