Chief scribe
The business section of the BBC website carries an article on freeing up government data within EU Member States for re-use by anyone. This would give rise to a market worth some €40 bn per year, according to the author. As advocates of open source, along with open standards, we have long believed in open […]
The latest post on the CiviCRM blog announces the release of versions 3.4.8 and 4.0.8 of this popular open source CRM system (as used by Bristol Wireless. Ed.), which runs of the Drupal or Joomla content management systems (CMS). The developers also announce that this release features a number of bug fixes. In addition, CiviCRM […]
One of the barriers frequently mentioned to getting involved in editing Wikipedia is the clunky editing interface; indeed it has come up at sessions attended by Bristol Wireless volunteers cunningly disguised as Wikipedians (news passim). Your scribe has some vague memory of the topic of the clunky editor even coming up in the course of […]
From the Bristol Girl Geeks Dinner website: Following on from the success of our Girl Geeks vs Wikimeet event back in August, we are teaming up with Wikipedia again, this time to bring you a hands-on editing event, at the University of Bristol. This event will run from 1pm until 5pm on Sunday 15th January […]
As the council in our home city moves away from its previous open source office suite (Star Office) to the dark side (aka Microsoft Office. Ed. ), news reaches the blogmeister’s inbox via the Free Software Foundation Europe reporting on the experience of Helsinki City Council. City officials in Helsinki, Finland, are overwhelmingly satisfied after […]
Are you in the public sector and do you use or contribute to free and open-source software for e-Government? If so, Joinup asks you to take this survey. The survey is enquiring about the policies for sharing and reusing free and open-source software (F/OSS) in public sector organisations and the regions and countries of the […]
From the heart of Leipzig in Germany, news reaches the lab of the establishment of Open Source Solar, a place for collaborative development of open source hardware for small photovoltaic systems, with the aim of assisting the construction of the highest quality, affordable solar systems. To quote: Photovoltaic power supplies are very useful if grid […]
The Internet Archive, the place where – inter alia – old websites go when they die (and a damned fine resource it is too!. Ed.), has launched an appeal for donations. Brewster, the Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, posted the following on the organisation’s blog yesterday: Dear Supporters of the Archive, In […]
We’ve been contacted on Twitter by Easton Arts Trail of Bristol with the following request: @BristolWireless We’re looking for a web designer to relaunch our website. Do you know anyone who might take it on as a project for free? The Easton Arts Trail was founded in 2006 by a group of local artists and […]
In the dispute between the companies AVM and Cybits the written reasoning for the decision of the Regional Court of Berlin is now available. The court confirmed FSFE‘s view that users of software licensed under the GNU General Public License are allowed to modify and install it even if it is shipped as a part […]
Well, who’d have believed it? (The blogmeister wouldn’t have for starters! Ed.) The UK’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is to trial open source desktop software in a move which could pave the way to the large-scale deployment of non-Microsoft PC software in the public sector, Computer Weekly reports. The DWP is to run […]
According to the OpenStreetMap Foundation blog, the organisation is growing fast, having just welcomed its 500,000th signed up user, and logged the 10,000,000th update to its map of the UK. The Foundation is a UK-registered not-for-profit organisation that supports the OpenStreetMap Project and some years ago, Bristol Wireless volunteers spent a pleasant day or so […]
News reaches the lab via Ubuntu Vibes that retailer HMV is using displays powered by Ubuntu in its shops in UK High Streets. Sharp-eyed readers will note the interactive touchscreen display is being used to give information about Nintendo’s Wii games console, whilst those with even more acute vision may not with some dismay the […]
We learn from the BBC that the BBC Micro is now a venerable 30 years old. This machine was instrumental in enthusing many of today’s more senior programmers in getting into coding. The BBC Micro was series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated […]
As part of the Government’s Autumn Statement, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne yesterday announced that ‘world-leading’ (ahem! Ed.) commitments by the Government to open up public sector data will make travel easier and healthcare better and create significant growth for industry and jobs in the UK, according to the Cabinet Office. The Open Data […]
The regional assembly of the Italian island of Sicily is to consider a law encouraging the public sector to use of free and open source software, OSOR reports. The bill was presented last month by Democratic Party member Massimo Ferrara. According to Blog Sicilia (in Italian), this is a “legislative initiative that reduces the digital […]
The YaCy project is releasing version 1.0 of its peer-to-peer Free Software search engine, according to a news report posted today by the Free Software Foundation Europe. The software takes a radically new approach to search. YaCy does not use a central server, but compiles its search results from a network of independent peers, which […]
Yesterday morning, Bristol Wireless’ chief scribe held a conversation on the Twitter micro-blogging site with an old friend of the co-op, Will Pollard of wifiExeter. The discussion was prompted by a visit to Exeter by Shadow Culture Minister, Dan Jarvis MP and revolved around matters such as the use of Creative Commons and other open/‘copyleft’ […]
The H Online reports that developers at Leuven Catholic University in Belgium have released AccessODF, an open source extension for the LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org Writer word processing application. With the extension, Writer users can evaluate and repair accessibility issues in documents, including the open source OpenDocument (ODF) and proprietary DOC and Office Open XML (DOCX) […]
To answer the question in brief, it’s a codename. Codenames are a common fact of life in information technology; everyone large and small uses them. For instance, the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution names its releases after animals preceded by an adjective (see list), whilst the venerable Debian, from which many distros take their inspiration (and […]