News from around the world
As reported yesterday, Bristol Wireless is a signatory of the letter below that was submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on 24th April 2013 (news passim). Dear Sir Berners-Lee [sic], We write to implore the World Wide Web Consortium and its member organizations to reject the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) proposal. As prominent […]
Along with many prominent organisations around the world dedicated to defending internet and computing freedom, such as the Free Software Foundation, Free Software Foundation Europe, Bristol Wireless will be signing a letter to be sent to the W3C, the web standards consortium, to protest against proposals to include Digital Rights Management (DRM) – in the […]
Germany’s Bundestag (Parliament) has adopted a joint motion against software patents, urging the German government to take steps to limit the granting of patents on computer programs. In the resolution (German, PDF), the Parliament says software patents restrict developers from exercising their copyright privileges, including the right to distribute their programs as free software. Patents […]
Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website, reports that the Croatian government is establishing open source and open standards working group. The working group will provide advice to government ministries and other public sector organisations wishing to adopt open source software and open file formats. The group will offer guidance for the procurement […]
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 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 […]
According to the news section of its website, the Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA) has formally requested that the Jordanian government remove articles in its draft Telecommunications Law which would allow the government to impose censorship and otherwise control access to the internet. The request was included in a list of suggestions submitted to the […]
Debian, the base Linux distribution for lots of other distros (including the highly popular Ubuntu), announced today that the backports service for the next stable release of Debian (version 7, codenamed “Wheezy”) will be part of the main archive. Backports are packages mostly from the testing distribution (and in few cases from unstable too, e.g. […]
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 […]
Today is International Women’s Day and Neelie Kroes, the European Union Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, has drawn attention on her blog not only to the opportunities that ICT can provide for women, but also to the dearth of women employed in ICT. She writes: I think every woman should have the tools and skills […]
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 […]