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Category Archives: International IT News

News from around the world

Ties strengthened between FSFE and The Document Foundation

It’s been announced today that the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is joining the Advisory Board of The Document Foundation, the body behind the very successful free and open source LibreOffice productivity suite. At the same time, The Document Foundation is becoming an associate of the FSFE. The FSFE’s aim is to help people control […]

The People’s Code – Federal Source Code policy released by White House

Two days ago, Tony Scott, the U.S. Chief Information Officer, wrote on the White House blog that the Federal government was releasing the Federal Source Code policy (PDF) to support improved access to custom-developed Federal source code. The policy, which incorporates feedback from the public, requires any new custom-developed source code developed specifically by or […]

Free Software Foundation Europe Summit 2016 – Not a tech conference

Free software advocates from all over Europe will be meeting in Berlin from the 2nd to the 4th of September at the FSFE Summit 2016. Apart from working on furthering the adoption of free software in Europe, the event will also be celebrating the FSFE’s 15th anniversary. One of the main missions of the free […]

Ubuntu Forums compromised – 2 mn. email addresses stolen

Hackers have succeeded in retrieving part of the Ubuntu Forums database by exploiting a security flaw in the Forum Runner extension for vBulletin. Some 2 million user names and associated email and IP addresses were stolen, Le Monde Informatique reports, although the attackers failed to obtain users’ passwords. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, announced […]

Document editing in Nextcloud with Collabora Online Office

Thanks to a partnership between Nextcloud and Collabora there is now a great solution for self-hosting Online Office. Nextcloud has worked with Collabora to provide an easy-to-use Online Office solution for the first time for home users which is easily integrated into Nextcloud. At the same time, Nextcloud and Collabora have announced the of enterprise […]

Bulk data collection only lawful in serious crime cases, Advocate General rules

The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that bulk data collection in the UK – as enabled under the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (Dripa) 2014 is illegal, except in the fight against serious crime, yesterday’s Guardian reports. The case had been brought by Labour deputy leader Tom Watson […]

New money and new management for ownCloud

German company ownCloud GmbH is receiving new money and taking over the business of ownCloud Inc. in the USA, German IT news site heise reports. In addition, there will also be management changes due to the financing deal. A group of investors featuring the Frankfurt-based entrepreneur Tobias Gerlinger will be providing ownCloud GmbH with “growth […]

Inria announces Software Heritage

Yesterday Inria, the French National Institute for computer science and applied mathematics, announced (French press release. Ed.) the launch of Software Heritage, an initiative collect, organise, preserve and make easily accessible the source code of all software that is publicly available. Sending messages to family and friends, paying bills, purchasing goods, accessing entertainment, interacting with […]

GNOME & KDE join TDF Advisory Board

Yesterday The Document Foundation, the organisation behind the free and open source LibreOffice suite, announced that GNOME Foundation and KDE e.v. have joined the Advisory Board of The Document Foundation (TDF). In a reciprocal move to consolidate their relationships, TDF also acquired seats on the boards of both the GNOME Foundation and KDE. These reciprocal […]

Rio’s largest favela has its own wifi provider

With the Olympic Games being held in Rio de Janeiro this summer, lots of eyes are being turned on the city. Some of those eyes are being turned on the city’s slums – known locally as “favelas” – with some surprising results. For instance, Techinsider has discovered that Rocinha, the city’s and Brazil’s largest favela, […]

Introducing The Document Liberation Project

Today many people have digital content they created years ago and stored in obsolete and proprietary document formats. Very often these old file formats cannot be opened by any application on the user’s current operating system, leaving the users locked out of their own content. However, it is not just individuals that are affected: public […]

Collabora Online 1.0 “Engine” for hosters and clouds released

Collabora Productivity, the driving force behind putting the free and open source LibreOffice productivity suite in the cloud, has announced the release the first production grade version of Collabora Online, its flagship cloud document suite solution. Codenamed “Engine”, it is targeted specifically at hosting and cloud businesses who wish to support both commercial and consumer […]

Open Source licence API developed

Over the last 19 years the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has been the steward of the Open Source Definition (or OSD), establishing a common language when discussing what an Open Source licence means. In addition, the OSI has maintained a list of licences known to be compatible with the OSD. This is being taken to […]

CERN’s 300 TB – the biggest open data release yet?

Yesterday a press release from CERN announced that its CMS Collaboration unit had released more than 300 terabytes (TB) of high-quality open data. This includes over 100 TB, or 2.5 inverse femtobarns (fb−1), of data from proton collisions at 7 TeV, making up half the data collected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by the […]

First LibreOffice 5.2 bug hunting session announced

A blog post earlier this week from The Document Foundation, the organisation behind LibreOffice, the popular free and open source office productivity suite, gives details of the first bug hunting session for the forthcoming release of LibreOffice 5.2. There is also a page on the session on the LibreOffice wiki. This initial session will be […]