On August 16, the Debian community will celebrate that epic Linux distro’s 19th birthday since Ian Murdock’s original founding announcement. As is tradition, the Debian communities all around the world will be celebrating it with Debian Birthday parties. A Debian Birthday party is a fun event, globally marking the appreciation and the joy of being […]
When he was over in Wales recently for Monmouthpedia (news passim), the chief scribe had the good fortune to meet Robin Owain, a stalwart of Wicipedia Cymru, the Welsh language version of Wikipedia, the world’s largest open source project. Wicipedia Cymru has a pool of some 200 editors who between them have now amassed (and […]
At 11 am UTC on 27th July the shutters come down on registrations for the European Space Agency’s Summer of Code in Space 2012 (SOCIS 2012). SOCIS aims at offering student developers stipends to write code for various space-related open source software projects. Through SOCIS, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors […]
Casas Bahia is a major domestic electrical appliances retailer in Brazil with 53,000 employees and over 500 stores. For the last 5 years it’s been successfully running SuSE Linux on its mainframes and point-of-sale systems with zero downtime as the following video explains (with helpful subtitles in English for non-Portuguese speakers).
Unlike their colleagues in the city of Helsinki’s IT department, who think open source office suites cost too much (news passim), the Finnish city of Tampere is to trail the free and open source OpenOffice productivity suite alongside its regular proprietary suite (probably the one with the annoying paperclip. Ed.), Joinup reports. The pilot follows […]
We’ve been long-term users of Linux LTSP thin client systems for running both our workstations in the lab and our mobile event ICT and public access suites. Moreover, following a tweet earlier today, we’ve been contacted just now by the LTSP developers to see if we can contribute to LTSPedia, the new LTSP wiki, as […]
It’s just been announced by Wikimedia UK, the UK charity that supports the work of Wikipedia, that the English language version of Wikipedia has today passed through the barrier of 4 million articles: The English @Wikipedia now has over 4 million articles! Congratulations to its 100,000+ editors that have made this possible! — Wikimedia UK […]
According to the IT department city of Helsinki in Finland, migrating to an open source office suite like OpenOffice or LibreOffice will cost the city council some €21 mn., according to a news piece carried by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). Back on 10th of April 2012, FSFE filed a Freedom of Information request, […]
LeggiOggi.it reports (in Italian) that the Puglia region has passed Italy’s first regional law that combines free software with open data. On Wednesday this week all 48 members of the regional council voted in favour of a new law promoting the use of free software and granting citizens access to all the information and services […]
After the leap second problems reported earlier this week (news passim), Techworld features some more positive news – that Linux was central to the discovery of the Higgs boson by CERN. Techworld quotes a post by a Reddit user called d3pd, which we reproduce below. I don’t see any CERN related things here, so I […]
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has two internship positions available from August 2012. FSFE is looking for bright, motivated people who want to make a real difference for a free information society. Applications would be welcomed from those with a background in politics, law, computer science or other fields. The internships are for between […]
Regular readers will recall that we paid a site visit to Somerset wildlife sanctuary Secret World a couple of weeks ago (news passim) to do a survey for some networking they wanted doing. Bristol Wireless’ Rich and Acesabe paid a return visit earlier today to carry out the actual work. It’s worth mentioning here that […]
The BBC is reporting that the leap second change and poor weather on both sides of the Atlantic last weekend caused chaos, knocking out the likes of Reddit, Foursquare and Amazon Web Services‘ cloud computing servers. Besides, internet and IT giants, the bug also affected many other businesses, such as Quantas, whose check-in system crashed. […]
We learn from Joinup that Yadifa, the DNS server developed to administer the .eu top level domain (TLD), has been released as open source by Eurid, the not-for-profit organisation which manages the .eu domain registry. Eurid uses Yadifa alongside Bind, one of two other commonly used open source DNS systems. Yafida was published officially on […]
Our friends at Bristol 24/7 recently reported that open source software supplier ForgeRock was moving its UK headquarters to Bristol’s historic Queen Square. Even more recently, Connecting Bristol alerted us that ForgeRock is recruiting staff for its Bristol office. Connecting Bristol’s post also indicates that successful candidates for ForgeRock’s jobs in Bristol will also have […]
Wikimedia UK, the British charity that promotes and supports the work of Wikipedia, its sister projects, and other open educational resources in the UK, is now looking for a Developer to join its growing staff team at its central London offices. This role will involve contributing to the development of MediaWiki (the software upon which […]
Clearly not, if the following exchange in the House of Lords between Lord Rennard and Baroness Verma is accurately reported. First the question by LibDem Lord Rennard: My Lords, will the Minister tell the House the Government’s policies in relation to the development of the computer code or software they pay for and whether it […]
A couple of days ago, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) announced it had started an initiative to promote fair public procurement in Finland. The initiative concentrates on IT-related procurement notices that require specific brands instead of defining the functionalities required by the purchaser. To date FSFE has scrutinised over 300 procurement notices, and of […]
It’s rumoured that the UK public sector spends some £20 bn. per year on IT. Is this money well spent? Hardly, if the latest evidence is to be believed. Computing.co.uk reports on a FoI request by open source storage supplier Nexenta into the storage buying habits of 48 local and central government departments, of which […]
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has now entered the fray (news passim) over the draft Communications Data Bill (aka the Snooper’s Charter), publishing advice for ordinary users to avoid its worst effects by using free software. The original post helpfully points out that, “Free Software provides several ways with which you can protect your […]