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 […]
The H Open Source reports today that Texas-based video games development company id Software has released the source code of Doom 3, a first-person shooter (FPS) originally released in August 2004. The game’s code is available under version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). However, no game data such as textures, sounds and […]
The CiviCRM Community site reports that a UK User Group meeting is to take place on 8th December 2011 from 4.30 pm to 6.30 pm at The Create Centre in Bristol (map). This will be an informal way of meeting others from the community and learning more about CiviCRM. The organisers say they’ll try and […]
The European Space Agency (ESA) wants to publish more of its software under open source licences. It is considering to use a source code tracking system to help untangle code that can be made available as open source and programs that cannot for whatever reason. ESA’s plans for open source are the topic of a […]
As of this week, Asus Eee PC 1215P netbooks preloaded with Ubuntu Linux are available in the shops – as long as you do your shopping in Portugal. 😉 The Canonical blog reports that the ASUS Ubuntu netbooks can be bought in 100 Vobis and Worten stores across the country. The Eee PC has a […]
Desura, a community-driven digital distribution service for gamers, announced the release yesterday of a Linux client. After a 2 month beta period, Desura a digital distribution client which supports the installation and patching of games on any Linux distribution has launched. With this release Desura is the only client which works on both Windows and […]
European universities and employment agencies are increasingly making use of a Europass Curriculum Vitae, an open standard for creating and managing CVs (that’s a résumé for our readers on the other side of the Atlantic. Ed.), according to OSOR. Also increasingly popular is the European Union’s web service to create such CVs: this year the […]
Yes, you did read the headline correctly. However, the government in question is not Her Majesty’s but that of la belle France, which has just issued an invitation to tender for free and open source software support to the amount of €2 million, according to Le Monde Informatique. The Information Systems and Communication Directorate of […]
Despite our best efforts over the last 10 years (and those of others all over the world. Ed.), Linux still accounts for a small percentage of desktop users – a couple of per cent at most. However, there’s one area where Linux is dominant – and that’s supercomputers. The latest list of the world’s top […]
Yes, you did read that correctly. It’s not very often the freetards of the Bristol Wireless lab recommend you spend any money. After all, we like our software to be free in both the beer and speech senses! 🙂 However, for once we’re changing our usual philosophy and encouraging you to go and grab some […]
Erik Josefsson is the winner of the Nordic Free Software Award 2011. With the award, the Swedish Foundation for Free Culture and Free Software (FFKP) honours Josefsson for his achievements as a campaigner for freedom in the information society. “We are proud to honour Erik for the tremendously important work he has done over the […]
Once more the public sector overseas is showing the way on how to use open source software in its areas of competence. Last week, software combining geographic information systems (GIS) with zoning regulations and other country-wide sources of land use information and offered online as an interactive map, was made available as open source software […]
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the organisation whose mission is to lead the Web to its full potential, is holding its first ever developer conference. Entitled W3Conf: Practical Standards for Web Professionals, it takes place next week on 15-16 November in Redmond, Washington, USA. For anyone interested in attending, registration is still open. For those […]
On 8th November the Berlin Regional Court issued its decision in the case AVM Computersysteme Vertriebs GmbH (AVM) v. Cybits AG (Cybits) (news passim). In this case, AVM was essentially trying to stop Cybits from modifying GNU GPL licensed free software inside of their AVM Fritz!Box products. Yesterday, the court dismissed this principal claim. Thus, […]
Yesterday the Charity Commission approved Wikimedia UK, the UK membership organisation supporting Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, as a registered charity. The news comes shortly before the launch of this year’s global Wikimedia fundraiser. Starting on 14th November, Wikimedia UK aims to raise £1 million to support Wikipedia and its sister projects. The Charity […]
Your correspondent arrived at the lab last Friday to find there was – initially at least – nowhere to sit down. We had a full complement of volunteers present – both old and new – and a couple of customers too. Looking at our volunteers, I’d like to draw your attention to 2 of them. […]
In the past we have been somewhat critical (with the aim of encouraging a bit more action, we hope. Ed.) of the UK government’s attitude to and adoption of open source (news passim). However, today we’d like to draw attention to (and applaud) some work done recently by the Cabinet Office. Tools to help the […]
Today Linux.com reminds us that there’s another anniversary to celebrate this year. In addition to the 20th birthday of Linux (news passim), the venerable Vim text editor has also reached the same age. Vim is, of course, a contraction of Vi Improved. In other words, Vim is actually a take on the even-older vi, the […]
Last weekend an historic change (for free and open source aficionados anyway. Ed.) occurred when Freshmeat, one of the oldest free software directories on the internet, changed its name to Freecode. The change is accounted for in part by the unusual name causing problems for many years when trying to sell advertising space for the […]