Osor reports that the Dutch could save €1-4 bn. per year, if the public sector moved to open source software, according to calculations done by the Ministry of the Interior. The ministry deemed the report ‘unsound’ and wanted to keep it under wraps, but Dutch Members of Parliament demanded access to the report. The report […]
Whilst the venerable Debian distro names its releases after characters in the Toy Story film, the popular Ubuntu distro – a spin-off from Debian – uses a formula of an adjective plus wildlife name to characterise its twice-yearly releases. Mark Shuttleworth, an early space tourist in a previous life and now the leading light behind […]
When: Saturday 19 March 2011. Arrive at 9.40 a.m. for a 10.00 start, continuing until 4 p.m. Lunch will be provided. Where: Room 1.06, Merchant Venturers School of Engineering, Woodland Road, University of Bristol, BS8 1UB (map) What: A non-technical event for individuals and organisations interested in working with Wikipedia and its related projects. Explore […]
LibreOffice, the free, power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Linux, Macintosh and Windows that forked from OpenOffice following the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle in January 2010, has now got a new website. So reset your bookmarks to http://www.libreoffice.org/ LibreOffice is community-driven and developed software and the project comes under the wings of […]
JH writes to the Hacktionlab list: Richard Stallman is doing 5 talks at various locations around the country in early March. It seems his main current activity is around raising awareness against anti-downloading legislation, corporations imposing Digital Rights Management and cracking down on copyright infringements – so it’s not the standard rant from him about […]
Over the past couple of days we’ve gone and updated our WordPress install and, as part of the update, we’ve also added the WPTouch plug-in to enable customisation of the site’s theme especially for folk with smartphones. Apparently it delivers a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to touch mobile visitors, without modifying […]
On 16 March Bristol’s Circle Interactive is hosting a one-day Introduction to CiviCRM with tutor Sean Kenny. Earlier this month, Circle held a CiviCRM user group meeting (news passim). The course will give an overview of CiviCRM use in small to medium-sized organisations and the first session will offer hands-on training in everyday tasks, such […]
Kerala IT News reports that the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) was inaugurated on 24th February by Kerala’s Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan in Thiruvananthapuram. ICFOSS will focus on providing technical assistance for using FOSS to implement various government projects in Kerala in an endeavour to promote open source software. In […]
Following on from the recent visit to Bristol and talk by Jimmy Wales for Wikipedia’s 10th birthday, Sam Downie has now announced the release an edited 6 minute version of Jimmy’s public talk at the Victoria Rooms (news passim). The event hosted by, and with the co-operation of Wikimedia UK, the University of Bristol, Bristol […]
The Estonian Ministry of the Environment has saved millions of Euro over the past 10 years by using OpenOffice, the open source office suite, according to Meelis Merilo, the head of the Ministry’s IT department, in a news item posted on OSOR. Using the open source package has cost the Ministry no more than €64,000 […]
A couple of days ago, we received a generous donation of an Acer laptop from an anonymous caller at the Lab (thank you kindly, sir! We did ask him if he wanted any kind of thanks, but he resisted all our blandishments. Ed.). He only asked that we wipe the data off the hard drive, […]
As announced a few weeks ago, a meet-up for CiviCRM users and developers was held on Thursday 10th February last at Bristol’s CREATE Centre (news passim), ably led by Circle Interactive‘s Dave Morton, who was being assisted by our old friend Sean Kenny. The main aims of the get-together were to discuss how the CiviCRM […]
H-Online reports that the main exchange of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is now live trading with a Novell SUSE Linux based system, following final step set-up procedures on Saturday 5 February. The system has been trialled for several months and the LSE’s move to Linux continues what appears to be a trend for stock […]
Why not make this February 14th a very special Valentine’s Day? On Valentine’s Day, FSFE calls on Free Software users everywhere to show their love for Free Software . It is the perfect occasion to show our love for Free Software and the possibility to use computers in freedom. On its campaign page , FSFE […]
Sexism in free and open source software (FOSS) culture has been increasingly discussed and documented over the past couple of years. However, little has been done about it. Moreover, the lack of women contributors to projects such as Wikipedia has been highlighted by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (news passim) and in Australia, Collective Action is […]
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is inviting individuals, community groups and institutions to celebrate Document Freedom Day (DFD) this coming 30th March. DFD is worldwide day of celebration of Open Standards, open document formats and their importance. Open Standards ensure the freedom to access your data and the freedom to build Free Software to write […]
Late notice I know (you might try apologising for your tardiness. 🙂 Ed.), but the Bristol & Bath LUG has this morning had details of the above event. To quote the event’s home page: The Linux & Open Source Expo 2011 is the UK’s only dedicated Linux & Open Source conference and exhibition. There is […]
One of the facts that came out of Jimmy Wales’ recent talk in Bristol (news passim) was that the majority of contributors to Wikipedia (aka ‘Wikipedians’) are male. Indeed, only 13% of current contributors are women. News now reaches the lab via Collective Action in Australia that a Women for Wikipedia campaign is running between […]
It’s come to the chief scribe’s attention that Herefordshire, another part of the country with a fine cider tradition, is having a bit of a do on Saturday 26th March and there’s a local Bristol angle, if you read down near the foot of the email reproduced below, which was posted to the Ubuntu UK […]
Debian News announces that next weekend, Debian developers and users from all over the world are organizing release parties for the release of Debian squeeze, which is due on the weekend of the 5th-6th February. For those interested in organising a local release party in their respective part of the globe, get cracking with the […]