2011 marks the 20th birthday of Linux (or GNU/Linux if you’re a purist. Ed.) and the Linux Foundation has released the video below to mark the event. Find out more about what’s happening to celebrate 20 years of Linux and penguin-powered computing at the Linux Foundation’s dedicated 20th birthday page.
News arrives that the Free Software Foundation Europe is 10 years old this month. This is a good age to start celebrating according to our sources. Consequently, FSFE is organising a small party in Berlin this evening at C-Base, Rungestraße 20, 10179 Berlin. All free software supporters are invited and those coming along are asked […]
It’s 8.30 on the morning of Saturday 26th March and your ‘umble scribe is standing on a sunny Stapleton Road station waiting for the train. One and a half hours later, he alights at an overcast and chillier Hereford station and goes ambling into town in search of 2 things: firstly, breakfast and secondly, All […]
Bristol Wireless has been using wikis for years to document and plan the development of the co-operative and its work, so we were delighted to accept an invitation to attend the Bristol Wiki Academy at the weekend (news passim). To the best of our knowledge, this was the first Wiki Academy to be organised in […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
News reaches the lab (hat tip: Lugbikaner) that Nigeria now has its own open source advocacy group called the Open Source Foundation for Nigeria (OSFON). According to OSFON’S website, its mission is The mission of Open Source Foundation for Nigeria (OSFON) is to promote and educate decision makers in government, educators, NGOs, businesses and citizens […]
OSOR reports that the Greek non-profit organisation ‘Free Software / Open Source Software’ (aka Ellak, in Greek) granted the northern Greek Municipality of Kozani four wireless access points and a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) line of 24Mb down/1Mb up in the town’s Lassanis square. Furthermore, Ellak undertook the installation, configuration, operation and technical support of […]
Arriving at the lab on Tuesday this week, your correspondent was pleasantly surprised to see that an additional batch of LTSP thin clients had been set up in the lab. He was even more surprised to observe that all 4 new machines were in use and a full-blown lesson on use of the Linux command […]
News reaches the lab that Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, the Linux operating system which we install on our refurbished machines, is organising a Developer Day on 27th January 2011 in Bangalore, India. The event will be held at Bangalore’s Leela Palace Kempinski Hotel. Ubuntu is different from other commercial Linux offerings that preceded it, […]
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is gathering information about the use of Free Software by the public sector in Europe. The information will help them to evaluate the current situation and will also be used to decide who will be the European Free Software Champion in 2012. The FSFE is asking public sector bodies […]
Just before Christmas, PCWorld.com ran an article speculating on the differences if the world ran its IT on secure Linux-based systems rather than insecure closed source proprietary operating systems. One reason for such speculation is that, for as long as we advocates can remember, it’s always been the next year that’s going to be the […]
Our resident purveyor of bah-humbug writes: It’s that time of year again; even the normally secular Bristol Wireless lab has started to acquire greetings cards. However, there’s another reason to celebrate 25th December: Sir Isaac Newton, a man of gravitas, was born on that day in 1642 (under the old calendar reckoning. Ed). Visiting the […]