Writing yesterday on the Free Software Foundation (FSF) blog, Libby Reinish states that UK citizens will soon be able to fill out government paperwork with their freedoms intact. The British government announced last week (news passim) that Open Document Format (ODF), HTML and PDF will be the official file formats used by all government agencies. […]
The European Commission has recently renewed its commitment to a proprietary desktop and secret file formats, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) writes. The Commission is refusing to make a serious effort to break free from vendor lock-in and is ignoring all available alternatives. In doing so, the EU’s civil service fails to practice what […]
In response to Mozilla’s announcement that it is reluctantly adopting DRM in its Firefox Web browser, Free Software Foundation executive director John Sullivan made the following statement: “Only a week after the International Day Against DRM, Mozilla has announced that it will partner with proprietary software company Adobe to implement support for Web-based Digital Restrictions […]
On Friday evening the Open Rights Group organised one of a series of nationwide European Digital Rights hustings at St Werburgh’s Community Centre in Bristol. This was a chance for local people to quiz MEP candidates from the South West about their views on digital rights and ask them to sign up to the 10 […]
The Gnome Outreach Program for Women (OPW) helps women get involved in free and open source software and has just announced the opening of a new round of internship applications. Women can apply for an internship to contribute to an open source project from May to August; and OPW is not just asking for applications […]
With about an hour to go before the shutters came down on Friday afternoon, Bristol Wireless responded to the Cabinet Office’s consultation on file formats for sharing and collaborating on documents with government. Our response is reproduced below. Background: we are a volunteer-run IT co-operative which has been active in the west of England for […]
Free software, we love you! 🙂 Don’t know what free software is? Find out here. Show your love for free software today by using the #ilovefs hashtag.
Malta’s new open data website is running on open source software, according to Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site. The site, which is run by the Maltese Local Councils Association, uses Centos Linux as its underlying operating system, the MySQL database management system, the Nginx web server and WordPress as its content […]
This Friday 14th will be – as it is every year – St Valentine’s Day and the whiff of romance is in the air as restaurants, the greetings cards business and florists gird their loins and reinforce their tills for increased turnover. On 14th February, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is asking all free […]
Blue-Mind, the French open source collaborative messaging solution, has been adopted for French universities and other associated establishments, including scientific and technical public institutions, Le Monde Informatique reports today. The Ministry for Higher Education and Research has signed a four-year framework agreement with French software supplier Blue-Mind. Its collaborative open source messenging solution is therefore […]
The Dutch town of Ede spends 92% less on licence fees than other Dutch local authorities. How? By using free and open source software wherever possible according to the Dutch edition of Computerworld. Where NOiV initiative failed, the municipality of Ede wants to be a shining example as regards the use of open source software. […]
Coming soon: the fair city of Manchester is holding its first Free Software festival between Monday 3rd February and Saturday, 8th February 2014. To quote from the FSFE Manchester website: We are delighted to announce that FSFE-mcr and friends will be running a whole week of Free Software fun in Manchester’s very first Free Software […]
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS proved to be the most secure product in a client operating system investigation by British security body Communications Electronics Security Group (CESG), which is part of GCHQ and provides assistance to government departments on their own communications security, according to a report today in Germany’s Linux-Magazin. The test field consisted of 11 […]
The Italian government has made free software the default choice for public sector organisations, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) reports. In a document (PDF, Italian) published last Wednesday, the Italian Digital Agency (Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale) issued rules saying that all the country’s government organisations must consider using free software before buying licences for […]
The initiatives for encouraging young people to get into programming are multiplying, writes French news site Le Monde Informatique. With CodeCombat the work is both study and play. Now released as open source, CodeCombat is a video game devoted to teaching programming. The platform is multi-player and uses CoffeeScript, a programming language that transcompiles to […]
The January newsletter for CiviCRM, the free and open source CRM package used by Bristol Wireless, has just arrived in our inbox and it contains 3 items of interest for UK-based users. Dealing with them in strict chronological order, the first date for your diaries is a Free CiviCRM Showcase Day in Leeds on 16th […]
Just before the end of last month Wildfire Games announced the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 15 “Osiris”. 0 A.D. is a real time strategy game and the new release comes with additional functions. It’s available free of charge for Linux, Mac and Windows and is licensed under Version 2 of the GPL. The Alpha […]
Microsoft has announced that it will be ending support for Windows XP, now 12 years old, on 8th April 2014. The Bristol & Bath Linux Users’ Group (BBLUG) has seen this as an opportunity to introduce people currently using XP to a reliable free and open source Linux operating system and has planned an event […]
Robert Ancell of Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution (which Bristol Wireless recommends for use by newcomers to Linux. Ed. ), has announced on the Ubuntu desktop mailing list that Canonical is forking the Gnome Control Centre. Robert’s email is reproduced in full below. Hi all, Ubuntu makes use of a heavily […]
HĂĽseyin Tolu, a PHD student at the University of Bristol, says that public sector organisations in Turkey are neglecting free and open source ICT solutions and its causes include institutional inertia, vendor lock-in and corruption according to a report today in Joinup, the EU’s public sector all things open source website. Part of his thesis […]