In conjunction with both Fossbox and Flossie, BCSWomen, the British Computer Society’s specialist women’s group, is organising 3 open source career taster days for women in London next month. The days involved are 13th, 20th and 28th May and the sessions will run from 10.00 am to 5.00pm. All the taster days will be held […]
Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website, reports that the Croatian government is establishing open source and open standards working group. The working group will provide advice to government ministries and other public sector organisations wishing to adopt open source software and open file formats. The group will offer guidance for the procurement […]
According to Ellak, a Greek open source advocacy organisation founded by 25 universities and research centres, Greek regional administrations should consider using open technologies, including free software and open data, when drafting their next regional management plans, EU open source public sector website Joinup reports. Last week Ellak sent a letter explaining the advantages of […]
The GNOME Foundation started the Free & Open Source Software Outreach Programme for Women, otherwise known as OPW, in 2010. Many other FOSS organisations joined the programme in the January-April 2013 round. Bits from Debian, the official blog of the Debian Project, announced earlier today that Debian will also be joining in the next round […]
Microsoft will be discontinuing its Windows/MSN Messenger service on 8th April and all current users will be switched to Skype. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is advising all Windows Messenger users to take this as an opportunity to embrace open standards such as XMMP (formerly known as Jabber) instead of switching to Skype. “Crucial […]
The email below has been posted today to the Hacktionlab mailing list. Hi All, I’m pleased to announce that the BarnCamp 2013 sign-up is now live and on-line: https://barncamp.org.uk/ More information about BarnCamp on that site and at: https://hacktionlab.org/barncamp/ You know what to do! 🙂
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) have awarded this year’s Document Freedom Germany Award to German newspaper taz.die tageszeitung (TAZ) in recognition of TAZ’s exemplary use of open standards. TAZ is receiving the Document Freedom award because it delivers its electronic paper to its subscribers in […]
Reuters reports that Hispalinux, which has some 8,000 members in Spain who either use or develop for the Linux operating system, has filed a formal complaint against Microsoft with the EU Commission’s office in Madrid. Hispalinux’s complaint states that Windows 8 contains an “obstruction mechanism” called UEFI Secure Boot (news passim) which makes it difficult […]
According to a report yesterday on German IT news website Heise, the Chinese Ministry for Industry & Information Technology has selected Ubuntu as the basis for its reference architecture for operating systems. The China Software and Integrated Chip Promotions Centre (CSIP), part of the Industry & IT Ministry, Ubuntu manufacturer Canonical and the Chinese National […]
The Python Software Foundation blog announced yesterday that an amicable settlement had been reached in the dispute over the Python trade mark in Europe (news passim) between the Foundation and PO Box Hosting Limited, which trades as Veber. The dispute centred around Veber’s use of the Python name for its cloud hosting services and its […]
The words free (as in freedom. Ed.) and open are quite commonly associated with academia and education: free thought, open access to knowledge and such like. Indeed, these concepts are actually embodied in the names of some academic institutions, such as the UK’s Open University and Germany’s Free University of Berlin. However, there are signs […]
A report on Joinup, the EU’s open source public sector news website, suggests that the government of Spain’s autonomous region of Galicia is considering a switch to open source office productivity tools. Galicia’s Agency for Technological Innovation and Agasol, the Galician Association for Free Software Enterprises, announced last week that they have started assessing the […]
Some years ago, computer retailer Dell made an abortive, half-hearted effort to offer a limited range of machines – one entry level desktop system and a couple of laptops – running Ubuntu Linux (news passim). It’s now back with another Ubuntu offering in the UK and Germany, according to a report in the H Online. […]
The LibreOffice project has been offered a project weekend from Friday 22nd March to Sunday 24th March at Dresden Technical University which will focus specifically on Impress, LibreOffice’s presentation tool (an open source alternative to death by PowerPoint. Ed.). The main aims of the weekend will be to: get into the code that is on […]
If you run a Linux system using the RPM-based package management system, you might like to give your system a security check following news from the Internet Storm Center (ISC) of a SSHD rootkit affecting such distributions. To quote from the ISC article: The rootkit is actually a trojanized library that links with SSHD and […]
Richard Stallman, aka rms, the Founder and President of the Free Software Foundation, will be giving at talk entitled “Copyright vs Community” at 6.00 pm on Thursday 21st March at the University of Bath as part of this year’s Bath Digital Festival. Admission is free, but booking is essential. More details are available on the […]
The use of the term Python for free and open source software is at risk in the EU due to a Community trade mark application by a UK company, as is explained in the post below from the Python Software Foundation News blog. There is a company in the UK that is trying to trademark […]
The City of Munich has responded on its IT blog to a report commissioned from HP by Microsoft alleging that migrating to open source had cost the city millions of Euro more than opting for proprietary software. The following paragraphs are a translation of the relevant blog post. The City has only had a short […]
From France’s Gendarmerie Nationale (news passim) to an Irishman with 6 machines, using free and open source operating systems and software is saving businesses of all sizes money. The Irishman appears in a report in today’s Meath Chronicle of how an 11 year-old boy saved him €3,000. Sean Mullen’s 3 laptops and 3 desktop computers […]
The whiff of romance is in the air as restaurants, the cards business and florist gird their loins for Valentine’s Day on February 14th. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is asking all free software romantics to do something different on Valentine’s Day: use the day as an opportunity to say “thank you” to one […]