The CiviCRM blog reports that CiviCRM 3.4.4 and 4.0.4 have just been released and both are available for download. This release offers several important improvements to permissioning, helping to harden systems. The developers recommend an immediate upgrade to benefit from the new release’s improvements. The new releases can also be tried on the public demos: […]
Information is slowly emerging about the future of open source – or its end – at Bristol City Council (news passim). The Counts Louse has for the most part been a lone flag-bearer for open source since its brave (and now reversed) decision to ditch MS Office and adopt an open source alternative some 5 […]
Yesterday in Berlin a court hearing took place in a case that could set a crucial precedent for the embedded industry. In the lawsuit between AVM and Cybits, AVM maintained that others should not be allowed to modify free software on computers bought from AVM, such as the widely used Fritz!Box. At the heart of […]
On Monday the advance crew – by now known as the tat-down team and consisting mostly of Bristol Wireless volunteers – arrived back tired but satisfied from the rural Barncamp site up the Wye Valley. Our journey began the previous Wednesday afternoon, when the advance crew got to site after a frantic best part of […]
The Free Software Unit of the Secretariat of State for Technology of Tunisia’s Ministry of Industry and Technology has launched Taskforce Opensource, an initiative aimed at fostering the adoption and implementation of open source in Tunisia. The site’s home page states: This collaborative space is designed to collate your proposals and your comments on many […]
The UK public sector has been characterised as an impregnable fortress as far as open source software is concerned. While public sector bodies in other countries are adopting open source (news passim), the British public sector is a virtual closed shop for advocates of openness (in terms of software). This dire situation has been further […]
Our friends at Circle Interactive report that on 7th June LASA will be hosting a head-to-head comparison of 3 database software systems, featuring an in-depth analysis of the facilities of each. The Circle article continues: This is an ideal opportunity for any organisation, who [sic] is considering investing in a complete CRM system, to compare […]
Today the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne MP, is speaking at Google Zeitgeist 2011. As a matter of fact, he’s not just giving any old speech, but the event’s keynote address. HM Treasury has very kindly released the Chancellor’s speech in advance and it does make very interesting reading indeed. Perusing the speech, your […]
Two weeks ago, your correspondent made one of his regular trips to Stoke on Trent to do a routine back-up of his 79 year-old mother’s computer, which happens to be running Windows XP. The back-up went smoothly: I took a copy of her personal files to a spare hard drive of my own in a […]
Are you enthusiastic about Debian and thinking about contributing? If yes, then the Debian Women project and the OpenHatch project want to teach you the basics. They’ll be will be holding an IRC event on Saturday 7th May to help people that want to compile their first Debian package from source, and apply their first […]
Yesterday the Gnome Project announced that the GNOME 3.0 release (as used in the latest Ubuntu release, now imminent, codenamed ‘Natty Narwhal’. Ed.) has attracted far more contributions from women than any previous GNOME release. This results largely from the hard work of the first round of the Outreach Programme for Women interns, who took […]
Our friend Emma Harvey (a fine exponent of singing the ‘Free Software Song‘. Ed.) at Trinity Community Arts has sent out an email today to let people know Trinity is looking for volunteers to assist in developing its work. Amongst the types of volunteers wanted, we noticed the following: IT Assistant to help us build […]
People who know BW’s chief scribe know he’s a great fan of Twitter, the social networking and microblogging website. Over the past couple of years, he’s tried out various Linux Twitter clients, ranging from quick and dirty Python scripts for tweeting from the command line, via your conventional web browsers to dedicated social networking packages, […]
Bristol has become a hotbed of activity in recent times for all things related to Wikipedia and Wikimedia UK. In May 2010 Bristol opened its arms to delegates from various Wikimedia chapters from around the world (news passim). In February this year the city welcomed Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who gave a talk at the […]
If someone asked you what you would do with Linux when the cows come home, would your answer be: “Milk them”? If so, you can go to the top of the class; and no, don’t let the proximity of April 1st lull into a sense of incredulity. Agricultural equipment manufacturer DeLaval makes a robotic milking […]
Over at Computer World UK, Tony Collins currently has a most revealing report on the state of UK government IT procurement taken from a House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee session, during which it interviewed Martin Rice, CEO of software company Erudine. Besides references to cartels and an “oligarchy of government IT suppliers”, the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]