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Tag Archives: open source

LibreOffice 5.1 – first bug hunting session announced

Writing on The Document Foundation blog, Italo Vignoli has announced that a bug hunting session will take place from 30th October to 1st November for LibreOffice 5.1, the next planned major release of this popular open source office productivity suite. Over those 3 days, volunteers and members of the LibreOffice community will check the first […]

1,125 public sector websites no longer advertise proprietary PDF readers

After six years of activity, the Free Software Foundation Europe’s (FSFE) PDFreaders campaign is coming to a close this month as one of the FSFE’s most successful campaigns. The campaign began in 2009 with the aim of removing advertisements for proprietary PDF reader software from public institutions’ websites. To start it all off, volunteers submitted […]

Motor manufacturers should make their software available for review says Dutch MEP

The so-called “diesel dupe” in which the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that many Volkswagen and Audi cars sold in the USA had devices in diesel engines that could detect when they were being tested and changed performance accordingly to improve results is having repercussions on both sides of the Atlantic. In the States […]

FSF was 30 at weekend

The weekend just gone saw another anniversary that ought not be forgotten: the Free Software Foundation (FSF) passed the 30 years milestone. German IT news website heise reports that the FSF was founded by Richard Stallman (aka rms. Ed.) on 4th October 1985. At that time the organisation’s goal was fully consistent with the then […]

Linux kernel is 24 years young on Monday

Although Linus Torvalds, the originator of the Linux kernel, announced his initial work on the kernel on 25th August 1991, it was not until 5th October 1991 that Linus actually released his code: Linux kernel 0.01. With this October anniversary in mind, it’s worth taking a bit of time to review what’s changed to the […]

LibreOffice 5.0.2 announced at LibreOffice Conference

To underline the importance of the event for the community, The Document Foundation (TDF) yesterday announced the release of LibreOffice 5.0.2 during the opening session of the 2015 LibreOffice Conference in Aarhus, which runs until Friday 25th September. LibreOffice 5.0.2 is the second minor release of the LibreOffice 5.0 family, with a large number of […]

FSFE elects new top brass

Matthias Kirschner and Alessandro Rubini are the new President and Vice-President respectively of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). They were elected last week in Bucharest during FSFE’s General Assembly, while Reinhard Müller was re-elected as Financial Officer. They will serve FSFE in those capacities for the next 2 years. Matthias Kirschner has been an […]

Tomorrow is Software Freedom Day 2015

Ooh aargh me hearties! Besides being International Talk Like a Pirate Day (hat tip: Rich), 19th September 2015 is also a date for the diaries of people advocating free and open source software; it’s Software Freedom Day 2015. The idea of Software Freedom Day (SFD) is for everyone without a vested interest in proprietary software […]

LibreOffice & ODF to be adopted by Italian military

The Italian military is moving to LibreOffice and Open Document Format (ODF), according to Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website. This will be Europe’s second largest migration to a free and open source office suite and open standards since the Italian Defence Ministry will be installing LibreOffice on 150,000 machines. The migration […]

BarnCamp burns the nerd gag

Last weekend saw the staging of BarnCamp 2015 (in which Bristol Wireless’ volunteers have been involved since its inception. Ed.). Running from Friday 19th June to Sunday 21st, BarnCamp was as usual a low-cost rural DIY skillsharing event open to everyone, including UK activists, campaigners, people involved in social and community groups and anybody else […]

Ford using Ubuntu in its driverless car

La Mirada del Replicante reports that Ford is signing up for the revolution in driverless cars and there’s no-one better in whose company to do so than Tux and one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions – Ubuntu. It has therefore launched a development plan for the next 5 years in which it plans to […]

Bulgaria releases first open data sets

Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site, reports that Bulgaria has just published the first datasets on its open data portal. Some 36 datasets from 26 public sector organisations have now been made available online. Furthermore, the Bulgarian Council of Ministers has also established a dedicated team to overcome public sector resistance to […]

OpenMandriva’s next release to pay homage to its Mandrake heritage

The sad news arrived earlier this week that French Linux gurus Madriva were being wound up (news passim). One of its community spin-offs, OpenMandriva, has now announced that its next release will be a tribute to its Mandrake heritage. OpenMandriva’s history is well known. It was born at the end of 2012 with the help […]

LibreOffice Viewer for Android released

The Document Foundation, the organisation behind LibreOffice, the most popular free and open source office suite, has announced the release of a native application for viewing ODF documents on Android devices. The app can be installed from the Google Play Store, whilst direct download of the APK will be made available at http://www.libreoffice.org/download/android-viewer. LibreOffice Viewer […]

The right to install other software on your devices

Safecast is a global project to map radiation data from around the world and release this information openly. When the project had just started, they used modified hardware, together with their own custom software and a few clever tweaks, to allow anyone to participate in the project. This kind of ingenuity, the ability to re-purpose […]

Droning on with Ubuntu?

The world’s first drone powered by the Ubuntu Linux distribution has arrived, Softpedia reports. Erle Robotics, a Spanish company known for all types of robots powered by Linux, launched the world’s first Ubuntu-powered drone on 3rd May. The Erle-Copter has a flight time of some 20 minutes and can handle a payload of 2 kg. […]