FLOSS News

WebEnabled is a Free and Open Source (FOSS) hosted platform that "makes it easy for teams to focus on building awesome web applications." Provisioning applications from their library is fast. Bevan reported getting a Drupal 7 instance up and running in a few minutes. The service offers full SSH, SCP and SFTP access. You can also manage your code revisions and collaborate with others using SVN.

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Quick excerpt from an interview with Jeffrey Zeldman which includes some discussion of the impact of Open Source, and particularly open source CMS’s, on the process of designing and building web applications:

Although I think it’s important to draw a distinction between simple, relatively cheap licensing (the Expression Engine model) and Free and Open Source software, I generally agree that

Now, we have really powerful comparatively easy to understand, open source content management systems

Via Sandro Grogans comes an interesting interview / discussion from http://initmarketing.tv/ about the use of the phrases “open source” and “free software” and the need to tailor the message to the audience.

Bruce Perens (co-founder of the Open Source Initiative) and Shane Coughlan (from FSF Europe):

The Obama administration has taken a big step back from transparency in one area of critical importance to the FOSS movement.

Just like George Bush did, the President is asserting that draft trademark and copyright agreements with Japan and the EU are "state secrets," and has refused to release them to the public -- even though the same drafts have been widely distributed among corporate lobbyists.

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Source: civicactions.com

Here's an interesting group I'd not come across before:

The Humanitarian FOSS Project is a collaborative, community-building project that was started by a group of computing faculty and open source proponents at Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Connecticut College. Our goal is to build a community of academic computing departments, IT corporations, and local and global humanitarian and community organizations dedicated to building and using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to benefit humanity.

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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has filed its first-ever copyright infringement lawsuit, accusing networking giant Cisco of refusing to distribute GPL’d source code embedded as firmware or used in router products sold under Cisco’s “Linkys” brand. In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the FSF claims Cisco's Linksys routers violate terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, and the GNU Lesser General Public License.

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Source: civicactions.com

If there's a theme for this election, it's "Change". I actually don't think change is going to come. It's already here. It's a foregone conclusion that the White House will be "Differently Occupied" in January (how's that for PC?). Change has already happened and history has already been made. Welcome to the 21st century. Now let's get to the discussion about addressing the issues of our day.

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Source: www.civicactions.com

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- the leading intellectual property court in the US -- has delivered a major victory to the Free and Open Source Software (“FOSS”) movement by explicitly holding, for the first time, that FOSS licensors are entitled to copyright infringement relief.

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Source: www.civicactions.com

Just came across yet another excellent post from Alex Russell of the Dojo project (and foundation): “The Price of Anonymity: Our Principles?”

Russell uses the occasion of some nasty comments in Digg on a Caryl Shaw article for PC gamer (and a series of presentations at OSCON a few weeks back) to reflect on the issue of sexism in free and open source software communities. Ultimately, the issue is really about what kinds of communities we want to be building. As he notes:

There are several ways to create Urban Style artwork .. You can make it from Scratch like in this Tutorial that I posted.. Or you can ease you work by using versatile Vector brushes..
Photoshop user are well aware of Urban/grungy style artwork.. But like my previous Tutorial I will use my favourite GFX program I.e. THE GIMP to create Urban Style Artwork..

Source: http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/Tutorial_Create_Urban_Style_Artwork_Wallpaper_using_Gimp

A Comprehensive review of Compiz Fusion 0.76 .. In the mid 2007 it was decided to merge Compiz and Beryl projects to release a much better,stable and sophisticated product .. Earlier named Compcomp but later on named Compiz Fusion.

Source: http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/Compiz_Fusion_An_Unparalleled_3D_Environment

Over the years, I came to appreciate a number of organizations that although not directly linked to free software and open source are of interest to the FOSS community. Pretty much everybody knows the free software foundation, the software freedom law center, the Linux foundation, The GNU project, the open source initiative, Creative Commons or Groklaw.

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Source: http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/10_organizations_of_interest_to_FOSS_developers

After lots of waiting Red Hat Released their latest Desktop/Server version of Fedora Linux Lets take a quick look at its feature Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project.

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Source: http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/Distribution_Fedora_9_Sulphur_Released

Ask average computer users what FOSS is about, and, if they've even heard of it, they'll probably say something about the source code being publicly available.

Source: http://www.fsdaily.com/Philosophy/GNU_Linux_Source_Code_and_Human_Rights

Well folks, it's that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.1!

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Source: http://www.fsdaily.com/EndUser/Distribution_Release_Slackware_Linux_12_1