Tag Archives: foss

Cyanogen Inc shutting down CyanogenMod nightly builds and other services, CM will live on as Lineage

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The CyanogenMod team has posted an update of their own, confirming the shutdown of the CM infrastructure and outlining a plan to continue the open-source initiative as Lineage, which we suspected was going to be the case last week.

Source: Cyanogen Inc shutting down CyanogenMod nightly builds and other services, CM will live on as Lineage [Updated]

Presenting Torus: A modern distributed storage system by CoreOS

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The problem of reliable distributed storage is arguably even more historically challenging than distributed consensus. In the algorithms required to implement distributed storage correctly, mistakes can have serious consequences. Data sets in distributed storage systems are often extremely large, and storage errors may propagate alarmingly while remaining difficult to detect. The burgeoning size of this data is also changing the way we create backups, archives, and other fail-safe measures to protect agains

Source: Presenting Torus: A modern distributed storage system by CoreOS

Introducing s2n, a New Open Source TLS Implementation

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In order to simplify our TLS implementation and as part of our support for strong encryption for everyone, we are pleased to announce availability of a new Open Source implementation of the TLS protocol: s2n.  s2n is a library that has been designed to be small, fast, with simplicity as a priority. s2n avoids implementing rarely used options and extensions, and today is just more than 6,000 lines of code. As a result of this, we’ve found that it is easier to review s2n; we have already completed three external security evaluations and penetration tests on s2n, a practice we will be continuing.

Source: Introducing s2n, a New Open Source TLS Implementation – AWS Security Blog

If you are interested in using or contributing to s2n, the source code, documentation, commits and enhancements are all publically available under the terms of the Apache Software License 2.0 from the s2n GitHub repository.

Slashdot burying stories about Slashdot Media owned SourceForge

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If you’ve followed any tech news aggregator in the past week, you’ve probably seen the story about how SourceForge is taking over admin accounts for existing projects and injecting adware in installers for packages like GIMP. For anyone not following the story, SourceForge has a long history of adware laden installers, but they used to be opt-in. It appears that the process is now mandatory for many projects.

Source: Slashdot burying stories about Slashdot Media owned SourceForge

How is it possible that someone, somewhere, thinks that censoring SourceForge’s adware bundling on Slashdot is a net positive for Slashdot Media, the holding company that owns Slashdot and SourceForge? A quick search on either Google or Google News shows that the story has already made it to a number of major tech publications, making the value of suppressing the story nearly zero in the best case.

I find this entire situation incredible.  Sourceforge was my go to site for FOSS and I have been using them for as long as I can remember.

Ever since the Linux world has moved to repositories where a simple yum install or apt-get loads up the entire package it has been awhile since I perused Sourceforge.  I have a set of FOSS utilities for PCs that I always download from the site that produced the software, not Sourceforge.  Many of those sites are listed on the sidebar under Tools.

All this started on Sourceforge a couple of years ago but people seem to be upset that it has recently hit the popular photo editor GIMP for Windows.  On Linux it’s just:

sudo yum install gimp

… and that’s all there is to it.  No adware, malware, nothing to worry about … so far.

As for FileZilla, the ftp program Sourceforge began making custom installers for a couple years ago, I prefer WinSCP on my Windows boxes nowadays although I have used FileZilla for many many years.   Always download from the source site of the software and you shouldn’t have any problems.  Sourceforge was the last one standing and now they have gone the route taken by CNET and Download.com many many years ago.

Here’s a Reddit thread posted a year ago about FileZilla and Sourceforge so this story isn’t something new.

That’s really deceptive. Filezilla for example, the big green DOWNLOAD button that is the correct way for downloading a file says the file name. Yet when you click it, you are taken to a page that offers you a different file name.Someone also pointed out that it’s signed by ASK.com and reporting back in with ASK.com for data. I never want ask.com associated with anything I do.

Source: Sourceforge starts using “enhanced” (adware) installers : technology

Web app open source alternatives

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You can replace a number of popular web apps with solid open source alternatives. If you want to embrace your inner geek, you can even run many of them on your own web server. Or, you can use hosted versions of those apps which will only set you back a few dollars a month.

Let’s take a look at 5 open source alternatives to some popular web apps.

via Web app open source alternatives | Opensource.com.

I have been pleased with Owncloud which he lists as one of the five.  Its install was straightforward and it works allowing for easy file sync with my android tablet using their app as a client and their software on a specified server.

Here’s another one of the five I hadn’t heard before which prompted me to repost this article here:

ownStaGram is a self hosted replacement for Instagram. All you need is a web server that runs PHP and mySQL, and you can install it in a few minutes. From there, you can upload photos from your computer to your instance of ownStaGram. Or, you can use the Android app (which includes several of those hackneyed Instagram-like filters).

I will give ownStaGram a try and post my thoughts soon.

Update:  I ran ownStaGram on a Fedora 19 build running php 5.5 and a warning message popped up about a deprecated mysql connect method.  This is clearly a problem that hasn’t been fixed in quite awhile.  Tried to download their app from Google Play but couldn’t find it.  Some of the comments on the web version of Google Play suggested it was a buggy app which may be why it got pulled.

ownStaGram is a good concept.  I’d love to be able to snap a pic and have it automatically upload onto my local “cloud” device connected only to the local wifi.

7 open source control-panel

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We have collection of more than 1 Million open source products ranging from Enterprise product to small libraries in all platforms. We aggregate information from all open source repositories. Search and find the best for your needs.

via 7 open source control-panel.

This site looks like an interesting resource to find useful open source packages.  Webmin is listed as second in this list of 7 control panels.  I have been using Webmin forever but might try out ISPConfig.  Although something is listed on this site I always download packages from sourceforge.net.

Munich opts for open source groupware from Kolab

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The Kolab groupware system that was originally developed for the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) will be employed as part of Munich’s MigMak project, a abbreviation used by the city to describe the migration of its mail and calendar system, Kolab said. The system is to be provided as completely open-source technology, including the necessary professional support, it added.

All the city’s LiMux PCs and the remaining Windows PCs will be using the Kolab Desktop Client in combination with the Kolab web client based on Kolab Enterprise 13, it said.

via Munich opts for open source groupware from Kolab | ITworld.

From: Kolab’s web site:

What is Kolab?
Kolab is a secure, scalable and reliable groupware server. It is formed by a number of well-known and proven components or the standards tasks such as E-Mail, Directory and Web Service.