We look back on 2019 using our 2020 hindsight at some of the important happenings during the last year in the world of Linux and open source.
Posts published in “News”
The man behind the first user-friendly Linux distribution now seeks to produce a free-as-you-want-it-to-be Android phone that respects user rights.
Are you ready for a new operating system for your Android phone? An operating system that’s totally free and thats main purpose isn’t to get you to consume? How about an operating system that, although based on Android, brings to the table some of the best aspects of Linux — like (eventually) it’s own repository of apps? Well, get ready, Gaël Duval is working to bring eelo to the table.
Part of the Linux culture for nearly as long as Linux itself, Linux Journal has announced that its November edition was its last.
Linux Journal is no more. On Friday, publisher Carlie Fairchild wrote that unless “a savior” rides in to save the day, the magazine born in 1994, just two years after Linus Torvalds posted that he was working on an operating system, has already released its last issue.
After nearly a year and a half with an uncertain future, Mozilla tells Thunderbird it can stay and that its future is now certain — in a most uncertain way.
This is complicated. Mommy Mozilla has eased up about kicking her child Thunderbird out of the house. T-bird can stay, but must live in the basement or in the room above the garage or something — and no more free ride. From now on, it must pay its way and obey house rules.
I’m joking, of course. Well, not exactly.
Last week, Red Hat’s DeLisa Alexander presented the third annual Women in Open Source Award to Avni Khatri and Jigyasa Grover at Red Hat Summit 2017.
The Screening Room
Red Hat is a company that does many things right, including promoting women in tech. Learn about the two winners of this year’s Women in Open Source Award, announced at the Red Hat Summit conference in Boston last week.
Apricity OS, another promising Linux distro has ceased development. “Lack of time” was cited as the major cause.
The Arch Linux based distribution, Apricity OS, has announced in an undated notice on its website that it’s shutting down. I learned the of news today when given a heads-up by a follower on Twitter.
The announcement is short and sweet:
OStatic ceased publication without warning or explanation in February. Archphile yesterday announced on Twitter that its “officially dead.”
Ostatic, the once popular website for news and information about Linux and open source, has disappeared from the face of the earth. Also gone, Archphile, an Arch Linux-based distro targeting audio playback quality for ARM devices.
I’ve been meaning to write about the demise of Ostatic for a month or so now, but it’s not easy to put together an article when you have absolutely no facts. I first noticed the site was gone a month or so back, when an attempt to reach it turned up one of those “this site can’t be reached” error messages. With a little checking, I was able to verify that the site has indeed gone dark, with writers for the site evidently losing access to their content without notice. Other than that, I’ve been able to find out nothing.
Libreboot has now officially applied to rejoin GNU, which it left in September. According to Leah Rowe, the “initial responses from GNU’s leadership seems positive.”
Last week we reported that after reorganization, Libreboot was considering rejoining GNU and was seeking input from its community to determine the amount of support it had for such a move. From reading the comments posted both on our article on FOSS Force and on Libreboot’s website, it comes as no surprise that the project’s core members feel they have the necessary consesus to proceed.
The Libreboot saga isn’t over yet. Now the project wants back into GNU.
Early this morning, Libreboot’s lead developer Leah Rowe posted a notice to the project’s website and a much longer post to the project’s subreddit, indicating that she would like to submit (or resubmit, it’s not clear how that would work at this point) the project to “rejoin the GNU Project.”
It appears the people developing Libreboot have done some of the hard work necessary to fix potentially toxic personal dynamics after last year’s controversy, when the project removed itself from the FSF and GNU.
You may remember, back in September FOSS Force reported that the open source project Libreboot announced it was withdrawing from the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project. Libreboot, which produces free, open source and blob-free software to replace proprietary BIOS firmware, had been endorsed by the FSF and became an official GNU project on May 14. The final removal of the project from GNU was made official in a public email from Richard Stallman on January 5.