The H Open Source

The H Roundup for the week ending 11 February

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:59:00 GMT

In the last seven days: fixes for power-saving issues in Linux, a backdoor in IP cameras, a man-in-the-middle certificate and a rugged Ubuntu-based tablet. Also open source hardware that could change the world, Symantec source code leaks and satellite phone encryption cracked

FSF wants labels on free JavaScript code

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:24:00 GMT

JavaScript Licence Web Labels are a proposal from the FSF to label every JavaScript file used on a site so that automated tools can confirm the site is all free software

Mesa 3D 8.0 supports OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:58:00 GMT

The latest version of the OpenGL implementation and 3D driver collection adds improved support for the latest graphics hardware

UK Government starts new Open Standards Consultation

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:35:00 GMT

After withdrawing its original open standards policy, the UK Government has opened a new consultation process which will run until 1 May 2012, gathering opinions on its proposed policies

Open source driver for ARM's Mali graphics appears

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:01:00 GMT

Lima is an open source driver for the Mali-200 and Mali-400 graphics chips used in various systems-on-a-chip containing ARM processors. The driver could open the way for 3D graphics rendering on ARM using a completely free software stack

oVirt's virtualisation software gets a first release

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:23:00 GMT

Jointly sponsored by Canonical, Cisco, IBM, Intel, NetApp, Red Hat and SUSE, the oVirt project has released the first version of its software for implementing and managing virtualised environments

Chrome 18 Beta brings graphics improvements

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:16:00 GMT

The Beta channel release of Chrome 18 includes support for GPU-accelerated rendering of 2D Canvas content and, on older systems, uses the SwiftShader software rasteriser to display 3D content

Eolas's claim on the "interactive web" invalidated in court

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:29:00 GMT

After testimony from Tim Berners-Lee and other pioneers of the web, a Texas court has ruled Eolas's 906 patent invalid and thrown out their $600 million claim against Google, Yahoo and others

Google expands its security rewards programmes

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:21:00 GMT

The Chromium Security Rewards programme has been expanded to include bugs in Chromium OS, the open source branch of the minimalist Chrome OS Linux-based operating system

No further updates for Debian 5.0 Lenny

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:21:00 GMT

After three years, Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (Lenny) has reached its "End of Life" and will receive no further security updates

WebKit dominance threatens the open web

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:07:00 GMT

Web standard activists are calling on designers to avoid creating exclusively for Chrome and Safari and have compared the current situation to the former dominance of IE6

EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.1 ships

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:10:00 GMT

EnterpriseDB's enhanced version of the open source PostgreSQL database is now available and offers higher read and write performance on modern multicore systems

HP releases Android kernel source for TouchPad tablet

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:42:00 GMT

Last year's accidental release of HP TouchPads that ran Android has now led to the company's release of the Android/Linux kernel source and other GPL licensed components that were created for the TouchPad tablet

State of New Hampshire votes for open source

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:34:00 GMT

In the US, the New Hampshire state legislature has passed an act requiring the state's agencies to consider using open source software for all future software acquisitions

CrunchBang 10 update split into two editions

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:00:00 GMT

The update to the Debian-based Linux distribution is available as "stable" and "backported" editions because of concerns expressed over the default use of backport images

NGINX rolls out commercial support

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:15:00 GMT

The high performance, low memory footprint web server now has commercial support from the company set up by its creator

Drupal completes community election of board members

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:08:00 GMT

The support organisation for the open source CMS has elected two new board members with a community vote as it moves to more community-centric governance model

Chrome 17 brings improved speed and security

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:26:00 GMT

Version 17 of Chrome improves page loading times by pre-rendering pages in the background and now better protects users against malicious downloads. The update also addresses a total of 20 security vulnerabilities, one of which is considered to be critical and eight that are rated as "high severity"

Sabayon 8 released with Cinnamon desktop

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:38:00 GMT

The newest version of the Gentoo Linux-based distribution brings incremental improvements as well as a port of the Cinnamon desktop developed by Linux Mint

Upgrade kit for Openmoko smartphones now available

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:24:00 GMT

Good things come to those who wait – one year on from unveiling a prototype, Golden Delicious is finally selling replacement motherboards for the open source Openmoko Freerunner and Neo 1973 smartphones in its online store

ReactOS 0.3.14 brings improvements with help from GSoC students

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:48:00 GMT

The newest version of the open source reimplementation of the Windows NT architecture adds an improved TCP/IP stack, ACPI support and the ability to change the look of the operating system

Netty 3.3.1 adds SPDY protocol support

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:52:00 GMT

The SPDY protocol is appearing in more and more software. Now, the Java-based Netty project event-driven network framework has added the protocol thanks to code donated by Twitter

Google launches Chrome for Android

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:11:00 GMT

Google has released a beta version of its Chrome browser for Android - although currently only for devices that run Android 4.0. Google plans to make the advantages of the desktop version available to Android devices

Perl Data Language gets auto-parallelisation

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:47:00 GMT

A new ParallelCPU module allows the N-dimensional array supporting extension to Perl to make better use of systems with many cores when manipulating arrays

New Fedora Project Leader announced

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:27:00 GMT

Jared Smith has stepped down from leading the Fedora Linux distribution and is being replaced by Robyn Bergeron