OpenCLI

Fonte: TUXJournal.net

Lo ho creato una startup spagnola. Oltre ad essere rispettoso dell’ambiente è anche uno dei primi ultra-portatili a scendere sotto il muro dei 200 dollari.

iUnika è il nome dell’azienda spagnola che produce il netbook Gyy. E’ creato interamente con materiale bioplastico, utilizzando risorse rinnovabili di origine naturale come amido, cellulosa e farina di mais. Ma oltre a questa interessante caratteristica, offre a chiunque la possibilità di estendere la durata della batteria fino a quattro ore sfruttando dei pannelli solari. Dal punto di vista hardware, Gyy utilizza un SoC con CPU MIPS Ingenic Jz4740 Multimedia Application Processor da 400MHz anche se, a scelta, è possibile optare anche per le versioni da 240, 336 e 360MHz. Il tutto affiancato da 128MB di memoria RAM, 1GB di memoria flash per l’archiviazione dei dati e display da 8 pollici in grado di raggiungere una risoluzione di 800×480 pixel. Non manca la connettività (opzionale) WiFi, ADSL, CDMA e GPRS e una porta Ethernet 10/100. Il netbook rispettoso dell’ambiente Gyy pesa appena 700 grammi, utilizza GNU/Linux come unico sistema operativo e il suo prezzo di partenza è di 130 euro. Maggior informazioni sul sito web ufficiale dell’azienda produttrice.

The UK government has said it will accelerate the use of open source software in public services.

Tom Watson MP, minister for digital engagement, said open source software would be on a level playing field with proprietary software such as Windows.

Open source software will be adopted “when it delivers best value for money”, the government said.

It added that public services should where possible avoid being “locked into proprietary software”.

Licences for the use of open source software are generally free of charge and embrace open standards, and the code that powers the programs can be modified without fear of trampling on intellectual property or copyright.

According to some in the open source industry, the shift from proprietary standards could save the government £600m a year.

Simon Phipps, chief open source officer for Sun Microsystems, said the UK government’s stance was part of a “global wave” of take up for open source in governments.

“We waste a fortune on proprietary computer software because of paying for licences and promises up front and not demanding value,” he said.

Mr Phipps said schools, government departments and public services would have a “crucial freedom” because of the choice of whether to pay for support and training when using open source software.

The government’s action plan could see a wave of open source software being deployed in areas such as office applications (word processing and spreadsheets), document management and database infrastructure, the backbone of many large-scale IT systems.

‘More teeth’

Steve Shine, European vice president of Ingres, an open source support vendor, said the government’s action plan had “more teeth” than policies being adopted in other countries because the plan was tied into policies regarding how IT managers procure new software.

He said the move had partly been driven by a series of high-profile IT failures in recent years that had relied on proprietary software.

He said: “Open source can help avoid many of the hidden costs of proprietary software such as making organisations re-pay for licences if they want to shift use of a particular piece of software from one place to another.

“This is irrelevant in the open source world.”

Announcing an open source and open standards action plan, the government said it would:

• ensure that the government adopts open standards and uses these to communicate with the citizens and businesses that have adopted open source solutions
• ensure that open source solutions are considered properly and, where they deliver best value for money are selected for government business solutions
• strengthen the skills, experience and capabilities within government and in its suppliers to use open source to greatest advantage
• embed an open source culture of sharing, re-use and collaborative development across government and its suppliers
• ensure that systems integrators and proprietary software suppliers demonstrate the same flexibility and ability to re-use their solutions and products as is inherent in open source.

Government departments will be required to adopt open source software when “there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products” because of its “inherent flexibility”.

Expected backlash

Mr Phipps and Mr Shine said they expected a backlash from proprietary software firms.

“I am absolutely certain there have been communications extremely high-up in proprietary vendors with management high up in government,” said Mr Shine.

Mr Phipps added: “Measured over the short term traditional vendors will cut prices back, end load contacts and do everything to appear cheaper.

“But the real value with open source comes from giving users a new flexibility.”

He said the widespread adoption of open source software in public services could also have a knock on effect to the ordinary consumer.

“It’s already happening to significant extent in the UK. Lots of homes are using Firefox and OpenOffice.org.

“It is becoming acceptable and expected.”

Fri, 2009-02-20 17:08 — nali

The Canadian government is looking to shave costs wherever it can and is now eyeing open source software as one way to accomplish that goal.

Canadian GNU/Linux Penguin

The government of Canada has issued an official Request For Information (RFI) on open source software and is looking for feedback and public guidance to help shape procurement policies. This move could be a prelude to broader adoption of free and open source software in the Canadian government’s IT infrastructure.

Although Canada has weathered the global financial crisis better than many other countries, its government is looking for ways to compensate for a recent glut of stimulus spending that has generated the country’s first budget deficit in over a decade. To help keep the economic recovery plan on track, Canada’s government is looking for ways to spend smarter.

The language used in the RFI makes it pretty clear that cost reduction is priority number one. It uses the broad term “NO CHARGE LICENSED SOFTWARE”, which it defines as software that is open source or available at no cost. According to the RFI, Canada is exploring no-cost software options on the desktop as well as the server, in categories that include operating systems, office suites, and automation systems.

A brief questionnaire is included to help direct responses. It covers a number of common concerns and considerations that often play into open source adoption decisions. Respondents are asked to comment on the potential for hidden costs, how to evaluate and manage compliance with open source licenses, and how open standards and interoperability should factor into the decision-making process. The RFI also includes a list of the standard criteria—such as performance, quality control, testing, and training—that the government considers today when evaluating commercial software. Checkboxes are placed next to each one so that respondents can indicate which are also applicable to open source software.

Open source software is no stranger to the north. Canada’s Internet-savvy-but-largely-ignored Green party, which accounted for roughly 6.8 percent of the popular vote in the 2008 federal election, has long been a vocal advocate of open source software. The party’s official platform declares that it will encourage broad adoption of open source software in government IT and mandate that all new software developed by the government is based on open standards.

Open source procurement has also been a topic of controversy in some parts of the country. A nonprofit group called FACIL sued the province of Quebec last year, alleging that the provincial government failed to comply with procurement regulations by granting millions of dollars of no-bid contracts to Microsoft.

FACIL contends that adopting open source software would save money, create new jobs, and reduce Canada’s dependence on US companies. The Canadian Association of Open Source says that the most significant impediment that is holding back Canada’s adoption of open source is a lack of awareness and understanding. The RFI demonstrates that the government is eager to remedy that problem.

The information that is accumulated from the RFI responses could provide valuable insight that will help the government craft more effective procurement policies. Although open source options aren’t always as mature or powerful as proprietary alternatives in some areas, it’s improving all the time and deserves close consideration. Articulating a strong interest in open source adoption might also give the government more negotiating leverage to secure some nice discounts from Microsoft.

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The Debian Project                                http://www.debian.org/

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 released                           press@debian.org

February 14th, 2009             http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214
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Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 released

The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 5.0 (codenamed “Lenny”) after 22 months of constant development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports a total of twelve processor architectures and includes the KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments. It also features compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.2 of the LSB.

Debian GNU/Linux runs on computers ranging from palmtops and handheld systems to supercomputers, and on nearly everything in between. A total of twelve architectures are supported: Sun SPARC (sparc), HP Alpha (alpha), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Intel IA-32 (i386), IA-64 (ia64), HP PA-RISC (hppa), MIPS (mips, mipsel), ARM (arm, armel), IBM S/390 (s390), and AMD64 and Intel EM64T (amd64).

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” adds support for Marvell’s Orion platform which is used in many storage devices. Supported storage devices include the QNAP Turbo Station series, HP Media Vault mv2120, and Buffalo Kurobox Pro. Additionally, “Lenny” now supports several Netbooks, in particular the Eee PC by Asus. “Lenny” also contains the build tools for Emdebian which allow Debian source packages to be cross-built and shrunk to suit embedded ARM systems.

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” includes the new ARM EABI port, “armel”. This new port provides a more efficient use of both modern and future ARM processors. As a result, the old ARM port (arm) has now been deprecated.

This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as the K Desktop Environment 3.5.10 (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.22.2, the Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment, LXDE 0.3.2.1, the GNUstep desktop 7.3, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7, Iceweasel 3.0.6 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox), Icedove 2.0.0.19 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird), PostgreSQL 8.3.6, MySQL 5.0.51a, GNU Compiler Collection 4.3.2, Linux kernel version 2.6.26, Apache 2.2.9, Samba 3.2.5, Python 2.5.2 and 2.4.6, Perl

5.10.0, PHP 5.2.6, Asterisk 1.4.21.2, Emacs 22, Inkscape 0.46, Nagios 3.06, Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1 (dom0 as well as domU support), OpenJDK 6b11, and more than 23,000 other ready-to-use software packages (built from over 12,000 source packages).

With the integration of X.Org 7.3 the X server autoconfigures itself with most hardware. Newly introduced packages allow the full support of NTFS filesystems and the use of most multimedia keys out of the box. Support for Adobe(R) Flash(R) format files is available via the swfdec or Gnash plugins. Overall improvements for notebooks have been introduced, such as out of the box support of CPU frequency scaling. For leisure time several new games have been added, including puzzle games as well as first-person shooters. Also notable is the introduction of “goplay”, a graphical games browser offering filters, search, screenshots and descriptions for games in Debian.

The availability and updates of OpenJDK, GNU Java compiler, GNU Java bytecode interpreter, Classpath and other free versions of Sun’s Java technology, into Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 allow us to ship Java-based applications in Debian’s “main” repository.

Further improvements in system security include the installation of available security updates before the first reboot by the Debian Installer, the reduction of setuid root binaries and open ports in the

standard installation, and the use of GCC hardening features in the builds of several security-critical packages. Various applications have specific improvements, too. PHP for example is now built with the Suhosin hardening patch.

For non-native English speaking users the package management systems now support translated package descriptions and will automatically show the description of a package in the native language of the user, if available.

Debian GNU/Linux can be installed from various installation media such as DVDs, CDs, USB sticks and floppies, or from the network. GNOME is the default desktop environment and is contained on the first CD. Other desktop environments – KDE, Xfce, or LXDE – can be installed through two new alternative CD images. Again available with Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 are multi-arch CDs and DVDs supporting installation of multiple architectures from a single disc; and this release adds Blu-ray Discs, allowing the archive for an entire architecture to be shipped on a single BD.

In addition to the regular installation media, Debian GNU/Linux can now also be directly used without prior installation. The special images used, known as live images, are available for CDs, USB sticks, and netboot setups. Initially, these are provided for the amd64 and i386 architectures only.

The installation process for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 has been improved in many ways: among many other improvements, support for installation from more than one CD or DVD has been restored, firmware required by some devices can be loaded by using removable media, and installations via Braille display are supported. The installer boot process has also received much attention: a graphical menu can be used to choose front-ends and desktop environments, and to select expert or rescue mode. The installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has now been translated to

63 languages.

Debian GNU/Linux can be downloaded right now via bittorrent (the recommended way), jigdo or HTTP; see Debian GNU/Linux on CDs [1] for further information. It will soon be available on DVD, CD-ROM and Blu-ray Disc from numerous vendors [2], too.

Upgrades to Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 from the previous release, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed “Etch”) are automatically handled by the aptitude package management tool for most configurations, and to a certain degree also by the apt-get package management tool. As always, Debian GNU/Linux systems can be upgraded painlessly, in place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read the release notes [3] for possible issues, and for detailed instructions on installing and upgrading. The release notes will be further improved and translated to additional languages in the weeks after the release.

1: http://www.debian.org/CD/

2: http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors

3: http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/releasenotes

Dedication

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Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” is dedicated to Thiemo Seufer, a Debian Developer who died on December 26th, 2008 in a tragic car accident. Thiemo was involved in Debian in many ways. He has maintained several packages and was the main supporter of the Debian port to the MIPS architectures. He was also a member of our kernel team, as well as a member of the Debian Installer team. His contributions reached far beyond the Debian project. He also worked on the MIPS port of the Linux kernel, the MIPS emulation of qemu, and far too many smaller projects to

be named here.

Thiemo’s work, commitment, broad technical knowledge and ability to share this with others will be missed. Thiemo’s contributions will not be forgotten. The high standards of his work make it hard to pick up.

About Debian

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Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system, developed by more than a thousand volunteers from all over the world who collaborate via the Internet. Debian’s dedication to Free Software, its non-profit nature, and its open development model make it unique among GNU/Linux distributions.

The Debian project’s key strengths are its volunteer base, its dedication to the Debian Social Contract, and its commitment to provide the best operating system possible. Debian 5.0 is another important step in that direction.

Contact Information

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For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at http://www.debian.org/ or send mail to <press@debian.org>.