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Submission + - Why Linux HDCP isn't the end of the world (collabora.com)

mfilion writes: Recently, Sean Paul from Google's ChromeOS team, submitted a patch series to enable HDCP support for the Intel display driver. HDCP is used to encrypt content over HDMI and DisplayPort links, which can only be decoded by trusted devices. However, if you already run your own code on a free device, HDCP is an irrelevance and does not reduce freedom in any way.

Submission + - Android: NXP i.MX6 buffer modifier support added to gbm_gralloc & Mesa (collabora.com)

mfilion writes: GPUs like those of Intel and Vivante support storing the contents of graphical buffers in different formats. Support for describing these formats using modifiers has now been added to Android and Mesa, enabling tiling artifact free running of Android on the iMX6 platform. With modifier support added to Mesa and gbm_gralloc, it is now possible to boot Android on iMX6 platforms using no proprietary blobs at all. This makes iMX6 one of the very few embedded SOCs that needs no blobs at all to run. Not only is that a great win for Open Source in general, but it also makes the iMX6 more attractive as a platform. A further positive point is that this lays the groundwork for the iMX8 platform, and supporting it will come much easier.

Submission + - Roundcube Next Beats Indiegogie Funding Goal (venturebeat.com)

stilborne writes: Roundcube, the world's most popular Free and open source webmail app, has been running an Indiegogo campaign over the last seven weeks to help fund a major development push they are calling "Roundcube Next". With a week left in the campaign, Venture Beat is reporting that they have beat their initial funding goal and discuss why Roundcube is so important to people who use a web browser for mail, contacts and calendaring.

From use by Fortune 50 companies to being installed by a whopping 62% of cPanel users who install a webmail client, Roundcube has been a force to be reckoned with. So it will be very interesting to see where Roundcube Next takes its huge number of users. The article also notes that the open source project has taken the step to create an Advisory Committee from the top funding organizations which so far include cPanel, Tucows, Fastmail, TransIP, bHosted, XS4ALL, Sandstorm.io, sys4 and Contargo, with more reported on the way.

Submission + - Roundcube Leaping Ahead, Launches Crowd Participation & Funding (indiegogo.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Roundcube was first featured on Slashdot in 2005. Over half a million installations later, it will continue to be incrementally improved. But now Thomas Brüderli, the founder of Roundcube, wants more: A full web application, responsive and elegant, for any device, as Open Source. To this goal he launched a crowd funding and engagement campaign last night.

Submission + - Kolab Summit 2015 Announced (kolab.org)

stilborne writes: The Kolab Collaboration Suite, the open source groupware system that scales from "Raspberry PI" installations to 100k+ seat enterprise deployments, has been adopted by companies and governments around the world, making it one of most successful "poster children" for Free Software and Open Standards. In order to chart the next steps forward, the Kolab community has announced the inaugural Kolab Summit to be held in The Hague on May 2-3, 2015. Along with workshops, BoFs and coding break-out sessions, presentations will be given by key developers from a number of open source projects including Kolab, Roundcube, cyrus imap, and KDE among others. Registration is free, and the call for presentations is live for the next few weeks.

Comment This is really about controling the internet (Score 5, Informative) 571

This isn't about sexual harassment, but controlling the internet, and implicitly people in general. A lot of the powers that be have decided that, like other forms of media, they need to sanitize it in the name of control. (even with games, google gamergate) They want a name and an ID behind every post, they want to create "accountability". They gleefully ignore the fact that any woman, gay person, person of color, persecuted minority can take on an anon alias and argue their beliefs, do their work on merit alone. Seriously, how do we even know that Satoshi, the bitcoin creator, isn't a black lesbian? The internet frees productive people from race and gender in a way that before was never even remotely possible.

So maybe, just maybe, the people who want to make it an issue now, are the doing it not because of some high morality, but because they are discovering they can't compete on merit. But the issue is way deeper that that. In today's world, a lot of media and games are controlled via copyright, but copyrights by their very nature require centralized control by those who control them to work. Yet the internet is doing just the opposite, it is moving into the direction of decentralized control, threatening a lot of people, who happen to have a lot of money.

Comment taxes are theft (Score 1) 259

After reading the comments here, it's surprising how few people seem to understand that taxes are just theft. Yeah yeah yeah, I know the government provides public "services", but that's all just a pretext to justify stealing from people. It's pathetic when people think these programs are about helping them.

If the mafia went from business to business extorting money from people, and one of the business people found a way out of it via a technicality. That is not a bad thing. And neither is it getting out from under the thumb of government criminals either. It amazes me how easy it is to see all the evil and crap done by the government, yet people still want to give them money. It's like there is some kind of disconnect.

If a slave escaped from the plantation, would people go off and say that is evil because the master will just make the other slaves work harder ... yet this is the exact kind of logic people use when they see others escape taxes. The gov will take more from us! Less money for our programs! The Mexican mafia has charity programs too, do you think they're doing it just because they are nice guys?

The state is already taking the max they can, and giving back the least they can get away with to justify themselves. People escaping them will not make things worse for us, but instead create more opportunity out there for us to escape too as well.

Comment Re:Backwardness of KDE continues (Score 5, Informative) 51

"True innovation would be to provide a script-based approach to most of the GUI stuff, e.g. nodejs/browser API .. and then provide native code layer"

We started working on exactly that ~5 years ago and the result is QML2 and Plasma (two separate things, but they work wonderfully together). As the node.js project founder said when he saw QML for the first time: "Wow, it's HTML5 done right."

So KDE is truly innovative, you're just too uninformed to have known and ~5 years too late to the suggestion table. (I'm not entirely sure how the /. smarminess works, but I gave it my best try with that last sentence .. did I succeed? ;)

Comment Re:"schematics available soon" (Score 2) 98

No, translation "we've been working very hard on this device, and will be releasing them at shipping time". We've put the Open Hardware Logo on the feature board and everyone who has participated in this project has licensed their contributions under the GPL. We're not about to start our first product by violating each other's licenses. Please, give us a bit more credit than that. Most of the people involved have been releasing things far more valuable and work intensive than this as Free software/hardware over the years, after all.

Comment Re:VGA port? (Score 3, Interesting) 98

" Of course if you believe this thing will appear on time, work and ever see another module which is compatible with it I have a nice bridge here to sell you"

So, it works. How do we know? We already have finished pieces in hand and use them.

Other modules: are alread add-ons such as VGA connectors and keyboard kits in prototyping; I've already seen two more feature boards; as for other CPU cards, those are further away but on the roadmap.

Who peed in your cereal?

I know it's easier to be cynical than to be helpful, but if you support projects like this they actually do go further.

Comment Re:Extremely capable? (Score 4, Informative) 98

This is an engineering board, not a smartphone. If you look around what is available for prototyping and developing projects, you'll find that single core ARM is actually the common case. This is a significant amount of hardware for the market category. This is also considerably more powerful than what smartphones were shipping with 3 years ago, though today's high end phones do come with more cores.

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