Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers
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Libre Arts ☛ Weekly recap — 1 December 2024
LibreArts Week highlights: new LibrePCB release, GIMP 3.0rc2 is being delayed, FreeCAD team is hacking tirelessly at the next version, OpenSCAD team makes more integrations.
GIMP
Jehan announced on his Patreon account that the second release candidate of 3.0 is being delayed due to GNOME’s infrastructure changes. In the meantime, he started working on a new API for non-destructive filters, including adding them from scripts. At the same time, Øyvind Kolås started patching the layers blending code to use perceptual space by default for certain blending modes.
Since the v1.0 release last week, maintainers have been meeting twice a week to go through the backlog of pull requests. There were over 250 of them, the list is now down to nearly 180, so there’s more work to be done.
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FSF ☛ November GNU spotlight with Amin Bandali
For announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu.
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FSF ☛ FSF Events: Free Software Directory meeting on IRC: Friday, December 6, starting at 12:00 EST (17:00 UTC)
Join the FSF and friends on Friday, December 6 from 12:00 to 15:00 EST (17:00 to 20:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.
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Wired ☛ With Threats to Encryption Looming, Signal’s Meredith Whittaker Says ‘We’re Not Changing’
As a messaging and calling app, Signal aims to be as simple and easy to use as possible so people don’t have to sacrifice user experience to communicate privately. The app doesn’t have a social media component and there are no plans to integrate AI, but Signal still regularly comes out with new features to make the app more robust. Whittaker told the Big Interview audience, for example, that the team is working on eventually adding functionality to support encrypted backups. (She later confirmed to WIRED that the feature is coming in 2025.)
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SaaS/Back End/Databases
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Silicon Angle ☛ Revolutionizing AI database integration with MongoDB and AWS
Chhabra spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier for theCUBE’s “Cloud AWS re:Invent coverage,” during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed MongoDB’s collaboration with Amazon Web Services Inc., the role of databases in enabling AI applications and the introduction of the MongoDB AI Applications Program.
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Events
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PostgreSQL ☛ PostgreSQL Conference Germany 2025
PGConf.de 2025 is the next iteration of the PostgreSQL Conference Germany. It takes place in the "Berlin Marriott Hotel" in Berlin.
The conference will take place on May 8th and 9th, 2025.
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Licensing / Legal
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Wyrl ☛ (democratizing software)
On November 21st, 2024, (I gave a talk about the software crisis), detailing its general impact on how we learn and practice the craft of software. It was equal parts philosophical and technical, with a focus on human-scale problems and how they affect networks of craftspeople and learners.
The central thesis of these talks was a simple message: something has to change, here's one direction we can go. The aim wasn't to shame others into submission, but rather to inspire people to start closely examining their craft under a new technical and philosophical lens.
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