Free, Libre, and Open Source Software and Standards

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 06, 2025

• Feld ☛ Bacula For Dummies

  I've had several people ask about Bacula because it's not quite as well known among tech folks unless you've ever been tasked to venture out and find a replacement for some horrible proprietary tape library backup software. The options in this case tend to be Bacula (or its fork Bareos) and Amanda. I can't speak for Amanda/Zmanda other than evaluating it many years ago and being impressed at its capabilities, but we would have wanted the Pro version and I don't remember what happened with that project. I think the economy was crumbling around us back in 2008 and we got acquired so that put a stop to that backup software replacement project.

• Education

  • Rlang ☛ A Gentle Introduction to Mathematical Simulation in R workshop

    Description: While R is best known as a tool for statistical analyses, it can also be used for mathematical simulations. Specifically, we can use compartmental modeling—a mathematical framework for capturing individuals transitioning between different stages—to investigate dynamics found in nature. Notably, we will use the package {deSolve} to model the Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model to showcase the diversity of dynamics that can be observed from a remarkably simple system of equations. The workshop will cover the basic mathematics, the structure of writing a differential equation model in R, as well as ways to visualize the output for better insight using {ggplot} and {gganimate}.

• FSF

  • The Four Freedoms for Kids

    Today's children are growing up as "digital natives," immersed in a world of screens, apps, and connected devices from their earliest years. We teach them to share their toys, to be curious about the world, and to be kind to their neighbors. But are we teaching them the same fundamental ethics for their digital lives? Are we raising them to be empowered users who are in control of their tools?

    The Free Software movement, at its core, is driven by ethics. Its principles, encapsulated in the Four Essential Freedoms, provide a powerful framework for teaching children about software freedom and sharing, community, and control. This guide is for parents who want to raise not just digital natives, but free software natives - a generation that understands that their software should serve them, not the other way around.

    Here's how you can explain the Four Freedoms to your children using simple, everyday analogies.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Data

    • Rlang ☛ Reversed

      What if the bathymetry of the Mediterranean Sea is reversed? We would get a Western Island and an Eastern Island, a Sardinia-Corsica Bay, the Balearic Lagoon… Let’s see!

  • Open Access/Content

    • Walled Culture ☛ Fans of open access, unite: you have nothing to lose but your chained libraries

      When books were rare and extremely expensive, they were often chained to the bookcase to prevent people walking off with them, in what were known as “chained libraries”. Copyright serves a similar purpose today, even though, thanks to the miracle of perfect, zero-cost digital copies, it is possible simultaneously to take an ebook home and yet leave the original behind. For a quarter of a century, the open access movement has been fighting to break those virtual chains for academic works, and to allow anyone freely to read and make copies of the knowledge contained in online virtual libraries.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Inventing The Future ☛ Mr TIFF

    So I turned my attention to TIFF, built initially as an image standard for desktop publishing. TIFF was able to store monochrome, grayscale, and color images, alongside metadata such as size, compression algorithms, and color space information. In many ways, it was a lot like AIFF so I was keen to know more. But I couldn't find a TIFF creator. No matter how I enquired, Aldus created TIFF.