Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 03, 2026

• Inkscape ☛ Artist Interview: Can Inkscape-made artwork compete in an international film festival?

  We've had the pleasure to virtually talk to Inkscape user, designer and short film artist Jorge del Campo Andrade about his process of creating the shortfilm "Ladrón de Flores" and his experience of taking part in the Peru-based international children's film festival "Mi primer festival". He also has some tips for you, if you would like to follow in his tracks!

• James G ☛ How software feels

  This is not an exhaustive list, but represents some of my higher-level thinking detached from specific design considerations that make a piece of software feel good.

• Gunnar Morling ☛ Hardwood Reaches Beta: S3, Predicate Push-Down, CLI, and More

  Hardwood is a new parser for Apache Parquet, optimized for minimal dependencies and great performance. Since the project’s initial release just a few weeks back, a small yet very active community has come together and evolved Hardwood significantly. Today, we are shipping an S3 backend, allowing to parse files directly from object storage, predicate pushdown for both local and remote files, Avro bindings, a CLI for inspecting Parquet files, and much more. We’re also excited to launch a website for the project, hardwood.dev, which contains the documentation and API reference.

  Let’s dig in.

• It's FOSS ☛ FOSS Weekly #26.14: Open Source Office Drama, Ubuntu MATE Troubles, Conky With Ease, Session Management in Wayland and More GNU/Linux Stuff

  Controversies all around.

• Ubuntu Handbook ☛ Hideout – Stupid Simple App to Encrypt Individual Files in Linux

  Want to password protect your files in Linux? Here’s a stupid simple app to do the job for beginners. There are quite a few ways to secure your data in Linux, e.g., encrypt the whole disk, encrypt a folder, or compress files into encrypted archive.

• Web Browsers/Web Servers

  • Samuel Henrique ☛ Samuel Henrique: Bringing HTTP/3 to curl on Amazon Linux

    Starting with curl 8.17.0-1.amzn2023.0.2 in Amazon GNU/Linux 2023, you can now use HTTP/3.

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox Tooling Announcements: MozPhab 2.11.1 Released

      Bugs resolved in Moz-Phab 2.11.1: [...]

• Education

  • Raspberry Pi ☛ Experience CS: The complete set of units is live

    The complete set of Experience CS units is now available.

    With the release of the final six units, Experience CS now provides 18 cross-curricular, project-based computer science units for grades 3–8. It offers educators a collection of free, standards-aligned units to bring computing into their classrooms with confidence.

  • Dark Reading ☛ Geopolitics, AI, and Cybersecurity: Insights from RSAC 2026

    RSAC 2026 Conference offered a platform to explore the shifting landscape of cybersecurity — where geopolitics, artificial intelligence (AI), and private-sector innovation converged to address emerging threats. In this Eye on Tech interview, Dark Reading senior editor Becky Bracken joins Informa TechTarget (ITT) senior executive editor Jamison Cush and ITT managing editor Sabrina Polin to dissect the critical issues shaping the industry, from the absence of US federal government leadership at the event to the European Union's proactive approach to regulation. Their conversation highlighted the growing influence of international players in filling the leadership vacuum and underscored the urgency of collaboration in an era defined by rapid technological advancements and geopolitical uncertainty.

  • MWL ☛ for 1 April 2026: “Networking for System Administrators, The Defenestrated Edition”

    It’s another silly April Fools’ book except, as usual, it’s completely serious. Can’t stand Windows? Don’t want to learn a thing about it? Don’t want it tainting your pristine open source eyeballs? This is for you.

• FSF / Software Freedom

  • FSF ☛ March GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali featuring eighteen new GNU releases: Autoconf, PSPP, and more!

    Eighteen new GNU releases in the last month (as of March 31, 2026): [...]

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Access/Content

    • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post — Diamond Open Access: A Lifeline for the Monograph?

      Diamond Open Access (Diamond OA) has received much attention in recent years as a possible answer to some of the toughest questions in scholarly publishing. But what do researchers themselves actually think about it? As part of the Strengthening Diamond Open Access in the Netherlands program, we found that while many researchers welcome the principle of Diamond OA, awareness remains uneven and actual publishing choices continue to be shaped by career incentives, reputation, and visibility rather than a deliberate commitment to community-owned infrastructures or long-term sustainability. This misalignment highlights the need for stronger institutional recognition of Diamond venues, clearer guidance for researchers, and incentives that meaningfully reward publishing in scholar-led, non-APC venues. Placing the findings into the context of what is sometimes called the ‘monograph crisis’ allows us to ask a sharper question: Can Diamond OA serve as a genuine lifeline for the scholarly monograph?