Free, Libre, and Open Source Software and Standards

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 03, 2026

• Protesilaos Stavrou ☛ Emacs: write with input method (e.g. French) and Jinx for spelling

  In this video demonstration I show the tools I use to write in French using Emacs. One is the built-in framework for input methods, which allows us to compose characters to express the full range of the language we are typing in (e.g. French or Greek). The other is a spell-checking package called jinx, which is developed by Daniel Mendler.

• [Repeat] FSF ☛ June GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali featuring eighteen new GNU releases: Linux-libre, Direvent, and more!

  Eighteen new GNU releases in the last month (as of June 30, 2026): [...]

• PowerDNS ☛ PowerDNS DNSdist 2.1.0 Released

  This new version brings several bug fixes since the first release candidate, including security issues that have been recently fixed in stable branches.

  Compared to 2.0, 2.1 brings many new features: [...]

• Web Browsers/Web Servers/Feed Readers

  • Mozilla

    • Tor ☛ New Alpha Release: Tor Browser 16.0a8 | The Tor Project

      Tor Browser 16.0a8 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.

      This version includes important security updates to Firefox.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • It's FOSS ☛ Collabora Office 26.04 Keeps Hey Hi (AI) Optional and Refines Writer and Calc

    The desktop suite's first major update pulls features from CODE 26.04.

• Education

  • Alice Girard Guittard ☛ GodotCon Amsterdam 2026

    Most importantly it was two entire days of talks about game development in Godot. Here are some of the ones I recommend checking out if you are into it.

• GNU Projects

  • GNU ☛ GNU Guix: ‘guix substitute‘ and ‘guix pull‘ Vulnerabilities

    Several security issues (CVE IDs pending) have been identified in guix substitute, a helper utility invoked by which enable a variety of harmful activities including remote privilege escalation to the build daemon user, remote store corruption, and potentially local disclosure of sensitive files accessible to the build daemon user. All systems are affected, whether or not guix-daemon is running with root privileges; the harm that can be done when guix-daemon runs without root privileges is more limited. You are strongly advised to upgrade your daemon now (see instructions below), carefully considering whether to pass --no-substitutes to all guix commands when you do so (see note in Upgrading section).

    The remote exploitation of guix substitute only requires that the vulnerable system attempt to download a binary substitute.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Data

    • Hackaday ☛ A Light-Up Map Of Monaco

      The project started with a QGIS mesh of Monaco, with the data fed through the Open-Meteo elevation API, which takes into account building heights. This was used as the basis for the heights of 179 pieces of 20 mm x 20 mm acrylic. These were assembled into a laser cut steel base, and were sanded on all sides but the base in order to allow them to diffuse light more effectively.

• Standards/Consortia

  • [Old] Christian Cleberg ☛ Plain Text, Plain Language

    Plain text never disappeared. It remained the foundation of source code, logs, configuration files, email, data formats, documentation, and the web. Now, with the rise of LLMs and agentic workflows, it feels even more obvious that plain text has won. Corporations may still save Word documents, share PowerPoints, and use other formats, but they are increasingly turning around and using agents to extract, summarize, transform, and rewrite that same content as Markdown or some other plain-text-adjacent format.

    Whether another format is used somewhere along the way, the center of gravity is moving back toward text that can be read, searched, copied, diffed, transformed, and understood without specialized software.