Free Software Daily

Anyone who uses Skype has consented to the company reading everything they write. The H's associates in Germany at heise Security have now discovered that the Microsoft subsidiary does in fact make use of this privilege in practice. Shortly after sending HTTPS URLs over the instant messaging service, those URLs receive an unannounced visit from Microsoft HQ in Redmond.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the TPE-N150USB Wireless N USB Adapter, sold by ThinkPenguin. The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy. The TPE-N150USB can be purchased from http://www.thinkpenguin.com/TPE-N150USB.

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Cenatic, Spain's open source center, has published a model to help calculate cost savings that are possible by switching to free and open source software on desktop PCs. Switching a basic government desktop PC configuration to free and open source, for example, will save some 5000 euro per desktop per year, Cenatic's model shows.

The Free Culture Foundation has posted a thorough response to the most common and misinformed defenses of the W3C's Extended Media Extensions (EME) proposal to inject DRM into HTML5. The FCF counters the three most common myths by unpacking some quotes which explain that 1.) DRM is not about protecting copyright. That is a straw man.

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Fresh obfuscated Tor bridges are needed more than ever, since they are the only way for people to access Tor in some areas of the world (like China, Iran and Syria). But it is not the same as an exit node.

Vendors, according to ARM, are looking to standardize on one chip architecture and a single operating system such as GNU/Linux across their product lines. ARM claims it is the only one that scales from smartphones all the way up to servers.

What the argument over the names often boils down to is philosophy, not just attribution or credit. GNU was created with software freedom in mind. Linux, in its genesis, was proprietary until it adopted the GNU GPL licence and then became mainstream.

On April 8, Microsoft will discontinue its Windows Messenger service. All current users will be switched to Skype. The Free Software Foundation Europe advises former users of Windows Messenger to take this as an opportunity to embrace Open Standards such as Jabber (XMPP) instead of switching to Skype.

Hispalinux’s complaint called the implementation of UEFI Secure Boot an “obstruction mechanism” and “a de facto technological jail for computer booting systems.”

NetBSD has turned 20 years old, based on the initial CVS commit dated from March 1993. Congratulations and wishing many more year to come.

Free Software Foundation president Richard M. Stallman announced the winners of the FSF's annual Free Software Awards at a ceremony held during the LibrePlanet 2013 conference.

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There is a proposal currently before the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML5 Working Group to build DRM into the next generation of core Web standards. The proposal is called Encrypted Media Extensions, or EME. Its adoption would be a calamitous development, and must be stopped.

After nearly 9 years of seeding The Pirate Bay’s oldest working torrent is still very much alive. Interestingly, the torrent is not a Hollywood classic nor is it an evergreen music album. The honor goes to a pirated copy of “Revolution OS”, a documentary covering the history of Linux, GNU and the free software movement.

The UK Government Service Design Manual says to "Use open source software in preference to proprietary or closed source alternatives, in particular for operating systems, networking software, Web servers, databases and programming languages." The policy is in place to move forward.

If you are in search of an alternative for Google Reader, this article offers a list to choose from. They have been listed under three categories – Desktop, Self-hosted, and Web service. Three are under each category, and are the ones I’ve either used in the past, or have read about.

Buhl Data Service GmbH has agreed to pay €15,000 to adhoc dataservice GmbH for using its LGPL-licensed FreeadhocUDF open source library in his business software without observing the LGPL's licensing terms.

Today ownCloud 5, a very important milestone for the ownCloud community and perhaps the most important release so far, was released.

Qualcomm Atheros has released the source code of firmware for two of its 802.11n wireless chips on GitHub.

Document Freedom Day is a day for celebrating and raising awareness of Open Standards and formats which takes place on the last Wednesday in March each year. On this day people who believe in fair access to communications technology teach, perform, and demonstrate. Document Freedom is about all forms of data, including artwork, sheet and recorded music, emails, and statistics.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the line-up for its upcoming LibrePlanet 2013 conference, to be held in Cambridge, MA at the Harvard Science Center on March 23-24.