Category Archives: News

Open Source Accounting Solution for Non-Profits

Non-profit organisations are faced with an unappetising choice when deciding on a software solution for their accounting needs. They can either develop and maintain a complicated system of their own or they can use propriety software which undermines their charitable, equality focussed basis. This conflict between ideological desire and practical needs is likely to be particularly heartfelt for open source and free software non-profits.
 
Software Freedom Conservancy has a solution to propose. They plan to first survey existing solutions developed for for-profit accounting needs and then develop from the best available system an open source solution focussed specifically on the needs of non-profit organisations. When completed this software should save the sector millions each year as well as increasing its collaborative potential.
 
The Conservancy is itself a charity and is looking for financial help to fund the development of this software. Today they announced the start of a campaign to raise the necessary funds to dedicate a year of developer time to turning the concept into a reality. The project already has a range of endorsements and statements of support but is still seeking donors. This is your chance to contribute to the ongoing success of a range of non-profit charities all in one go.

Stopping the Snoopers Charter isn’t Enough

In a welcome move, Nick Clegg announced his opposition to the communications data bill (CDB) last week. His article in the Telegraph listed five reasons why CDB went “too far” in its attempted legislation. Among those reasons was the ease with which competent criminals could sidestep the effects of CDB and the alarming precedent the UK government would be setting for other countries in the scope of its jurisdictional claims. He’s not on his own; these arguments and many more have been brought against CDB from a wide range of opposition.

Continue reading →

Two Weeks of Big News at MariaDB

MariaDB LogoLots of big MariaDB news these last couple of  weeks:
  • Last week Wikimedia foundation fully migrated their English and German Wikipedias over to MariaDB.
  • As reported here on Meshed Insights, we also heard that the MariaDB Foundation has appointed an interim board to oversee the election process of a new board in July.
  •  This week brought the exciting news of a merge between SkySQL and Monty Program Ab. This is especially good for the core MariaDB developers as it assures them ongoing backing.
  • Along with the above announcement, SkySQL joined the MariaDB Foundation as its first Platinum member.
  • Matthew Aslett  highlights the growth of MariaDB and importance of  the MariaDB Foundation during his Percona Live keynote.

Community vs Technical Debt

OpenJDK CommunityOracle’s Java technical chief recently admitted that dealing with long standing security issues has hampered the release of the latest Java instalment. The issues didn’t necessarily originate with Oracle, they’ll have been accumulating over many years, first at Sun and then at Oracle. The problem has been that until now these issues have been on a continual back burner, the “tyranny of the urgent” focussing developer attention onto business considerations as the priority.

Dealing with this technical debt is clearly a time consuming affair, but eventually it catches up with a project and needs to be handled. Some long lived projects don’t seem to gather this sort of flotsam though; the key is in the community. Proprietary projects are often forced to be solely feature focussed, but open projects with a healthy community are in a much better position to bypass the problem of technical debt, as community members will often pour enthusiasm and expertise into resolving the backlog. Continue reading →

International Free and Open Source Software Law Review

Are you aware that among the large body of international law research there’s some dedicated solely to the legal issues surrounding free and open source software? International Free and Open Source Software Law Review covers topics ranging from licence interpretation to open standards to statuary changes and relevant case law.

Recently it published its seventh issue, aiming to inform the legal community about FOSS issues. This leading, peer reviewed, academic treatment of legal issues in this field follows the principles it analyses and debates, making the review freely reproducible for commercial or non-commercial use.