Internet News Section
The release of the new stable branch WebKitGTK 2.32.0 has been announced, a port of the WebKit browser engine for the GTK platform. WebKitGTK allows access to all the capabilities of WebKit through a GNOME-oriented API based on GObject and can be used to integrate web content processing tools into any applications, from specialized HTML/CSS parsers to fully functional web browsers. Notable projects using WebKitGTK include Midori […]
In light of Twitter's policy regarding the imposition of JavaScript, enthusiasts have developed Nitter—a free frontend for Twitter that operates without the imposition of JavaScript, analytics, trackers, or resources from Google, CloudFlare, and other third-party services. The project's code is written in Nim and is distributed under the AGPLv3 license. Project features include: No JavaScript or ads All requests are routed through the backend, […]
The ninth corrective update for the Debian 10 distribution has been released, including accumulated package updates and fixes in the installer. The release includes 45 updates addressing stability issues and 30 updates fixing vulnerabilities. Notable changes in Debian 10.9 include an update to the latest stable version of the postgresql-11 package and the addition of UEFI SBAT (Secure Boot) support in fwupd.
An experimental release of the open implementation of WinAPI — Wine 6.5 — has taken place. Since the release of version 6.4, 25 bug reports have been closed and 413 changes made. The most significant changes include support for the OpenCL 1.2 specification, defining the API and C language extensions for organizing cross-platform parallel computing using multi-core CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, DSPs, and other specialized chips.
From the codebase on which the FreeBSD 13 release was based, the code implementing the WireGuard VPN protocol, developed under contract by Netgate without consultations with the original WireGuard developers, has been controversially removed. This code was already included in stable releases of the pfSense distribution. After code review by Jason Donenfeld, the author of the original WireGuard, it was determined that the proposal for FreeBSD contained significant issues.
The Sculpt 21.03 operating system release has been presented, which is developing a general-purpose operating system based on Genode OS Framework technologies that can be used by ordinary users for everyday tasks. The project source code is distributed under the AGPLv3 license. A 27 MB LiveUSB image is available for download. It supports operation on systems with Intel processors and graphics subsystems.
The NGINX Unit 1.23 application server has been released, which is developing a solution for running web applications in various programming languages (Python, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Go, JavaScript/Node.js, and Java). Multiple applications in different programming languages can run simultaneously under NGINX Unit, with launch parameters that can be dynamically changed without the need to edit configuration files and restart.
The release of the dual-panel file manager GNOME Commander 1.12.0 has taken place, optimized for use in the GNOME desktop environment. GNOME Commander offers features such as tabs, command line access, bookmarks, customizable color schemes, directory skipping mode when selecting files, access to external data via FTP and SAMBA, extensible context menus, automatic mounting of external drives, access to navigation history, […]
A voting plan has been published, with a single option: to support the petition against Stallman by the Debian project as an organization. The voting organizer, Steve Langasek from Canonical, has limited the discussion period to one week (previously, at least two weeks were allocated for discussion). The founders of the vote also include Neil McGovern, Steve McIntyre, and Sam Hartman, who in the past […]
A patch release of the OpenSSL cryptographic library 1.1.1k is available, addressing two vulnerabilities classified as high severity: CVE-2021-3450 — a potential bypass of certificate authority verification when enabling the X509_V_FLAG_X509_STRICT flag, which is off by default and is used for additional verification of certificates in the chain. The issue stemmed from a new verification implemented in OpenSSL 1.1.1h that prohibits the use of […]
The author of the popular Ruby library mimemagic, which has over 100 million downloads, was forced to change the license from MIT to GPLv2 due to a discovered breach of the GPLv2 license within the project. Only versions 0.3.6 and 0.4.0, released under GPL, remain on RubyGems, while all older releases under the MIT license have been removed. Furthermore, the development of mimemagic has been halted, and the repository on GitHub […]
The Open Source Initiative (OSI), which verifies licenses for compliance with Open Source criteria, has decided to hold a re-election for the governing board due to a vulnerability found in the voting platform used to manipulate the results of the previous elections. Currently, the vulnerability has been blocked and an independent investigation has been brought in to determine the consequences of the breach. Details of the incident will be published after completion […]