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A fight is brewing over ads in the 'open-source Photoshop'
Far from just being that character in Pulp Fiction, GIMP is also an open-source alternative to Photoshop that's given away freely for all to use. Unfortunately, there's been a kerfuffle between the project's creators and SourceForge, one of the places that the software is available to download. The latter stands accused of adding for-profit adware to its version of GIMP, which is a big no-no amongst the free and open-source software community. In a posting to Google+, SourceForce is alleged to have frozen out GIMP for Windows rep Jernej Simončič and subsequently injecting malicious code into the build to trap unwitting users.
Hot Topic is buying ThinkGeek
High school is teenage tribalism, which is why the Lip Service kids aren't going to hang with the Forever 21 set in the lunch hall. Now, however, Hot Topic has realized that it's got plenty in common with ThinkGeek, and has decided to swallow the niche retailer in a deal worth $122 million. Hot Topic CEO Lisa Harper believes that it's a good fit, since both companies share a strategy of "delivering great products for avid fans of various licensed properties." Or, in non business-school buzzkill speak, selling y'all t-shirts with Marvel characters on them will make the company even more bank if it owns one of its rivals.
Google Code is shutting down because everyone loves GitHub
Goodbye, Google Code. The technology giant has decided to close its project hosting and code collaboration site because, well, there are simply better alternatives on the web. Google says it launched the platform back in 2006 because it was unhappy with the "limited" options available to the open source community. Since then, the likes of GitHub and Bitbucket have risen to prominence, superseding Google Code's feature set and encouraging developers to transfer their projects. As such, Google's offering has become increasingly filled with spam and abuse, leading to the company's decision to pull the plug. Yesterday it stopped accepting new projects, and on August 24th the site will become read-only. Google Code will eventually be shuttered next January, although tarballs of project source, issues and wikis will continue to be available throughout 2016. If you need to transfer a project, head here for the relevant GitHub and Bitbucket migration tools.
TrueCrypt development stopped amid a cloud of mystery
Last Wednesday the SourceForge page for popular open-source disk encryption software TrueCrypt started recommending the use of BitLocker on Windows instead. Visitors were told that the application was "not secure" anymore. Of course, social networks exploded with speculation, with people claiming the page was hacked or that the government, using a National Security Letter, might be requesting "changes" on the software. The truth is much more mundane: a developer of TrueCrypt confirmed to Reuters that it had been shut down out of boredom. Security researcher Steve Gibson said that after 10 years of work, the developers simply got tired of the project.
Dice Holdings buys Slashdot, Freecode and SourceForge for $20 million
Dice Holdings, the unimaginatively named owner of technology jobs site Dice.com has purchased Geeknet's media business for a cool $20 million. The deal hands over control of the world-famous Slashdot, Freecode and SourceForge to the careers company, commencing the careers site's push into tech content. It leaves Geeknet with one remaining property, ThinkGeek, which will now be getting all of that company's attention -- hopefully to produce products that are even more lust inducing than Cave Johnson's portrait.
New open source voice project
Ryan McDougall has announced the formation of a new Sourceforge project, called VoIP for Virtual Worlds. The long-term goal is to create an interoperable open-source standard for all virtual worlds. To help the project find its feet, the initial short-term goal is to create an open-source replacement for the existing Vivox component (SLvoice) that is used for voice in Second Life that can communicate with a SIP-based backend server. Developers who are interested in the effort can start with the project's new mailing list. We don't presently know if an open-source solution could be fully compatible with the existing voice system in Second Life as the existing system relies heavily on Vivox servers and backend software.
RealXtend viewer now on Sourceforge
Sourceforge - billed as the largest open source website in the world -- is now host to the source code project for the RealXTend viewer (rexviewer) for Second Life. RealXtend claims to have replaced all of the license encumbered portions of the viewer with GPL-friendly alternatives, though they are still having some issues decoupling FMOD from their VoIP solution. The project website remains at rexviewer.org, while the project page and source code (available via subversion) is now on Sourceforge. Rexviewer is only in alpha at present, but has a number of distinctly interesting technological features, and more planned.
TiVo DRM cracked, non-Windows users rejoice
Historically, one of the main raps against TiVo has been its lack of support for non-Windows users with respect to transferring recordings off of the set-top box; TiVoToGo is a privilege served up to Windows users only. Well that's all about to change, if the crafty coders over at Sourceforge have anything to say about it. According to several sources (most significantly, the 'forgers themselves), a program that's been a year in the making -- the so-called TiVo File Decoder -- is finally stable enough to run in the wild from command lines worldwide. Although there are currently no OS-specific GUIs to expedite the process, Decoder will still perform a .tivo-to-MPEG conversion without the need for tools like DirectShowDump, so it should only be a matter of time before polished Mac and Linux interfaces are compiled that dumb down the process for the average user. As with all DRM-altering applications of this nature, the usual caveats apply -- you're responsible for your own data, and when the TiVo police show up at your door to take a swing at your MacBook with a sledgehammer, make sure to blame the folks at Sourceforge and not your good friends at Engadget.[Via PVRWire]
Automating ClamAV
For those of you without antivirus protection for your Mac (which I guess is all of you, right?) there's always ClamAV. And while Clam is fantastic, updating the package requires a cumbersome trip to Sourceforge to download and compile on your machine. Fortunately, Macosxhints has a post with a shell script automating the process. Now since Terminal is AppleScriptable, you can run this script with a simple drop down as well. In fact, shell scripts are accessible via AppleScript directly, but I digress. You could just get all fancy and grab ClamXav, the GUI front-end to ClamAV.
